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5 6 July 2017
In his famous 1960s book ‘One-Dimensional
Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Indus-
trial Society’, Herbert Marcuse described the
Happy Consciousness, the amoral product of the
technocratic age, in which “guilt feeling has no
place”. A person with such a deficiency, Marcuse
says, “can give the signal that liquidates hun-
dreds and thousands of people, then declare
himself free from all pangs of conscience, and
live happily ever after”. Trump, No?
In ‘One-Dimensional Man’, Marcuse explained
how nuclear-war planners represented this
Happy Consciousness. They weirdly mixed the
business of planning death on a nuclear scale
with ‘fun’ talk about playing interesting games
so trivialising mass murder.
Trump’s frivolous flippancy about the possibil-
ity of nuclear war between North Korea and its
neighbours: “Good luck, Enjoy yourself folks”,
and his failure to rule out using them in Europe
reflect this.
Trump is a product of what Marcuse’s Frank
-
furt School colleagues called the Culture
Industry - movies and TV. Despite its popularity
the mass media is not democratic. The Culture
Industry is an anti-democratic con job. As its
Wikipedia entry says, “The culture industry per-
petually cheats its consumers of what it
perpetually promises”.
Trump is a creation, Marcuse would conclude,
of the fraudulent Culture Industry that perpetu-
ally dupes addict-consumers by conjuring up
prefabricated fantasies about the endless prom-
ise of the American Dream. Donald Trump used
his image as a wealthy celebrity showman to
spread these fantasies and manipulate voters,
who were desperate for a glimmer of success,
glamour or fame, as well as for someone to bring
them well-paying jobs.
Marcuse claims that “advanced industrial
society” creates false needs, which integrate
individuals into the existing system of produc-
tion and consumption via mass media,
advertising, industrial management, and con
-
temporary modes of thought creating a
“one-dimensional” universe of thought and
behaviour, in which critical thought and opposi-
tional behaviour dissipate.
Philosopher Roland Barthes, quoted by Mar
-
cuse, speaks of “magic-authoritarianism” where
“there is no longer any delay between the
naming and the judgement, and the closing of
the language is complete”. Examples of this
include the casual way Trump declared to her
face that he’d prosecute ‘crooked’ Hillary Clinton
and his judgement of Barack Obama as “Bad (or
sick) Guy”, after he decided the former President
had had him bugged. Trump lies - and lies about
his lies - because he is a One-Dimensional Man
entirely severed from the Truth and its ascend
-
ancy over falsity. It is all just a narcissistic magic
show, hypnotic entertainment - the Post-Truth
Triumph of the Spectacle.
But in our fractious and dangerous era of
media-generated ‘false news’ supported by
international strategic hacking, leaking and sub-
version his powers are politically lethal.
Failed ideas and
premonitions from
Marcuse, Kant, Plato
and Nietzche find a
tremendous home
by Thomas White
‘Barthes’, quoted by
Marcuse, speaks of “magic-
authoritarianism” such as
Trump’s judgement of Barack
Obama as “Bad (or sick)
Guy” - because he is a One-
Dimensional Man severed from
the ascendancy of Truth in a
narcissistic magic show
TRUMP:
Philosopher Mogul
A
GROUP OF UNITED STATES menl helh professionls hs
expressed concern bou he menl helh of Donld Trump.
Psychologis Dr John Grner sid: “We do believe h Donld
Trump’s menl illness is puing he enire counry, nd indeed he
enire world, in dnger. As helh professionls we hve n ehicl duy
o wrn he public bou h dnger”.
Bu wh bou duy o wrn bou his philosophy? Le us imgine
h four fmous ded philosophers, Herber Mrcuse, Dvid Hume,
Immnuel Kn nd Plo, hve been resurreced, nd pplied
hemselves o Trump. More unlikely, le’s preend Trump opens himself
o his philosophicl side.
Herbert Marcuse is very, very
worried.
Herbert Marcuse
CULTURE
July 2017 5 7
In Beyond Good and
Evil, Trump finds
justification for his
view that evil is not
the opposite of good
and his sense of
an Ubermensch,
superior Americans
David Hume warns not only about
Trump, but his followers too
David Hume, the apostle of scepticism, might also have
something to say about Trump’s dangerous personal-
ity cult. In Hume’s essay ‘That Politics may be reduced
to a Science’, citing the political vagaries of humanity,
he declared “should be sorry to think that human
affairs admit of no greater stability, than what they
receive from the … characters of men”. In other words,
Hume as a professional historian, would declaim the
folly of Trump thinking that only he - just one leader -
could fix America’s problems - an assertion that history
tends to mock. And being an astute moralist, and
observer of human nature, Hume would also have
questioned why Trump’s followers were gullible
enough to be fooled by overbearing bombast into her-
alding him as the master problem solver. In another
essay ‘Of Impudence and Modesty’, Hume remarked:
“Such indolence and incapacity is there in the gen
-
erality of mankind, that they are apt to receive a man
for whatever he has a mind to put himself off for; and
admit his overbearing airs as proofs of that merit which
he assumes to himself”.
Moreover, Hume forewarns not just about about
Trump, but his indolent supporters.
Kant: Donald Trump is my worst
nightmare
Immanuel Kant would have been disgusted by Donald
Trump, appreciating in him the philosopher’s worse
nightmares. For Kant integrity, honesty and consist
-
ency were everything. Trump would be akin to a
philosophical pornographic website (we assume that
our reborn Kant is up-to-the-minute).
Kant had a dim view of an exclusive focus on sex. In
his lectures “Duties towards the Body in Respect of
Sexual Impulses”, he notes:
“Sexual love makes of the loved person an object of
appetite; as soon as that appetite has been stilled, the
person is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which
has been sucked dry…Taken by itself it is a degradation
of human nature…”.
Donald Trump, of course, engaged, as Kant would
now be aware, in just such degradation: from beauty-
contest-sponsorship to casual sexism and alleged
real-life gropings. Kant might agree with Michael
Moore, who noted that this predation explain why
Trump rejects global climate treaties. Sexual predation
against women and corporate predation against the
environment are part of the same amoral game, which
he characterizes as “crimes against humanity”.
Yet what makes this even worse for Kant is that
Donald Trump has been elected President of the United
States of America, a nation for whose original revolu-
tion he had been an enthusiast, even though he denied
the right of revolution. Morally, Kant invested every
action with the importance of a universal action. But
nearly all of Trump’s actions are immoral. There is abso-
lutely no evidence he even recognises ethics as a guide
to behaviour. As a constraint on self-interest he consid-
ers it is the discipline of the Loser, perhaps his ultimate
bogeyman. Though reincarnated, Kant is now question-
ing whether he can live in the same miserable world
occupied by Donald Trump, and his ilk. Kant is even
wondering if suicide, which he definitively considered
wrong under any circumstances since it “roots out
morality from the world itself” might not be justified in
the Age of Trump. Trump puts paid to Kant.
David Hume
Immanuel Kant
5 8 July 2017
Plato: how democracy evolves from
oligarchy and into fascism
Plato steps in to remind us that he warned us in his Dia-
logues what would happen in a society that overvalued
wealth, when its oligarchic rulers were unable to wield
their power effectively. The people would first replace it
with democracy but then, in an over-zealous pursuit of
freedom to the extent of subverting democracy elect
someone who played on their wishes, resulting in mob
rule and/or tyranny. Plato would cite in evidence the
“Make America Great Again” concept, wall-building and
xenophobia. Because a dictatorship flows from such
mindless populism, Plato is now warning us that Trump
(or post-Trump) Era fascism is a real possibility.
Plato is also intrigued by biographical and psychologi-
cal reports that Trump has excellent acting skills. In the
words of one biographer, we are seeing, “Donald Trump
playing Donald Trump”, while a psychologist has
observed: “Trump seems supremely cognizant of the fact
that he is always acting”.
Plato perceives that Donald Trump fits the philoso-
pher’s profile of a sophist. In his dialogue, ‘The Sophist’,
Plato observed that sophists have “a place among the
mimics” and thus are skilled in the “art of imitation” of
genuinely virtuous persons, while at the same time
engaging in aggressive, restless predatory behaviour
using guile. Sophists are “skilled in the arts” of seduc-
tion - “wizards” and “illusionists”, Plato styled them.
Predation, seduction, illusion: Trump.
Plato (in basic agreement with Marcuse, Hume and
Kant) sees Trump as the Ultimate Predator, who seduced
enough voters to win because he is a highly skilled soph-
ist able to manipulate the images people watch within
today’s electronic Plato’s Cave— our media bubbles.
Then the rest of classical philosophy
jumps on the wagon
Of course cynical Machiavelli would find in Trump a soul-
mate, with ethics suspended in the interest of means
that justify the end. The Old Testament would provide
backing for much of Trump’s unsubtle Schopenhauer
pessimism and apocalypiticism (which may explain why
some religious evangelicals surprisingly support him).
In Hobbes, with his depressing view of humanity and life,
Trump may find his champion: the problems of political
life mean that a society should accept an unaccountable
sovereign as its sole political authority.
But the most real prediction of Trump comes from
Nietzsche. Nietzsche was particularly hostile to ‘Losers’
and would have appreciated Trump’s contempt as well
as his perception of himself as a sort of ‘Superman’, buy
act and birth. Trump and Nietzsche agree to promote the
master morality over the slave morality. With the death
of God, comes the loss of any universal perspective, of
any coherent sense of objective truth. In ‘Daybreak
‘Nietzsche began a “Campaign against Morality”, iden-
tifying himself as an “immoralist. In Beyond Good and
Evil, Trump finds justification for his view that evil is not
the opposite of good. It impels his disdain for humanism.
And Nietzsche grounds Trump’s sense of an Über-
mensch, of the superiority of the American, whose
country he wants to make great again.
Trump agrees this philosophy stuff is for winners, and
they hold a colourful party in one of his weekend
retreats. The while history awaits the renewal of its worst
mistakes.
Plato sees Trump
as the Ultimate
Predator, who
seduced enough
voters to win
because he is a
highly skilled sophist
Plato
CULTURE
July 2017 5 9
Dec/Jan 2017 4 7
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