“The Empty Vessel makes the loudest sound,” said Shakespeare. The German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer put it this way, “Folly makes the loudest noise.”
America is deafened by the sound of Trump’s beating his own tin drum. From the incessant din that Donald Trump sends up each day, one can easily infer that Trump possesses a despotic disposition. He has the temper of a belligerent adolescent. Trump apparently expects his hearers to submit cringingly to what he says, claiming that the authority for his views comes from his dazzling achievements in life.
Unfortunately, Trump’s convictions are based on his enormous self-satisfaction rather than on any insightful or original discernment of the fundamentals of an issue. His assertions are simply a rehash of hackneyed and commonplaces, and stale platitudes that the ignorant accept with compliancy. In fact, Trump is a man of dull mind. He is one who flatters the mob in order to mislead it. His stale commonplaces shed little light on sound, vital knowledge. Trump appeals to prejudice and ready-made sympathy, ignoring the fact that prejudice is, first and last, is the bastard child of ignorance.
Trump’s campaign for the U.S. Presidency is but another chapter of the warfare between what a man is and what a man he has. It is clear to all except the blind that Trump wants to obtain political power at any cost. He is one of those, like Hillary, who think that life’s greatest pleasures consist of being admired and obeyed. Unfortunately, those cravings have their origin in vanity and unbridled self love, and the conduct of both resemble a person who flaunts his influence and power because of a forged will. They are living rebuttals of the view that the more a person has in themselves, the less they will need the worship of the outside world.
In Trump’s eyes, the man of unbridled riches is a man entitled to unlimited, uncorrected self assertions. He believes that such a person is entitled to bulldoze any a rival mind flat as pavement, and then is able to leave the scene convinced that he has won the argument. His convictions are based on his enormous conceit rather than on any insightful or original discernment of the fundamentals of an issue. His assertions are simply a rehash of hackneyed and commonplaces, stale platitudes that the ignorant accept with compliancy. Trump is a man of dull mind. He is one who flatters the mob in order to mislead it. His stale commonplaces shed little light on telling facts and sound knowledge. Trump appeals to prejudice and ready-made sympathy, ignoring the fact that prejudice is, first last, is the bastard child of ignorance.
Apparently, closely reasoned argument remains outside Trump’s intellectual capacity, and since Trump cannot analyze, he simply lays down his own laws. Whether the assertion is right or wrong, astute or misguided, ignorant or worthwhile, he has no means to determine its validity beyond the fact he has said it. His listeners would be the last people on Earth able to know if his conclusions were correct or mistaken.
Trump’s admirers cannot reason about a thing; they cannot think a topic through. The hearers of Trump hold to the belief that by being buried in such a torrent of hard words, some factual truth may still be lurking in them, and so they keep listening. Such an audience sometimes pretend they have reached sound conclusions when, in fact, they will embrace what the speaker says out of mere weariness. The constant repetition of what is false, said with the weight of authority, deadens their ability to resist. At times, Trump attempts to use different tactics to gain followers. Instead of acting upon a hearer’s intellect, a man like Trump goes to work on his listeners’ motives, their storehouse of unexpended resentments, and he will try to excite similar hatreds, believing that a flawed reaction to what he says is better for achieving his aims than all the penetrating insight in the world. The ignorant embrace people like Trump because their uneducated thought resembles his.
Trump is ill humored, disagreeable, touchy, quick to feel insulted while remaining insensible to the feelings of those he attacks. A major defect of his mind resides in the fact that he cannot advance any alternative claims, or offer any modulation of his tone, or any variation of his tactics – he sticks with the claims he had made, but employs a louder, more belligerent voice when contradicted. Not only is Trump wrong about his facts, he is wrong at the top of his voice.
Trump’s mind can only travel on a single track. Trump asserts rather than argues. Contradiction and contention only irritate him into exaggerating his original statements. He deals with an objection by repeating his original assertion at a greater volume, attempting to insult and shoulder aside competing ideas. Trump’s basic aim is to overpower, not convince. His way of rebutting another’s claims is, at bottom, an appeal to brutality. Instead of offering new facts, Trump repeats; he repeats, and he repeats, his loud, harsh tone rising, his coarse, uncouth face reddening with displeasure, until his small store of patience has gone dry and he responds with fresh truculence.
Trump, in my view, caters to insecurity -- caters to people who suffer from a sense of being left behind, of having been found inferior and out of date. He caters to the puerile and the inert. He caters to those we feel slighted by life. His followers appear determined to remake the world in according to their wishes, no matter how ignorant or misguided those wishes have been or what catastrophic results those wishes have produced in the past. Resentment, rather than admiration, is most powerful force in such minds. In such a group, anything that creates doubt or misgiving is likely to appear suspicious or undermining. Most of Trump’s followers are far from being open-minded. His followers parse through the convictions of others, not in search of any truth, but to discover something more congenial to their pet outlooks. Trump offers them a match.
Trump disdains false delicacy. He uses an ax to split hairs. He reminds me of someone who finds that a soap dispenser empty, yet keeps trying to get it to work instead of refilling it. In Trump, his will crowds out his judgment. It is the case of the will trying to do the work of the imagination. And criticizing Trump is like squeezing a snow ball -- the greater the pressure, the harder it gets.
The Conceit of Capitalism
The most ominous feature of Trumps tirades is the suggestion that the rich man is likely to be themost able man. Never mind flexibility or sagacity or intellectual and moral strength that sound leadership requires. If he ever obtains political power, I fear that the next step would be Trump saying to his public, “On your knees, little man, before your master.” His rantings personify what is worst in America, the deterioration of moral standards, the decline of the critical spirit, seeing life as battle, the exaltation of childishness, vast indifference to the past treasures of a broad culture. (One can make his or her own list. )
Many ordinary people don’t put their hearts into their work anymore. Why should they? They aren’t paid. America’s capitalism has destroyed democracy and established an oligarchy in its place. I excerpted this from a recent article in Time Magazine: “Capitalism has been amazingly successful,” write Friedman and co-author Sarah Hertz of Empire State College. “But it has grown so unfettered, predatory, so exclusionary, it’s become, in effect, crony capitalism. Now places like Qatar and Romania, “countries you wouldn’t expect to be, are doing better than us,” said Friedman.
“You can become a second-rate power very quickly,” added Hertz.
And America has become second-rate in many areas. Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. Now we have fallen to seventh place.
The United States once had the highest proportion of young adults with post-secondary degrees in the world. Today that number has declined to 12.th place
In 2001, the United States ranked forth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
And the list goes on.
Trump vs. The Stranger
Trumps comments about the dangers of Mexican immigrants have their origin in the Know Nothings of the 1850s, when America had German, Irish or Italian immigrants pouring in by the thousands, and native Americans refused to grant them equality with themselves. Americans were and are a self -admiring people who believe that, “Though all the vicissitudes of time, the Caucasian has risen to the moral and intellectual supremacy of the world, and now this favored race is fitted to he Stewardship of the Earth and Emancipation of Manual Labor.’ Everyone else is remote and alien. Granting rights to the “lesser breeds” was envisioned as an act of mercy, not something that immigrants could earn by their work and social contributions. The smug assumption of Anglo Saxon superiority has found a new disciple in Mr. Trump. So congratulations for Mr. Trump for being in the forefront of a very backward movement.
And the bad news is that there are too many who want to pucker up and get behind him. Trump belongs on the entertainment pages. Unfortunately, many political journalists are unable to fathom this.
Posted by: Lars | 27 July 2015 at 05:54 PM
Mr. Sale,
I feel that Trump is actually brave in his opposition to illegal immigration. If he was the shallow charlatan you describe him as, he would have run as Jeb Bush has...and coasted on the applause of the MSM and Borg infrastructure.
He is catching hell and fighting an uphill battle. Even if you don't like his position, you should at least respect him for taking the hard route.
I feel that your criticism on his immigration position is rather shallow. So what if this "sounds like" things that were said before? Was it necessary to allow all those immigrants of past years into the country? Did they not end up living in squalor and commiting crimes? Is it written in some Godly law that every immigrant group is destined to improve itself with each generation?
I have heard a respected Canadian demographic researchers argue that there is no need for accelerated or sustained immigration (this in a country with mostly legal immigration...so you can imagine how insane the US position is in this regard). I have heard respected American economists argue that markets are supposed to respond to decreased labour supply by increasing wages...and that purposefuly & artificially inflated immigration is a violation of market principles.
Contemporary politics requires simplicity and passion. You are attempting to alert people to dangers the powerful wish to be kept hidden. You are attempting to motivate people to wake up from their comfortable slumber. I understand why Trump attempts to incite. If he was timid, he would have been ignored by the masses and steam-rolled by the Borg infrastructure. So your criticism in this regard strikes me as unfair.
Best,
Paul Escobar
Posted by: Paul Escobar | 27 July 2015 at 06:14 PM
Richard, And all this makes Trump different from the other candidates (excepting maybe Webb and Sanders)how exactly?
I take bombastic over the typical weaseling and craven any day. It seems that a significant proportion of Americans agree with me.
I think we should welcome Trump's style and his bashing of the sanctimonious weasels. It's refreshing.
Posted by: no one | 27 July 2015 at 06:51 PM
I find myself in strong agreement with no one
Sadly, I find Trump refreshing. Sad that it should be so. Bernie inspires, but seems certain to loyally pass all his voters on to Hill, who carries the masters of the universe water - he limits himself considerably. Rand Paul is not his dad, and his dad never really got anywhere. Mr hopey-changey changed his tune instantly and gifted trillions to the uber rich and the banks and he remains a wonderful speaker of empty meaningless words. Trump actually states there is rottenness in the state of Denmark and he is the only one saying so (Bernie dares not go that far).
If you are expecting deep thought provoking conversations in the upcoming multibillion dollar election season, well, maybe a few decades ago.
Posted by: ISL | 27 July 2015 at 08:27 PM
The Donald is exhorting the rabble
to attack the Bastille. Unbeknownst
he will be the first to feel the blade.
We are all Jacobins now. 👍😱😎👀
Posted by: SteveG | 27 July 2015 at 10:08 PM
Let's take a look at the "results" of years of focus-group driven, poll driven, corrupt mediocre weasels whose only accomplishment has been to suck on the public teat.
This country is being run - into the ground - by assholes who'd mess up a lemonade stand.
If Trump, for all his narcissism (we've endured 8 years of a petulant, immature narcissicist, BTW) and obnoxity can drive the establishment (and their media lapdogs) nuts, that's good with me.
Posted by: tv | 27 July 2015 at 10:28 PM
Mr. Sale,
Humor alert only, this reminded me of a rather funny discursive by David Roth of Vice Sports on "a-holes" which I suspect you might enjoy.
https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/david-roths-weak-in-review-the-importance-of-not-being-an-a-hole A snippet:
"A world in which people feel not just okay about but a certain smug pride in behaving like assholes is not a world that anyone would really want to live in, really. Because the defining trait of assholery is an unwillingness or inability to deal with the reality of a world that contains other people, an asshole-positive culture is an unworkably narcissistic one. That culture is aggrieved and fact-averse and tribal. More than that, though, it's warped and stunted and incomplete—every insufficiently flattering or convenient perspective is filed under "BS/Whatever," every trial or tragedy or triumph is run through the filter of the self until it makes the sort of sense that the asshole-in-question wants it to make."
Posted by: Mark Logan | 27 July 2015 at 10:49 PM
Nice post Richard with which I largely agree. But you left out the words SELF DELUSIONAL.
Many brilliant minds in asylums are SELF DELUSIONAL.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 27 July 2015 at 11:49 PM
There are many who've noted there's something rotten in DC. Simply trumpeting the fact obnoxiously, ampliified with cash, does not not endorse the trumpet as conductor. Also, he's an insufferable ass even by modern political standards.
Posted by: ked | 28 July 2015 at 01:12 AM
A Trump Consensus [that the man is an asshole] would be a way to neutralize the Sowers of Discord and the forces of Divide & Conquer/All Against All.
https://youtu.be/AIBkRDzffak?t=20
Posted by: rjj | 28 July 2015 at 08:58 AM
that is well said.
Richard
but beware of being shallow, as Mr. Escobar described me.
Posted by: Richard Sale | 28 July 2015 at 09:48 AM
Richard, you aren't, but at one point I found Babak's critique pretty close to mine. And yes, I struggled with Babak.
I appreciated one of your stories on The Athenaeum a lot. Since in a nutshell it said: don't trust appearances.
I cannot tell you to what extend Yanis Varoufakis, the martyr of European media libel reminded me of it. .... I never would have noticed but stumbled across it here.
To what extend as a journalist did you ever have complete information, you couldn't have. How can it be otherwise
I did wonder a bit about this character, he couldn|t have been you. But what made him surface?
Posted by: LeaNder | 28 July 2015 at 11:00 AM
tv,
The "results" "... of years of focus-group driven, poll driven... " politics. Here's a summary:
The unmarried girlfriend of the Democratic Party's front runner's husband received a million dollar payout for a tv interview in the '90s and is now in the public eye decrying 'bullying' (a new new crisis in the culture).
Said girlfriend's paramour - the husband of the front runner- is front and center in a "Global Initiative" that is the main effort of a tax exempt multi-million dollar enterprise that influences government policies around the planet (not just our own). The Democratic Party just loves, loves, loves the adulterous gentleman and his wife.
Their daughter is married to a hedge fund manager and is (shock!) an employee of said tax exempt organization working on implementing that tax free Global (so much for America being the focal point) Initiative.
Trump? He's a NYC based blow hard screwing people the old fashioned business way. The Clinton's, why they do it the New New York City way.
Posted by: Fred | 28 July 2015 at 01:01 PM
I would agree. We learn nothing from what he says.
Trump is simply an outdated populist right out of the late 19th century who feels that the stranger from a different land is corrupting the pristine national character. It is outdated paranoid rubbish.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Sale | 28 July 2015 at 02:17 PM
Mr. Sale
I have to disagree with the thrust of your post. You could replace Trump with Hillary, Jeb and the other candidates in your second and third paragraphs, and it would apply equally. I would except Bernie although he's not going to challenge the establishment in the general election.
The Borg wants people like you to do their job to discredit all those that threaten Borgistan.
Posted by: Jack | 28 July 2015 at 02:26 PM
Jack
"Borgistan" The Purple Assed Mandrill Of Peace (PAMOP) tells me that he likes that and asks what a group of Borgistas would be, perhaps a Murder of Borgistas or a Pod of Borgistas? pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 28 July 2015 at 02:32 PM
A fundament of Borgistas?
Posted by: rjj | 28 July 2015 at 02:39 PM
In the first place, I am not a part of The Borg and never have been.
You clearly misunderstood what I was trying to say. Trump, Hillary and Jeb are not people I admired. Trump is merely the most untruthful and obnoxious.
but the whole field is a field of non-entities.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Sale | 28 July 2015 at 03:02 PM
The Borg Brotherhood which can be simplified to Borg Brother.
And since resistance is futile, it provides a great challenge to knock Borg Brother off the pedestal.
Posted by: Thomas | 28 July 2015 at 03:07 PM
rjj
A "fundament of borgistas," The PAMOP says he likes that but would like other suggestions. This reminds me of the occasion on which I gently told a German professor of Islamic Studies that "fundament" and "fundamentals" were not the same thing and that talking to people of their fundaments was not a good idea. The PAMOP has finally told me that he was named by his sweet momma for Marcus Aurelius and wishes to be referred to as Marcus. He says his dam did not know Marcus Aurelius. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 28 July 2015 at 03:30 PM
Richard, how can say the trump is most untruthful? Isn't that like arguing that your calculation of how many angels can dance on the head of that pin is more accurate than mine?
Obnoxiousness is in the eye of the beholder. In this case would you like the conductor to quietly smile and tell you that the smoldering wreckage at the bottom of the canyon is not the train or have him brashly state that he is the best damn conductor in the world (as he begins to take the turn at 120mph) and not at all like the liar that crashed and won't admit it? Who knows, maybe he is pretty good and the train won't come off the tracks.
Posted by: no one | 28 July 2015 at 03:37 PM
Sir
I'm glad PAMOP likes it. I would suggest to the nominating committee that it should be a "Murder of Borgistas". After all they are like crows - "the bird of death". Having killed our republic they are now scavenging the remaining carcass.
Posted by: Jack | 28 July 2015 at 03:45 PM
Hey Marcus...
How about…
a scourge of borgistas (mosquitos)
an unkindness of borgistas (ravens)
a scurry of borgistas (squirrels)
a lamentation of borgistas (swans)
List of English terms of venery, by animal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_terms_of_venery,_by_animal
"Nature is never less than art, for the arts are simply copies of natural things. This being the case, how can the perfect and overarching nature of the universe be any less artistically skilled? In all the arts, it is the vision of the greater that inspires the manufacture of the lesser, and so it is with nature. From this fact springs justice, and from justice all other virtues trace their roots. We cannot be just when we are distracted by lesser things or deceived by them into making rash or fickle judgments." -- Marcus Aurelius
Posted by: Valissa | 28 July 2015 at 04:23 PM
A blattodea of borgistas?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blattodea
Posted by: no one | 28 July 2015 at 04:58 PM
Trump is merely a reflection of Citizens United taken to its logical endpoint.
Posted by: DeWitt | 28 July 2015 at 05:25 PM