David French wrote a column back in January that raises some issues worth thinking about. French's column was titled, "Us and Them Is All The Rage." To be perfectly clear, that is the "hardcopy" version of the title. Online, here is the title you'll find: "How a German Thinker Explains MAGA Morality."
"MAGA Morality"?
The first line in French's column pretty much spells out what French means by "MAGA Morality":
When you worship power, compassion and mercy will look like sins.
French continues with the following observation: "Over the last decade, I've watched many of my friends and neighbors make a remarkable transformation. They've gone from supporting Donald Trump in spite of his hatefulness to reveling in his aggression." French suggests that a good way to understand this transformation is to read Carl Schmitt, a German political theorist who joined the Nazi Party after Hitler became chancellor.
A key to "MAGA Morality," says French, is what he calls the “friend-enemy distinction”:
Let us assume,” Schmitt wrote, “that in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable.” Politics, however, has “its own ultimate distinctions.” In that realm, “the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy."
One of liberalism’s deficiencies, according to Schmitt (the fascist), is a reluctance to draw the friend-enemy distinction. Failing to draw it is a fool’s errand. An enduring political community can exist only when it draws this distinction. It is this contrast with outsiders that creates the community.
At the root of what French is calling "MAGA Morality" is a belief that we are not "in this together," as I often say, but that we are essentially divided, and that one side or the other must, inevitability, either "win" or "lose." If this is the nature of the political "reality" that prevails in that "Political World" that is created by our joint actions, then we must try not to "reconcile" with those who have views different from ours; we need to extirpate those who hold views different from ours.
Per Schmitt (the fascist), "rage," not "reconciliation," must our basic approach to dealing with political differences.
While French is associating this approach to politics with the "MAGA" tribe, both "sides" are buying in to this idea about how politics is supposed to work.
Building our politics on "rage," instead of "reconciliation," is to insure that hatred and division will be, in fact, the "coin of the realm."
Let me make a pitch I have made before, particularly in a blog posting suggesting that trying to find things to be "angry" at is not the type of political involvement we need to be promoting. We are - I want to emphasize this again - "in this together." Deciding how to make political decisions in a world in which "we are in this together" is the challenge that faces us now.
"Rage" and "anger" are not the way to meet that challenge, whether your politics and "morality" is "MAGA" or the opposite!
Image Credit:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment!