The 2016 US presidential election and the Trump presidency have helped make visible that a variety of epistemically perilous features are far too common in the thought and behavior of Americans. David Roberts, in a 2017 blog post for Vox, aptly labeled one such feature tribal epistemology. Roberts describes a world dominated by tribal epistemology as one in which Continue Reading …
Kitsch and Camp in the Age of Trump
In this strange era, in which the dominant intellectual pastime has become analyzing the moods and behaviors of the American President (not so different, one imagines, from life at Versailles in the mid-eighteenth century) an interesting question about Donald Trump seems, to me at least, to be whether his style is more Kitsch or Camp? I realize this concern puts me in Continue Reading …
Self-Contradiction: The Wisdom of Emerson Vs. Trump’s Whims
In the strange days since the election, everyone's been talking about Thoreau, as so many of us carry on his legacy of civil disobedience. But it's the other icon of American Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who's come to my mind repeatedly since the presidential campaign. Before I get into why, perhaps it's worth saying a little about Emerson and his immense Continue Reading …
Is Donald Trump a Legitimate President?
The Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis made headlines recently, and sparked the ire of President-elect Trump, by stating to NBC News that “I don’t see this President-elect as a legitimate President.” Congressman Lewis’s reasoning was that undue Russian influence in the election propelled Trump to victory. In other words, the procedure that brought Trump to power was Continue Reading …