The Trump Problem, War, and the Honorable

 

The “Trump Problem,” War, and the Honorable

Peter Schultz

 

 

From Caroline Elkins' book, Legacy of Violence: “the English temperament [embraced] sanctimonious self-righteousness which … indulged in injustice and selfish spoliation … under a cloak of virtue, benevolence, and unselfish altruism.” [212, Elkins]

What’s the Trump problem? How should he be understood? Is the most problematic thing his being anti-democratic or is it his being sanctimoniously self-righteous, embracing injustice and cruelty under the cloak of virtue and justice? The critique of Trump as being anti-democratic is a partisan critique. He doesn’t support democratic policies. The latter though is less superficial, less partisan than the former. It cuts deeper, revealing roots of American politics that are beyond partisanship and more problematic. For both party elites, a sanctimonious self-righteousness is a sign and a source of virtue, of patriotism, of being a good American. California’s governor Newsom is as self-righteously sanctimonious as Trump. And that sanctimonious self-righteousness is the most problematic characteristic of our political order, not partisanship. A partisan critique of Trump does not cut deeply enough to reveal the most problematic characteristic of the American political order. 

Hugo: War “is the second and more powerful of the two normal means employed the governments to achieve the ends [desired]. Diplomacy is the other means, but diplomacy by itself would be weak and ineffectual; war is its reinforcement, its sanction, and its alternative.” But diplomacy doesn’t have the same moral appeal that war has. War is taken as a sign and a source of virtue, of righteousness because when you’re willing to kill human beings, you know and have proof that you’re righteous. Killing is proof or your righteousness. Thus, such killing has “a moral effect” and is universally praised.

“Honor killings, often thought of by Americans as the practice of primitive societies, are engaged in by US elites as well. And so it is little wonder that persons seeking to be honorable are attracted to, seduced by war, especially patriotic wars. And, so, the distance between the Boy Scouts and war, for example, isn’t all that far.” 

Addendum: There are those who seek to be honorable and there are those who seek to be honored. For the latter being honorable is not enough. They need to be honored as well. Those seeking the honorable and those seeking to be honored are very different beings, and lead to very different ways of being in the world, e.g., the life of the good person and the life of the good citizen. For the ambitious, being honorable is not as important as being honored. And the most ambitious may be said to lust after fame because they see it as a kind of immortality. And on that quest, the honorable will often need to be and often will be sacrificed.