On Medium: The Flimsiness of Tucker Carlson’s Populism
Read on about how leftists alone can divide the elites from the common people, because right-wing populism, such as Tucker Carlson's rests on arbitrary, unstable assumptions that are held hostage by the shifting tides of culture wars.
''Thus, the conservative populists relish culture war issues and take a strong stand on anti-immigration. Brexit resulted from right-wing populist demagoguery about how dark-skinned foreigners were taking the jobs of hard-working, betrayed, White British folk.''
ReplyDeleteHere I think it's a little less because most of the recent immigration to the UK has been from Poland.
There is a popular and mistaken idea on the part of many leftists that to be bourgeois you have to own the means of production.
ReplyDeleteThey think that being upper-middle class and wealthy, but not directly exploiting others and/or adopting progressive values, is enough to differentiate them from the classic capitalist/bourgeois.
''There are at least two problems with this defense. First, the American higher education system isn’t exactly meritocratic, as the 2019 college admission scandal demonstrated.''
ReplyDeleteThe lack of meritocracy seems to run deeper, not just in the US, but across the world, even when it appears.
For example, there is no process to assess the moral judgment of candidates for any profession.
So, to become a lawyer, for example, you don't have to be fair or impartial, but to convince the innocence of anyone.
Another problem is the emphasis on general rather than specific knowledge to select professions that are, intrinsically speaking, specializations.
I suspect that China may incorporate into its elaborate testing system a moral assessment of its candidates for high office. Those who are immoral or foreign, according to Chinese cultural assumptions, are preemptively sent to concentration camps.
DeleteMoral testing of society could lead to a police state. So the question is who should be doing that testing. The government would be corrupted by that power.
Also, whether morality can be tested so objectively is dubious.
It is evident that the misuse of any possibility will bring bad consequences.
DeleteImposing a system of moral evaluation in an extremely authoritarian country, but even in a “representative democracy” such as Western ones can be problematic.
It may be, but it may not be, if the leadership is not corrupt. In a Nordic country, they would be more likely to work.
Fact is: there are MANY professionals who lack moral judgment or are technically incompetent, even though the very lack of moral judgment causes technical deficiencies.
Putin and Trump did not come to power for nothing.
It is now evident that morality can be analyzed objectively. Intelligence can too, but don't confuse objectivity with linearity.
And if it were not possible to objectively analyze the capacity for moral judgment, closely related to the rational capacity, then how do you know that Putin /Trump is/are morally reprehensible?
If morality were subjective, that would indeed pose a problem for the moral condemnation of anyone, including Trumpians. This is a problem for existentialism and for any type of moral relativism. There are ways around this such as virtue theory, utilitarianism, deontology, or my aesthetic take on morality, although I think the standard solutions are more problematic than mine.
DeleteThe condemnation of Trumpism needn't be just moralistic, in any case. Trumpism can be rejected as objectively dangerous or as empirically wrongheaded.
I've just written an article comparing the cults of Trumpism and Wokeness.
Morality is subjective and objective at the same time. A priori, morality consists of our ability, collective and individual, to evaluate our actions as well as those of others.
DeleteMoralistic:
overfond of making moral judgements about others' behavior; too ready to moralize.
I don't think being a moralist is necessarily a bad thing.
And making judgments doesn't always mean it will be in a negative sense.Judging is usually a finalization of the act of analyzing.
Exactly!
Objective morality begins precisely with the analysis/judgment of behavior from less parochial/ from more fundamental perspectives: particularly existential and ecological.
A synthesis of what you might define as ''animalistic/fascist morality'' and ''anti-natural/progressist morality''.