The Tao of Trump

Deusclaimer: everything about this post was unexpected, including the title, but I guess that's how the Tao rolls.

I certainly don't know why I am the way I am, but perhaps part of the reason is that I started out so completely aware of my own ignorance that I've never really recovered. I didn't know anything about anything -- except sports and pop music -- until I was well into my twenties.

Yes, there was a relatively brief respite from the ignorance, when I was a canard-carrying leftist (not just an ambient cultural liberal), and thought I knew everything -- or at least enough to render me superior to anyone to my right. Imagine Paul Krugman without the humility and charm. 

Being that I am congenitally insecure, the period of leftist superiority must have been a compensation. Now, being that I can't be the only one, it must be that leftist ideology serves a similar compensatory function for others seduced not only by its promises of omniscience, but by the other benefits as well, such as unearned virtue, social status, and being accepted by the Right People more generally.  

I never truly fit in with those superior specimens of humanity. And the way humans are built, when we don't fit in, we tend to blame ourselves. It's why we're vulnerable to social pressure. 

I suppose it goes back to the principle that life is just a continuation of high school. I didn't know much back then, but I knew I was an outsider, and I know it now. There was that period in between when I thought I could be one of them. That could never happen in real life, so I guess I'm lucky I found out before it was too late. 

Imagine wanting to fit in with the likes of Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Don Lemon, Tom Friedman, Joy Behar, Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, et al. Worse yet, imagine actually fitting in. It would simultaneously be hell and not knowing one is in hell. 

Maybe hell as such is not knowing you're there. They say God doesn't create hell per se, rather, it is built prick-by-prick by people and their bad choices. Really, it's just a consequence of freedom poorly used.

Hell is ignorant of being Hell. If it knew, it would be a temporary place of purgation (Dávila).

It starts back in Genesis 3 -- which, to repeat, didn't happen once upon a time, but rather, happens every time, starting today:

The proclamation of our autonomy is the founding act of Hell.

Like so many aspects of Cosmic Orthodoxy, the purpose of this principle is not so much to transmit formal content as to avoid catastrophic error. It's pretty simple: don't start by denying the existence of the Absolute, because that way lies cosmic madness, stupidity, narcissism, vanity, and the denial of every transcendent good. It is the Self-Evident Truth with which we must begin and on which everything else is founded. Deny it, and hell follows, whether sooner or later. And at the moment, it's gaining on us.

This is the primary reason why politics is so important. It reminds me of something Charles Krauthammer wrote about why it is arguably the most consequential subject of all, because if you get it wrong, then everything else goes south with it:

Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything -- high and low and, most especially, high -- lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away.

And one of the most important guiding principles of politics is awareness of the Unknown -- and Unknowable -- Unknown. 

It reminds me of a comment by Leo Strauss that I read this morning on PowerLine, to the effect that modern political science isn't "Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.”

I might add that this principle is not unknown to other cultures. For example, in the Tao Te Ching we read that

When the Master governs, the people / are hardly aware that he exists.

If you don't trust the people, / you make them untrustworthy....

He understands that the universe / is forever out of control, / and that trying to dominate events / goes against the current of the Tao.

Stop trying to control. / Let go of fixed plans and concepts, / and the world will govern itself.

That last one might as well be the Tao of Hayek. There's even a bit of explicit economic advice: 

The more subsidies you have, / the less self-reliant people will be....

I let go of economics, / and people become prosperous.

Who knew Lao-tzu was an Austrian? And a liberal anti-leftist:

When the will to power is in charge, / the higher the ideals, the lower the results.

When they think that they know the answers, / people are difficult to guide. / When they know that they don't know, / people can find their own way.

Finally, 

Those who try to control, / who use force to protect their power, / go against the direction of the Tao. / They take from those who don't have enough / and give to those who have far too much. 

They unleash 87,000 new armed federal agents on the people, / raid the home of a past and future president, / use the threat of Climate Change to further enrich wealthy donors, / and rob from future generations to finance their greed.