Belmont Club: Divided by Virtue, Separated by Hate

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The question progressive politicians raise is whether to expect retaliation should Donald Trump win a second term. Will he get even for what may be interpreted as partisan persecution against him? The body politic has been intentionally divided with all the dire possibilities of an indefinite tit-for-tat. 

One of the requirements of a retaliation-free democracy is the broad acceptance of equality among the parties who comprise the polity. A stable democracy is divided by opinion, not by fundamental nature. This underlying similarity makes reconciliation an available option. If the differences ran deeper there would be trouble. It would be difficult, for example, to arrange an acceptable election between angels and devils; they have nothing in common. You can never have an acceptable election between a side that can do no wrong and a side that can do no good. 

In a divided society where some are utterly convinced that they’re on the right side of history, the only way the self-appointed visionaries can lose an election to reactionaries is if something is wrong with the election itself. The famous “nooo” uttered by a Hillary Clinton supporter in 2016 exemplifies this rejection of this unnatural event. She couldn’t possibly lose and therefore didn’t.

The impossibility of reconciliation, psychologically speaking, began with the death of God. Philosophically, this parricide destroyed the mythical brotherhood of man — if you accept that it is a myth. The vacant throne had to be filled by god-men who are beyond the common clay. In the famous words of Nietzsche, “Dead are all the Gods: Now do we desire the Overman to live.” The Overman, god-men, vanguard, Woke — whatever you want to call them — enters into history and can never logically lose an election because they are not the equals of their former brothers. 

Rights do not come from God, who is deceased, but from whoever controls government, i.e. the advanced thinkers. The fundamental premise of left-wing politics is that the right is not merely wrong but inferior and despicable. The attraction of Wokeism is that it lifts you up from the greasy herd and takes you from a low estate to a higher one, which is in the absence of God, the best neighborhood in town.

What Nietzsche overlooked is that even after Overman had killed God, he would still need information from Out There. External reality, including the greasy herd, would stubbornly possess some information even Overman did not have. Somehow the first 500 names in the Boston phonebook could know something the faculty of Harvard didn’t. God-men were still vulnerable to surprise from the outlier the way Boeing was to SpaceX. 

Militant Wokeism like aristocracy may not have believed that “all men are created equal,” especially where the highly credentialed are concerned, but could not risk information starvation, which comes from throwing away ideas “not invented here” or incompatible with reality. Comity had to be preserved from necessity because when one comes right down to it, human societies are formed because people need each other. In the face of the tremendous mystery of the universe, no Overman — or pronoun — can stand alone. 

The god-men’s knowledge would always be incomplete; there would ever be something undecidable. Orwell’s nightmare of a world based on hate and domination instead of cooperation is unattainable because it won’t work.

The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. … There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. … Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face–for ever.

But you can’t put a boot on your brother’s face, not if you would successfully face disease, disaster, and war. It is better that you be able to extend a hand. The question tremulously posed by the New York Times — what “If Trump Wins?” — should have been answerable with, “So what?” Instead, it presents a vision of what would happen if the Democratic program were halted. Swirling vistas of mass deportations, criminal prosecution of political enemies, rule by executive order, tariffs on China, retreat from Europe, war against the Mexican cartels. 

It is the fear of those who have burned their bridges. It is the dilemma of any political project that goes for broke and fails, of a movement that counts on being on the winning side of history and down on points. It is the cry of Overman plaintively asking, “What now?”