The Catcher in the Rye

"You're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them-if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

What's all this Donald Trump business about, in the end?

It's not just about policy, is it - about tariffs, about insisting the Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of America and annexing Canada? That's like saying banditry is just about deception or stealing.

And it's about more than politics and doing deals. While we all take sides and fight to win, we also develop laws and democracy that make for some balance, for keeping things roughly fair.

The political idea of 'His Majesty's Loyal Opposition' in the UK and of two competing but legitimate and loyal parties in the US was a key advance in government but appears under threat. Why?

It's normal for politicians to blame problems on political opponents, but Trump needs to suggest anyone with a different view is the enemy.

Not only the 'extreme right' agree. Many in the centre, left and right, accept populist alarms that 'they' have allowed things to go too far. Who are 'they'? Anyone not MAGA. What things? Everything. 

Perhaps we can have too much freedom, too much democracy, and then there's a swing back, a cycle. That's the usual answer.

But that History goes in cycles seems a superficial explanation. Why would History have cycles and what on earth are they? 

Much of the talk now is about how Trump will end. In the end, that must depend on us and our values.

On Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Mr Hyde has to come out sometime simply because he's there, tired of hiding? 

And now, after some time, so must Doctor Jekyll?

 

Why people don't trust science

They never did.

People want certainty, which is why we have habits and rituals, why there are schedules and insurance companies and more conservatives than liberals.

And why there's always a turning away from doubting to religion and magic, which share the warm assurance of permanence.

People resent the rigour of science, fear its innovations, and have no time for its restless searching. It may be confusion after everything we learned about it at school, but more likely it's the way we grow up to be.

There's no certainty in Nature, or in life. It leads a chosen few to be happy questioning, while others come to see the point, or somehow knew it from the first, from a sense of history.

"How do you know that a reality exists 'out there', independent of any consciousness?"

.

It was a challenge to me on an internet site.

One answer is that if a reality 'out there' is only speculation, then that there is no reality out there is also speculation.

Consciousness does not confirm either case and seems to lack a clear connection to the subject. 

Knowledge and judgment are the answers here. They tell us that our experience of what may or may not be out there broadly coincides with the experience of entities all around us; and that those entities are clearly not us but otherwise appear to act like us. 

 

What's more, our cat acts in response to our surroundings. As two or three of those entities might jump at a sudden noise or walk round something in the way, so does our cat.

Bertrand Russell was useful on this. He said if a thing is not certain or is unprovable, it’s best to go for what is probable. 

It’s at least probable that ‘our’ world is ‘out there’ as a cat’s is. It’s just that we are able to speculate that it isn’t. No cat has been known to do this.

Well, has the Trump magic changed History?

A proper understanding of history must begin with human psychology, mustn't it, with understanding the minds of those involved in it?

So President Trump diverts us. He talks of making History with a capital H, as if History exists apart yet can be made to perform to order - Trump's. 

And so the wizardry of tariffs will make all trade fair and every American rich, a dazzling illusion Donald Trump doubtless sees as real - at least until the next sleight of hand gets us baffled and taking sides. Trump magic pulls trick after trick.

But how does that craft make anything an historical certainty, besides confirming Trump and his supporters' belief in his limitless power? And what if the idea of History Repeating Itself is only the failure of leaders to learn from the past - lessons being the one area where Trump definitely gives rather than receives?

Human beings come in all shapes and sizes, convinced of all kinds of truths. Even so, it is hard not to see a foundational difference between the world views of two broad types - conservatives and liberals. And putting the matter broadly again, it is conservatives who worship President Trump as a MAGA magician and liberals who do not. 

The divide between magic and reality is visible everywhere there are people and stoked to extremes in the US today. Given human nature, a way back from mounting political disorder there is nowhere in sight. 

Hence a well-known piece of advice: if you're relying on conjurors like Trump to change their act before they are forced to, don’t hold your breath. And hence the only possible outcome: history alone will show whether Trump magic works wonders now.