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Postmodern Trump and his Absolute Evil
Resolving a diabolical paradox
One of the paradoxes Donald Trump embodies, especially as he’s monopolized public attention as American president, is that his profusion of bad-faith sophistry is preeminently postmodern, while his conduct is perfectly evil.
The postmodern standpoint invites us to eschew moral absolutes, relativize all judgments, and drown them in context. Praise or blame is transferred to the previous generations that installed the institutions that hold us captive, so that no one now is responsible for his or her actions.
Trump speaks as if there’s no such thing as truth. There’s only the “art of the deal,” meaning salesmanship and showmanship, or razzle-dazzle that bamboozles you, so you think you’ve been persuaded. This is sophistry, the mastery of spin and the fifty shades of rhetorical grayness. Saying that Trump lies is like saying Mount Everest is tall.
Trump’s “controversial” cabinet picks demonstrate the requisite contempt for America’s founding humanist values. RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz — saying that these are controversial picks would be like saying Jack the Ripper made questionable use of a knife.
Of course, Trump didn’t invent the “fox guarding the henhouse” principle. Thomas Frank’s book The…
