The Trump Conning Tower

   

         Trump is a consummate con man. But is that so bad?     

            We were amazed that so many American voters couldn’t see through Donald Trump’s bluster. We likened him to the Hans Christian Anderson story, The Emperor’s New Clothes. He was called P.T.Barnum. Some even went so far as to compare his ranting tweets to hysterical speeches by Musolini or even Hitler.

            These analogies were apt. He was and is an authoritarian populist. He is megalomaniacal, egotistical. He is a carnival barker who plays the media to hype his celebrity image as brilliant deal-making billionaire entrepreneur and builder. Exposure of the truth of the myth behind the hype, which was belatedly dragged out by the media that created him, did little to change the minds of those who had already bought the product.

            They bought his pitch—he was a breath of fresh air in politics, who would shake things up by being a strong leader, who says what he believes. No amount of proof that the emperor was naked, or that his products were bogus, would cause the customers to spurn this product.

            We were shocked each time he made a claim against his opponent that actually applied to him. They were lying, picking on him; they had short fuses, had poor temperament; they were unqualified; they were criminals, sexists, racists. He had gall to accuse others of his own defects. Like Hitler claiming the Jews were the threat to world peace.

            His claimed prowess in business was contradicted by his bankruptcies, and the lawsuits by contractors. His claim to create American jobs was disproved by his outsourcing of products that bear his name. His refusal to show his tax returns undermined his claim to be charitable, a good citizen, even his claim of great wealth. (Need I mention his chutzpah in claiming to respect women?)

            None of that mattered to the voters who were anxious to swallow his bluster whole. Maybe the reason was that the other candidate / salespeople offered even more unattractive products, but the fact is that his advertising campaign hit the gullible customers in their angry, frightened hearts, if not their minds. He pandered to the worst in us, and his gamble paid off.

            Yes, he was a brilliant confidence man, who carried off the greatest swindle in American history. He took power, trampling the founding fathers’ claim of a democracy guided by an informed and educated electorate. He laughed all the way to the White House and to immortality.

            Those of us who were standing on the edges of the parade shouting vainly that the emperor was naked are terrified about what the inevitable comeuppance will do to the future of the nation. We are sure that if he carries through with the wrongheaded ideas he espoused in his ranting campaign, it will result in eventual ruin. 

            He cannot bring high paying manufacturing jobs back to the rust belt states that gave him his win: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. We are certain that his policy against Mexican and Muslim immigrants will be ruinous. We dread the changes his party will make to the Supreme Court and reverse progress in individual rights, including the right to health care and education.  We think we are right and he is wrong. We think given enough time, the American public will come to its senses and through the rascal out, along with the others in his party who kowtowed to him in to further their own ambitions.  

            But what if we are wrong? 

There have been other swindlers who sweet talked their way to power. We have three huge examples in my lifetime. In 1933, FDR was elected in the depths of the Great Depression, when the country was on the verge of revolution because of bank failures, 30%+ unemployment. 

There were calls for a military coup, dictatorship, a communist uprising. So, FDR, the crippled son of privilege, who was considered a second rate intellect and superficial glad-hander by professors and columnists, made his first speech on the Capitol steps. What is remembered from the speech is the phrase, “We have nothing to fear . . . but fear itself.” Huh?

            At the same time in Germany, things were even worse. The nation had been crushed twenty years earlier, losing millions of lives in a disastrous war, and then humiliated into signing a treaty that stripped its resources, put it into debt, placed all the blame for the world war on their shoulders. The Great Depression struck Germany even more harshly than here. Inflation was rampant, unemployment unstoppable.

            And Adolph Hitler is chosen to lead, by claiming that he—and only he—could bring his country back to its previous greatness. He presented himself as a savior, a powerful leader whose vision and faith was strong enough to carry the nation’s burdens. There was nothing in his past to support this except in his words, and the power of his rhetoric and self-belief. These had gathered an army of sycophants to adore him. 

Now the rest of the nation would yield to him. Opponents pointed out that he was a failed artist, architect; a rabble rousing race baiting lunatic, who wasn’t even German. None of that meant anything to those who were willing and anxious to believe his promises, even though to a rational mind, they seemed far fetched.

            By the summer of 1940, Hitler’s army had conquered Poland and France, and threatened to invade England. The smart money bet on victory within a few months. American public opinion bet that way, as did the American ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, and America’s hero flyer, Charles Lindbergh.

            So, England turned to a failed politician, whose ego and bluster had been rejected long before. Winston Churchill had been thrown out of the cabinet in 1915 after the Gallipoli fiasco. Since then, he had been an outsider who cared about preserving Empire and Crown, opposing communism and fascism. He wrote books, made speeches; he was an entertaining speaker and writer, and was ignored in parliament.

            By that summer, they gave him the reins of a government that most people expected to be forced to surrender; many thought Hitler would offer generous peace terms. (He had allowed a French government to govern over the southern half of that country, keeping his military forces in the occupied north.)

            Churchill would have none of this. His broadcast speech included eloquent words of defiance:

“. . .Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old

                        Many saw this intransigence as foolhardy as well as illogical. “The Empire beyond the seas” he referred to consisted of colonies such as India that would have welcomed the defeat of their Imperial masters. As for the “New World,” meaning the USA and Canada, his hope was more a pipe dream than a real likelihood.

            It is true that great leaders in times of crisis often show the traits of swindlers: resolve in the face of reason, an aura of self-assurance that calms shaking nerves. They are master bullshit artists, salesmen of exceptional skill and courage. The 20^th Century was a high point in the production of such figures. The advent of mass media allowed for The Big Lie to be pervasive. A power could control all major sources of information: news and opinion for the use of propaganda leading to a new concept: “totalitarian rule.”

            The tools of advertising and marketing that sold commodities translated well to politics. Democracies are particularly vulnerable to manipulation of the marketplace by clever minds. Polling, surveys, focus groups, testing, psychological profiling, all are useful in persuading large numbers of people to buy something they don’t need. 

They can go further—creating images that make bad people seem good, and dumb ideas seem brilliant. People can be made to buy things that aren’t good for them. They can be led to enthusiastically support policies that are, in fact, contrary to their own best interests.

            Celebrities have always existed in every culture: royalty, religious prophets, warriors, athletes, beautiful women, talented artists of all kinds. With the invention of pervasive media, promoters have been able to create the illusion of celebrity that makes it really happen. Barnum did it with his attractions; Ziegfeld did it with his discoveries just as the century began. For instance, he posed the singer, Anna Held, in a bath filled with milk and called in the photographers, scandalizing society but intriguing the public, who had to pay to see her perform.

            In the 21^st Century, we have come further, first creating celebrities who are famous merely for being famous, and making millionaires out of them. With the worldwide scope of social media, international celebrities emerge overnight from obscurity to marketability for no greater talent than performing a stunt on a bicycle or getting hit in the face with a bag of feces.

            With all of this background, we should not have been surprised by Trump’s election as president of the United States, following in the footsteps of Washington (whose mythmakers had tossing coins over the Potomac, admitting to his father that he cut down a cherry tree), Lincoln (the simple frontier woodsman who was actually a wealthy corporate lawyer), FDR (who convinced the press to never mention the fact that he was physically helpless), JFK (who winked at the press so they wouldn’t reveal his many mistresses), or Bill Clinton (who swore that he never had “sexual relations with that woman,” because her mouth on his prick was didn’t fit his idea of “relations.”)

            Linclon supposedly said, “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” To which another wit might add, But if you work it right, fooling some all the time and all some of the time can make you a hero, a star, wealthy, . . . and / or a president.

Remorse is a funny thing ...

"The only thing you owe the public is a good performance." H. Bogart.

"I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior I engaged in.I know people want to find out how I could be so selfish and so foolish." T. Woods.

T. Woods has a string of outstanding performances in his chosen field, which is golf. Let's get that straight. Golf. Not religion, politics, ethics, oratory. It is golf talent that has made him celebrated, envied, and vulnerable to attack for hubris.

He is also living proof of a central principle of Borenstein's Law - the counter intuitive truth that human beings can be counted on to act against their own best interests - sometimes to the point of self-destruction.

This Law applies to anyone, from the most sociopathic criminal to the highest achieving powerful people on earth.

Here's how Tiger phrased it:

"I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I ran straight through the boundaries that a married couple should live by. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them."

Now, Mr. Woods has exemplified another lesson I have learned in almost forty years of defending people accused of wrongdoing:

No expression of remorse can ever satisfy everyone.

There are ramifications of this fact.
The transgressor is usually in a no-win posture.
Failure to express remorse for bad conduct is seen as aggravating, but expressions of remorse are usually suspiciously self-serving.

"Sincerity" is completely subjective and tentative. Bill Clinton apologized with the same "sincere" voice he had used to deny guilt under oath months before.

Cynical responses such as "he wouldn't be sorry if he hadn't been caught" are earned by the initial deception.

The reaction to "I'm sorry" has as much to do with the listener's attitude as the transgressor's. People whose faith in another's goodness is shattered by revelations of transgression are usually hurt and angry.

The media does not have the "right" to know all the facts about everybody's life, even so-called "public figures." The First Amendment does not demand that people who want to sell products must give power over their lives to commercial media, whose primary purpose is to profit from celebrities rather than to provide information people need to form a better world.

Bullshit

The reason for global warming should be obvious: the world is full of bullshit. There is more in the world now than there has ever been. We now have entire fields of study which are founded on bullshit, obtaining grants to collect and disseminate bullshit. We are now inundated with “information” which we call “data” but which is mostly bullshit. We have a proliferation of Art, 99% of which is bullshit. How much of the internet is bullshit? Are you kidding?

Even before the internet, there was already so much bullshit on television, radio, in newspapers and magazines that it was nearly impossible to discern what was not bullshit. Now, the static of bullshit pervading cyberspace boggles the brain.

All advertizing is bullshit. Large chunks of serious institutions have been taken over by bullshit. Government, The Law, Medicine, Sports, Literature, Art, Business, Education from top to bottom are infested with bullshit.

Religion, philosophy and “serious thought” are pervaded by bullshit. There are entire bullshit sciences: psychiatry, psychology, sociology, anthropology. Most history is bullshit. Take away the bullshit and you have a slim volume of commons sense known to anyone with an I.Q. higher than an imbecile (and, oh, the I.Q. test is also bullshit).

What do I mean by bullshit?
I mean garbage, waste, lies, dissembling, poses, self-serving nonsense, sentimental wishes, statistics, anecdotal evidence, anything said in a political campaign, most medical tests, all local news programming.

When the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s story saw the emperor parading naked, he should have cried, “Bullshit!”

Andy Warhol was a “bullshit artist” in both senses. So are all the cable talking heads, the Sunday pundits, the PBS experts (including Deepak Chopra, Suze Orman,). Talkradio is the font of more bullshit every day than was produced in all the books of every century before the Twentieth.

The Twentieth Century was the bullshit century. The greatest figures of the era were bullshitters of the highest magnitude: Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill, FDR, JFK, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton. Our heroes are mostly made of bullshit (“bravado” = bullshit). Bullshit is the definition of acting and accounts for most of what we are fascinated with about celebrities.

The cure for bullshit is simple. Skepticism — a state of mind which stands uncomfortably between cynicism and apathy — is the antidote. When you see it, doubt it. When it moves you to tears, proceed from the assumption that you are being manipulated. When it makes you angry, ask who wants you to feel that way. Who benefits from the news stories about crime? How did the latest subject on the gossip shows become an “issue.”

It is true that there has always been bullshit. Bullshit thrived throughout history. Myths, legends, superstition, the Middle Ages (the Age of Bullshit). The start of every war can be traced to bullshit, and most were won or lost by bullshit.

But we were led to believe that the modern age would distinguish itself by overcoming bullshit. In science and medicine, truth would triumph over ignorance for the betterment of mankind.

The Founding Fathers were products of an era historians call The Age of Enlightenment, when bullshit was recognized as the enemy of man. Having seen through such bullshit notions as “the divine rights of kings”, they hoped that an idea like democracy might work. The hypothesis was: “You can bullshit some of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.”

The plan required that th people would be educated and informed of the dangers of the bullshit-riddled future. It assumed that the people would choose to be guided by an enlightened and intelligent elite — a group not unlike, oh say, the Founding Fathers. They would be a cut above the people in the ability to reason, the eloquence to lead, and mostly, possessed of just enough independent wealth to allow them the luxury of expressing selfless wisdom to act for the common good occasionally — on the really important issues. Parenthetically, it should be noted that this has worked during our history. Noblesse oblige, the duty of enlightened wealth and upper classes to govern wisely and selflessly has provided many of our best leadership: the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Adamses, Byrds, Rockefellers, etc.

The U.S. Constitution stands as the most remarkable work of protection against bullshit ever devised out of a laboratory. The checks and balances every textbook so glibly mention are an ingenious expression of the anti-bullshit political theory. No one group is to be trusted not to bullshit the others.

Even so, Jefferson and some others still smelled bullshit. They didn’t buy the argument that individual rights would be protected against the greatly increased power of the new improved people’s government. The proponents argued that it was not necessary to enumerate individual rights into the document. Those rights were well understood by the founders who were English gentlemen by birth and lawyers by training. These rights were guaranteed to every Englishman through the English constitution, a conglomeration of written documents and laws, unwritten traditions. They had incorporate these rights into the charters of their colonies and now their states’ constitutions, and the states were to be independent and sovereign.

Besides, the clever argument ran, the mere definition of individual rights was dangerous. It would lead to the conclusion that the defined rights articulated the exclusive list of rights possessed by individuals. That was contrary to their intention. They meant the powers of government to be circumscribed, clearly defined and limited, with all the other powers, rights and residue belonging to the people. The argument was somewhat prophetic as throughout much of our history parsing of the language and divining of the intentions of our constitution has become a parlor game played by Supreme Court justices and law professors.

Jefferson the scientist remained skeptical. He felt more comfortable putting it in writing. The result was The Bill of Rights, which has become the model for every constitutional democracy.

So did it work? Did it prevent or at least restrain the bullshit? Let’s first admit that the odds were long. It is in the nature of things that most everything is bullshit. It is simply part of the nature of the human animal to survive by wits, which means learning to bullshit better than the next guy. Every baby cons its mother into attentiveness by tears and tantrums. Toddlers trick their peers away from their toys, the best students learn to fools their teachers, rites of passage into manhood and womanhood involve successfully duping members of the opposite sex as well as a large dose of self-deception for survival.

In politics, democratic leadership inherently requires bullshitting the largest numbers of people, persuading them to do what is right contrary to their self-interest, usually by manipulation and promises.

Jefferson pinned his hopes for bullshit detection on the concepts contained in one cluster of clauses of the First Amendment — no state religion, unrestricted freedom of speech and press, peaceable assembly, and petition for redress of grievances. The idea was that if given access to all points of view, the people would sort out the bullshit and eventually make the right choices. There would be no state religion, no one Truth about ultimate questions. Rather, there would be a diversity of theories to choose from. The same with political truths: let everyone state a point of view, try to prove it, argue it, print it, try to persuade others, march about it, get together with others of like mind, complain to the government about it. Eventually, right choices would be made.

But Jefferson never anticipate the power of Bullshit. The mass media and now the internet have produced volumes of misinformation. He never imagined how much misleading data would bury the people trying to sort out the few nuggets of truth from the piles of bullshit. The naked emperor in our world is hidden behind blizzards of bullshit.

Jefferson, the architect, botanist, agronomist, philosopher, historian, naturalist, and lawyer could never have foreseen that there would come a time when everyone became a specialist, when the educated elite, the best and brightest that he relied on, would be so overwhelmed in bullshit about their own field of study that they could not hope to lead others in general debate over diverse issues. The most educated of us are narrow-minded and suspicious, self-interested without pause. Doctors and lawyers hate each other; scientists learn government to milk it rather than check it.

The system envisioned by the founding fathers, of enlightened leaders followed by an educated informed people, foundered on the mass of bullshit.

What does that leave us with? The only hope was to educate the people to fend for themselves. The mass media promised to inform, but it deforms, manipulates, distorts by overemphasis, creates hysteria. The free press, conceived as protectors of dissent and a marketplace of creative ideas, has devolved into just a marketplace of shabby commercialism. Since first discovered by Hearst and Pulitzer to be a profitable consumable, the News Business, pandering to the lowest tastes regarding crime, scandal, or salable issues, is an industry captured by the compulsion to SELL, not to inform.

We had the hope that public education, free to everyone, would insure that all the people would be able to recognize the bullshit. But we are failing miserably, even to insure basic literacy. Educators focus on giving information (data, bullshit) rather than teaching how to sort it out. There are so many people to process and so much bullshit to plow through that teachers become buried under it and eventually give up or become part of the bureaucracy that cultivates bullshit for a living.

The result is a public mired in cynicism and apathy. Most people don’t bother to vote, too discouraged by the weight of bullshit. Those who do vote, increasingly and understandably, do so to express a narrow self-interest — an issue or small constellation of related issues they perceive as relevant to their lives — and even then, are easily manipulated into buying bullshit.