August 03, 2016
Andy Warhol, Self Portrait
Source: Bigstock
First, the artlessness of how Trump frames his proposals exposes the extremism of the globalist ruling class” emerging ideology of borderlessness.
For instance, when Trump proposes to build a wall, the establishment replies, in so many words, that the entire concept of national borders is outdated and immoral. When Trump says the U.S. should keep out Muslims, the elites reply that it is unconscionable for Americans to have a choice in who gets to immigrate.
Tipsy on their own rhetoric, the mainstream unintentionally reveals how crazy open-borders doctrines are becoming in a century when the U.N. predicts the population of Africa will quadruple to 4 billion.
But second, it’s also because Trump is a salesman without a silver tongue that he feels the need to avoid the usual eloquent obfuscations and boil ideas down to basic realities. He’s just not verbally adept enough to put over the kind of high-status bilge that has colonized our thoughts.
Seven hundred years ago an English friar named William of Ockham gave his name to the traditional Western prejudice that the simplest feasible explanation is most likely to be true.
Six and a half centuries later we went to the moon.
Lately, however, we haven”t really felt all that inclined to figure out how the world works. It’s more important to demonstrate our mastery of socially preferred locutions.
For example, one pressing public-policy question of the day is: What are the main causes of Muslim terrorism? Now, an Ockhamite might surmise that one useful answer is:
Muslims.
But the respectable answer in 2016 isn”t supposed to be anything that blunt. In particular, any acceptable explanation must include the six-syllable word “Islamophobia.”
Logically, Islamophobia sounds like it would be an effect of Islamic terrorism rather than a cause.
But logic hasn”t been the goal in 21st-century America. Status is. Repeating the word “Islamophobia” demonstrates that you have been to college, or at least that you watch talking heads on TV who have been to college.
And that’s what really counts.
In summary, Trump has been able to galvanize American politics by telling so many unfashionable truths because the reigning dogmas of our day are smart in form yet stupid in content.
Yet if our intellectual culture has to rely on a real estate developer for pointing out the Empire has no clothes, we are already in big trouble.
