Regarding Elitist Columnist Charles Lane’s Smug Criticism — of Allegedly Nihilistic Donald Trump Voters

© 2016 Peter Free

 

06 May 2016

 

 

Questionable words from an Ivy League mentality

 

What do you make of the following reasoning from Harvard and Yale-trained Washington Post columnist Charles Lane?

 

 

As night follows day, recriminations flowed in the Republican camp after Donald Trump laid claim to the GOP presidential nomination.

 

To hear many tell it, Jeb Bush is at fault for taking Trump too lightly. Or Ted Cruz, for failing to broaden his appeal after winning Wisconsin. Or “the establishment” generally, because — well, because everything is its fault.

 

[T]here hasn’t been nearly enough blaming of the people most responsible for The Donald’s rise: his voters.

 

They are perpetually — indulgently — described as “angry,” or “frustrated,” or “fed up,” and no doubt they are. But exactly how reasonable are those feelings, and how rational a response to them is a vote for Trump?

 

The answers, respectively, are “only somewhat” and “not at all.”

 

The pro-Trump segment of the American electorate has thus abdicated a basic duty of a democratic citizenry: to hold a candidate accountable for his or her ideas.

 

Worse, many seem to regard his crude simplifications as a feature, not a bug — a badge of uninvolvement in the corrupt Washington system . . . .

 

Trump’s voters are bitterly disenchanted because they think society puts the grievances of others above their own.

 

Like many Democrats who are feeling the Bern, Trump voters believe, with an instinctual passivity bred of being endlessly pandered to by politicians, that the political system is “rigged” — and it’s about time somebody re-rigged it, in their favor.

 

[T]he voter nihilism that Trump both reflects and stimulates is a symptom of political decay.

 

[I]t’s enough to show how often the cry of “blow the system to hell” has gone up among peoples living in freedom and democracy, sometimes just before they lost both.

 

© 2016 Charles Lane, The dangerous nihilism of Trump voters, Washington Post (04 May 2016) (extracts)

 

My extracts edit Lane’s essay into a coherence that it lacks

 

But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. I will critique what he seems to be saying.

 

 

Hmmm

 

According to Mr. Lane, the System is not actually rigged to favor the economic elite. Meaning, Lane implies, that Trump voters are excessively ignorant, unwarrantedly selfish, and nastily narcissistic because they are mistakenly tired of getting screwed.

 

Dribbling salt into his whip strikes, Lane further claims that Trump voters have inexcusably abandoned their duty to hold politicians accountable for their “ideas”.

 

 

Note

 

How holding politicians accountable for their (obviously more important) actions escaped Lane’s anti-nihilism prescription eludes me.

 

Maybe Harvard and Yale are not very good at teaching critical thinking.

 

Lane concludes by implying that Trump’s voters may lose American freedom in the rubble left behind by their unjustified, witless and irresponsible rebellion.

 

 

A brick to Lane’s (arguably privileged) skull

 

Perhaps Trump voters are acting as they do because the System is (in fact) rigged and perpetually spews up candidates who act to keep it that way.

 

Without an actually sensible Republican rebel candidate to vote for, they have settled on Mr. Trump, who at least reflects their rage with some arguably legitimate targets.

 

 

How is this misguided, when the rebelling group’s only voting choice is between two outrageous poles?

 

If one has to choose between voting for a Slave Maker and a Populist Demagogue, whom would you pick?

 

Obviously the Slave Maker, if you come from Ownership and Capital, and the Demagogue, if you do not.

 

 

Then there is Ivy Boy’s misuse of the word “nihilism”

 

Nihilism is a philosophical concept that questions the existence of absolute values. This is not what Trump voters are demonstrating via their actions.

 

What Lane apparently meant to say is that Trump voters’ rage makes them destructively oriented. Like children having a tantrum and smashing their own toys.

 

Yet, exhibiting an anger-filled state is not the same as being philosophically nihilistic. A tantrum does not have the continuity that it would need to make a philosophical statement of any kind.

 

In this terminology regard, Lane’s intellectually-trained snobbery makes an objectively described ass of him.

 

 

The moral? — Lack of objectivity generally prejudices Elitists’ case against the 99 Percent Underclass

 

Smugly silly opinions like Charles Lane’s (in this instance) only fuel the rebellion that he implicitly decries.