<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">
<div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">A note on alleged “relativism” & “subjectivism”:</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 35px; line-height: normal; min-height: 42px;" class="">
<br class="">
</div>
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="background-color: #ffffff; border-collapse: collapse" class="">
<tbody class="">
<tr class="">
<td valign="middle" style="width: 767.0px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0.0px 0.0px 2.0px 0.0px; border-color: transparent transparent #cccccc transparent; padding: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px" class="">
<div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" class="">
<span style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; font-family: Times; -webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class=""> </span><span style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Times; -webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class=""><img alt="page1image3848128.png" apple-inline="yes" id="C4B3348D-470E-44BE-85CE-CEEAD1FCAA80" src="cid:713ED914-4DCE-4875-94AD-B08CB5E43418@hsd1.il.comcast.net" class="">
</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><a href="https://nyti.ms/2Fdsgby" class="">https://nyti.ms/2Fdsgby</a> </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="">
<td valign="middle" style="width: 767.0px; border-style: solid; border-width: 2.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; border-color: #cccccc transparent transparent transparent; padding: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px" class="">
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia;" class="">
<span style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 26.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-font-kerning: none;" class="">Opinion
</span><span style="vertical-align: 2.5px; font-kerning: none; color: #cccccc" class="">|
</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 48px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Is President Trump a Stealth Postmodernist or Just a Liar?<br class="">
</span><span style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; -webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">Thomas B. Edsall NYT
</span><span style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 17.3px; line-height: normal; -webkit-font-kerning: none;" class="">JAN. 25, 2018 </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">How should we explain the fact that President Trump got away with making
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000" class="">2,140 false or misleading claims
</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">during his initial year in office? </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Both the left, in “America’s First Postmodern President” (written by Jeet Heer in
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000" class="">The New Republic
</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">last summer), and the right, in “Donald Trump is the First President to Turn Postmodernism Against Itself” (written by David Ernst in
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000" class="">The Federalist </span>
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">a year ago), have argued that Trump, without knowing the first thing about, say,
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000" class="">Michel Foucault</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">, is an avatar of the rejection of objective truth. </span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Postmodernists, Heer wrote, describe a world where </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Fragmented sound bites have replaced linear thinking, where nostalgia (“Make America Great Again”) has replaced historical consciousness or felt experiences of the past, where simulacra is
indistinguishable from reality, where an aesthetic of pastiche and kitsch (Trump Tower) replaces modernism’s striving for purity and elitism, and where a shared plebeian culture of vulgarity papers over intensifying class disparities. In virtually every detail,
Trump seems like the perfect manifestation of postmodernism. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Along parallel lines, Ernst wrote, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">if the only one true thing in the world is that all truth and morality are relative, then anyone who pretends otherwise is either an idiot or a fraud. Hence the contemporary appeal of the
antihero, and the disappearance of the traditional hero. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Scholars of contemporary philosophy argue that postmodernism does not dispute the existence of truth, per se, but rather seeks to interrogate the sources and interests of those making assertions
of truth. As </span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Casey Williams
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">wrote in
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">The Stone
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">in The Times last April: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Call it what you want: relativism, constructivism, deconstruction, postmodernism, critique. The idea is the same: Truth is not found, but made, and making truth means exercising power. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">It is not usually the job of political journalists to analyze postmodernism, so I turned to some scholars who are devoted to the subject. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Trump’s “truths,” as
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Alan Schrift</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of philosophy at Grinnell College, pointed out, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">are not socially constructed but emerge from his own personal sense of what will promote his popularity, his power, and his wealth. This is why his particular, and acute, narcissism is so
dangerous: he appeals to no social standards at all, only his own imagination as to what is in his own personal </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 21.3px;" class="">interest.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 21.3px;" class=""> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Put in the most straightforward terms,
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Johanna Oksala</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of social science and cultural studies at the Pratt Institute,
responded by email to my inquiry: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">I don’t think Trump should be called a postmodern president, but simply a liar.
</span><span style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">For something to be objectively true, Oksala wrote, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">does not mean that we have to have (or can have) absolute and eternally infallible knowledge of it. But our knowledge claims have to be available for public scrutiny by the scientific community
and go through a rigorous peer- review process in order to qualify as scientific or objective truths. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">In the Trump era, the core concept of truth has become deeply politicized and among Trump supporters there is scant appetite for “a rigorous peer-review process.”
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Andrew Cutrofello</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, argues this point
in an email: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">In the present political climate truth and power have become uncoupled to a certain extent. It’s natural to wonder whether this means the notion of objective truth has been undermined. But
it could be the opposite, namely, that what we’re living through isn’t the loss of the category of objective truth but rather a battle over who has objective truth on their side. In other words, the very category of objective truth has become an ideological
weapon, having been displaced from relatively neutral territory to the political battlefield. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">For some scholars, the attempt to link Trump’s lies — his falsehoods, his prevarications, his exaggerations, his duplicity, his “</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">truthful
hyperbole</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">” — with postmodernism grows out of a misperception of the term. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Todd May</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of philosophy and religion at Clemson, wrote by email that </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">In philosophy, the dominant idea was probably Jean-Francois Lyotard’s view </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">that we are at “the end of grand narratives,” the end of the idea that our history or our world or our existence can be accounted for by a single overarching narrative that accounts for it
(or them). </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">In “</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">The Postmodern Condition</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">,”
Lyotard conducted a full-scale assault on the idea of a grand narrative as well as an assault on established norms. He wrote: “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. ... Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool
of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable.” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Daniel Dennett</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of philosophy at Tufts, has given much thought to the current state
of events. “We’re entering a period of epistemological murk and uncertainty that we’ve not experienced since the Middle Ages,” he
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">told The Guardian</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">. In a 1998 essay, “</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Postmodernism
and Truth</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">,” Dennett explains why, in his view, objective truth is in fact something real, verifiable and of vast importance: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">We are the species that discovered doubt. Is there enough food laid by for winter? Have I miscalculated? Is my mate cheating on me? Should we have moved south? Is it safe to enter this cave? </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Dennett adamantly rejects “a slide into some form of relativism.” He argues that while “it is true that past scientific orthodoxies have themselves inspired policies that hindsight reveals
to be seriously flawed” and that “the methods of science aren’t foolproof,” it is also true that </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered. The methods of science, like everything
else under the sun, are themselves objects of scientific scrutiny, as method becomes methodology, the analysis of methods. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Trump’s utter indifference to the truth, what some of his critics have come to call his “normlessness,” is intensely alarming to many Washington analysts. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Never before have we had a president, E.J. Dionne, Norman Ornstein and </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Thomas Mann write in their book, “</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">One Nation After Trump</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">,” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">who aroused such grave and widespread doubts about his commitment to the institutions of self-government, to the norms democracy requires, to the legitimacy of opposition in a free republic,
and to the need for basic knowledge about major policy questions and about how government works. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">They continue: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Norms, we argue, are often more important than formal rules in ensuring the function of a constitutional republic. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Observing that “Trump has violated these basic understandings of how our democracy works in an unprecedented way,” Dionne, Mann and Ornstein go on: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">This norm breaking, is not simply a matter of political nicety. It is part of Trump’s larger assault on our institutions, his tendency to think in autocratic terms, his abusive attitude toward
the judicial system, and his disrespect for civil servants and the day-to-day work of government. We show how Trump’s words and behavior parallel those of authoritarian leaders, past and present. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">William M. Kurtines, Jacob Gewirtz and Jacob L. Lamb
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">draw attention
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">to the link between normlessness and moral disorder. In the
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development (Vol. 3)</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, they write, “Durkheim identified anomie
— a condition of normlessness or moral deregulation — as a moral disease more likely to afflict the top than the bottom of society.” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Wealth, according to Durkheim, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">deceives us into believing that we depend on ourselves only. Reducing the resistance we encounter from objects, it suggests the possibility of unlimited success against them. The less limited
one feels, the more intolerable all limitation appears. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Trump’s status and wealth have allowed him to ignore limits, norms, rules and regulations and have created a vicious circle — as violations of customary norms go </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">unpunished, such violations become ever more widespread. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Gary Gutting</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, focuses on the crucial role of
power in postmodernism — the power to defy norms and the power to determine the veracity of competing claims. He emailed me: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">The “modern” in “postmodern” refers to the idea that we should seek truth by the objective methods of reason and science — not by appeals to emotion or tradition. ‘Postmodern’ is often used
to refer to those who think there is no objective truth, just various devices we use to con people into agreeing with us. In this sense, Trump is postmodern. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">But serious postmodern thinkers like Foucault accept the ideal of objective truth. They point out, however, that practices and institutions
<i class="">claiming </i>to be based on scientific truths often turn out to seek power as much or more than truth. Foucault, in particular, worried that what we think of as scientifically enlightened ways of improving society are often covers for increasing
power over the people we claim to be helping. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">For Foucault, Trump, who seeks not truth but only power, would be an extreme example of what serious postmodernism opposes. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">There was a period,
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Stephen Greenblatt</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of the humanities at Harvard said by email, when </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">a strain in postmodernism was so giddily determined to call into question the posturing of Enlightenment scientism that its advocates recklessly dismissed the very existence of objective truths. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">To these earlier advocates of postmodernism, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">everything is just the game of power, they noisily declared, assuring themselves that their deconstructive claims would somehow always be in the service of radical critique. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">This view, however, “was eviscerated by philosophers like Bernard Williams and has, I think, virtually no current standing.” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">David Bromwich</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of English at Yale, contended that </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">academic skepticism about objective truth doesn’t as a rule deny that we can know the fact of the matter — e.g. the answer to the question “How many German troops crossed bridges over the
Rhine on March 7, 1936?” Or “By how many degrees did the average global temperature rise between 1987 and 2017?” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Instead, Bromwich argues that academic skepticism </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">is directed against the assumption that any particular interpretation of the facts should be trusted as quite reliable. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">These movements in theoretical analysis are, however, alien to Trump, Bromwich wrote: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Anyway, none of it was required to create Trump’s attitude toward fact and truth. He seems a demagogue of a familiar modern type, but far less coherent and more capricious than most of his
predecessors. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">In an </span>
<span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">essay
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">in the London Review of Books last year, Bromwich provided insight into how Trump justifies his falsehoods. Bromwich cited a
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">January 2017 ABC interview
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">of Trump by the journalist David Muir, in which Muir repeatedly challenged Trump’s claim that Clinton only won the popular vote because three to five million illegal ballots were cast
for her by undocumented immigrants and other noncitizens. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">In the transcript, Muir and Trump go back and forth for 1,168 words — an eternity on television — until Trump acknowledges how he justifies the claim: “You know what’s important, millions
of people agree with me.” Trump told Muir that people called in to say, “ ‘We agree with Mr. Trump. We agree.’ They’re very smart people.” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">The Muir interview provides evidence in support of a thesis developed by Carlos Prado, professor emeritus of philosophy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Prado argues that instead
of representing postmodernism, Trump embodies a very different phenomenon: “Post-Truth.” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">“Users of post-truth see themselves as expressing their opinions, but opinions that call for no verification, and in being their opinions, are on a par with anyone else’s opinions,” Prado
writes in a forthcoming book, “The New Subjectivism”: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Post-truth is the final step in the misguided move away from objective truth to relativization of truth. If truth is objective, assertions or propositions are true depending on how things
are. If truth is relative, assertions or propositions are true depending on how people take things to be. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Trump’s post-truths have drawn a conservative audience of American voters inured to lying. A majority of voters, 59 percent, in an April 2017 Washington Post- ABC News poll, agreed that the
Trump administration “regularly makes false claims up,” but, in the same survey, 52 percent said news organizations “regularly produce false stories.” An October
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">2017 Politico/Morning Consult
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">poll found that a plurality of voters, 46 percent, believe the media fabricate stories about Trump compared to 37 percent who say the media report accurately. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">“The criticism of postmodern theory as ‘anything goes relativism’ is a bum rap,” says John Caputo, emeritus professor of religion at Syracuse University: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">In postmodern theory we are better served by the idea of having ‘good reasons,’ meaning the best idea that anybody has at the moment, remembering that some obscure fellow working in a patent
office because he can’t find a job teaching physics is liable to change the face of physics tomorrow morning. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">The problem with Trump, according to Caputo, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">is not that he is an “anything goes relativist,” but that he is an authoritarian, a would-be strong man, who launches vile personal attacks on anyone who criticizes him. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Judith Butler</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of comparative literature and the founding director of the program of
critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley, voiced disbelief that </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">anyone would be inclined to blame intellectual trends in the academy or in the arts for the way that Trump speaks, thinks, or acts. Given that he does not read very much at all, and that the
kind of literary and social theory you reference depends on reading closely, the two trends could not be further apart. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Along similar lines,
</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Colin Koopman</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, a professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, argued that what is
disturbing about Trump is that “he does not value truth in the sense of offering justifications and reasons to those at whom he speaks or tweets.” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">As a result, Koopman continued in an email, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">only those who are cynical about truth itself can take him seriously. His style is not “postmodern” at all, but is rather cynical. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">If postmodernism does not account for Trump’s bludgeoning of the truth, what does? A field that provides insight into the Trump phenomenon is evolutionary theory. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Steven Pinker</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">, professor of psychology at Harvard and author of the forthcoming book “</span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Enlightenment
Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">,” emailed me his thoughts: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">The answer lies in raw tribalism: when someone is perceived as a champion of one’s coalition, all is forgiven. The same is true for opinions: a particular issue can become a sacred value,
shibboleth, or affirmation of allegiance to one’s team, and its content no longer matters. This is part of a growing realization in political psychology that tribalism has been underestimated in our understanding of politics, and ideological coherence and
political and scientific literacy overestimated. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Once tribalism becomes embedded in the political system, Pinker wrote, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">the full ingenuity of human cognition is recruited to valorize the champion and shore up the sacred beliefs. You can always dismiss criticism as being motivated by the bias of one’s enemies.
Our cognitive and linguistic faculties are endlessly creative — that’s what makes our species so smart — and that creativity can be </span></p>
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" class="">
<tbody class="">
<tr class="">
<td valign="middle" style="width: 767.0px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0.0px 0.0px 2.0px 0.0px; border-color: transparent transparent #000000 transparent; padding: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px" class="">
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">always deployed to reframe issues in congenial or invidious terms. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Don Symons, professor of anthropology emeritus at the University of California-Santa Barbara, made a similar point in an email: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Our species is profoundly coalitional, and in most times and places moral prescriptions apply only to one’s in-group, not to humanity in general. I don’t see any evidence that we evolved innate, universal moral rules
about how to treat all humans. That’s why history, as James Joyce said, is a nightmare. Prehistory is worse. I assume that coalitional-thinking is what Trump was getting at when he claimed that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his base would still
love him. It’s not that they feel that killing a random stranger for no reason is morally ok; it’s that loyalty to their coalition leader is primary. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">If tribalism has begun to supplant traditional partisanship, their argument suggests, lying in politics will metastasize as traditional constraints continue to fall by the wayside. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Trump’s success, such as it is, has been to accelerate the ongoing transformation of traditional political competition into an atavistic struggle in which each side claims moral superiority and defines the opposition
as evil. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22.7px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">These developments have been unfolding for decades, but the 2016 election was a turning point that appears to have the potential to corrupt the system beyond repair. Trump is determined to leave the destruction of democratic
procedure as his legacy. Instead of granting him the title of postmodernist, let’s say instead that Trump is a nihilist who seeks to trample, to trash, to blight, to break and to burn. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">I invite you to follow me on </span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000" class="">Twitter, @Edsall</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><i class="">Follow The New York Times Opinion section on
</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000" class=""><i class="">Facebook
</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><i class="">and </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000" class=""><i class="">Twitter (@NYTopinion)</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><i class="">, and sign up for the
</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #000000" class=""><i class="">Opinion Today newsletter</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><i class="">. </i></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="">
<td valign="middle" style="width: 767.0px; border-style: solid; border-width: 2.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; border-color: #000000 transparent transparent transparent; padding: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px" class="">
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 17.3px; line-height: normal; font-family: Arial;" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class="">© 2018 The New York Times Company </span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="">
<td valign="middle" style="width: 767.0px; padding: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px" class="">
<div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Times; min-height: 14px;" class="">
<span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class="">
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br class="">
</body>
</html>