An Ordinary American Monster: Liberalism, Capitalism, and Donald Trump

By Christopher Bernard

He was inevitable. The innocents who believed either in the fundamental goodness of humanity, or in the power of our institutions to undermine humanity’s drive to evil – its selfishness, greed, hunger for power, arrogance, deceitfulness – did not just fail to defend us from him. They helped create him. And then made it almost impossible to defend against him. You see, he had rights, and these rights were guaranteed. And his rights superseded our rights to be protected. That is the way it is with rights: the agent has more than the patient. When the elephant has the same rights as the mice, it is not the elephant that is crushed.

And this is the way with liberalism. And, with capitalism, which is the economic driver of liberalism; this is the way with America and its “exceptionalism.” This is our way, the American way. We have avoided, or conquered, the worst effects of our way of life for a very long time. Until now.

Yet who doesn’t love liberalism, especially when it is applied to them? The very word is steeped in generosity, in magnanimity and loving kindness. I love the freedom it accords me to do whatever I wish whenever I wish. I love the feeling of lightness and air it surrounds me with, like a bath. I love the fact it gives the same freedom to everyone I know and care for, even though they sometimes use it in a way that (usually inadvertently) does me some harm. And even for people I do not particularly like or love: I hate the idea of them, or of anyone, confined, oppressed, suffering, for any reason at all. In fact, if I had my way, Dante’s Inferno would be empty. Indeed, if I had my way, life on earth would be a paradise.

But the Supreme Being didn’t ask me when drawing up plans for the cosmos. Really, he should have. I would have had some nice liberal ideas, and also a few useful ideas that might have saved us from liberalism’s formidable flaws.

It is not often noted that liberalism is not so much a political philosophy as an abdication from having one, a kind of what the French call faute de mieux (“for lack of anything better”), a jury-rigging and gigantic shrugging off and throwing up of one’s hands at the very idea of discovering how a society, how a polity that supports the well-being of all its members, might actually work: every attempt to found a “philosophy of liberalism,” from Hobbes to Locke to Jefferson and the framers of the United States Constitution, has failed, mired in helpless contradictions and blinded by forms of willful self-deception.

For at the very basis of liberalism lies a series of gaping holes liberals keep pretending not to notice, and then keeping falling into them while pretending they are just potholes they are mending on the way to the millennium.

To wit:

Liberal: “The freedom of the individual supersedes the rights of society as a whole.”

Skeptic: “Really?”

Liberal: “That’s right. And we must tolerate all religions and philosophies because people can’t agree on first principles, and we want to live in a society that is at least relatively at peace.”

Skeptic: “But you just told me you in fact have a ‘first principle’!”

Liberal: “I hoped you hadn’t noticed that.”

Skeptic: “And what about people (most people throughout history, really) who believe the rights of groups, of families, of society as a whole come first – and in fact they must come first, for obvious reasons? No individual human being can exist outside a society; we are social creatures from the day we are born, and remain so until the day we die. The only perfectly autonomous individual is a dead one. We all begin as infants, and if we weren’t immediately supported by a complicated network of social support – from our parents and family to doctors and nurses – we would be dead within hours, even minutes, of coming out of the womb. We are components of a group before we ever become (relative, since we never become complete) individuals. So privileging the individual above the society is literally an insane idea – it would be like saying the tire on a car is more important than the car itself.”

Liberal: “[Several pages of incoherent and inconsistent logic-chopping we will not bore the reader with. But their ultimate argument always comes down to:] Everyone loves liberty, everyone wants to be free, just like us. Everyone wants to do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it. The fact that most societies since the dawn of time have considered this the height of human immaturity at the very least, and, at worst, of moral irresponsibility and active evil, to be condemned, excoriated, and punished, makes no difference. Their morality is just out of date – these things change, history has its own morality and ethical standards, there are no absolutes, but history is progressive (yes, I know the Nazis came after Florence Nightingale, but don’t bother me with facts!), we are progressive, we are liberated, we are enlightened! And who gets to define what these noble values mean (to anticipate your irritating question)? Why, we do, of course! And so, if anyone doesn’t choose to be free, we shoot them until they do. It’s really very simple: as Rousseau and John Stuart Mill so wisely said: people sometimes need to be forced to be free. And as far as infants go, we’re doing this for the children!” 

Skeptic: (Silent. After all there are no words by which one might wade through such a swamp of self-contradictions.)

But then there’s the liberal doctrine of “tolerance.” How can anyone possibly oppose that? It sounds so nice!

Liberal: “We must tolerate all forms of thought and action as long as they do not cause harm to other people.”

Skeptic: “Okay. And who gets to define ‘harm’?”

Liberal: “Why, liberals do, naturally!”

Skeptic: “So what do you do with people who don’t agree that something you tolerate does not cause ‘harm,’ indeed they believe it is an absolute evil that must be destroyed? Wait, don’t tell me! You . . .”

Liberal and Skeptic “. . . shoot them until they do!”

Skeptic: “Well, of course we do. But I have another issue. Isn’t there a danger liberalism will encourage the most anti-social forms of behavior; in fact it will reward psychopaths and empower ‘malignant narcissists’ when they also happen to be talented manipulators? It could hand power over society as a whole to some of the worst monsters humanity is able to create. At the same time it will have made it almost impossible to protect against them.”

Liberal: “But if we liberals just scold enough and say out loud what a very nasty person it is and how we should really not let these people either become billionaires or become president of the United States, and just follow the Constitution, which is after the greatest political document in the world, with its marvelous array of check and balances, and division of branches of government, and an actively questioning Fourth Estate of news organization, independent of any interference by psychopaths or ‘malignant narcissists’ or political sway of any kind, and we have after all a robust and independent debate going on in America on all the important issues of our time, without fear or favor, don’t we? I mean, well then everything will work out just fine. We hope. Maybe.”

Skeptic: “My gosh, you actually believe all of that . . . gibberish?”

Liberal: “Of course I do! We are what liberalism created! We are the freest country in the world! Oh wait: I meant to say, ‘We are the greatest country in the history of the world!’ (Don’t want to be cancelled, heh, heh!)”

Skeptic: “Whew! I knew you didn’t know yourself very well, but I never guessed how much. Despite the qualms I have about the knot of self-contradictions making up your so-called ‘political philosophy,’ it doesn’t bother you at all. And it sure looks like a heck of a lot more fun than worrying about being ‘moral’ all the time. Where does one go to sign up?”

Liberal: “No need to! Just stop thinking so much and Do Whatever You Feel Like Doing Whenever You Feel Like Doing It, and devil take the hindmost,”

*

And capitalism? Capitalism is liberalism on meth, cocaine, steroids, old wine for me, fentanyl for thee. It is the economic policy of liberalism, of America and her “exceptionalism”: it makes the monsters rich. The elephant crushes the mice because he can. The mice have the same right to crush the elephant . . .

*

And then there is Trump.

But what is Trump?

Perfect liberal, perfect capitalist: psychopath and malignant narcissist with a gift for manipulating millions of us. A man who is just doing whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it – and he has very good lawyers in using the laws invented to protect his liberal “rights.” And devil take the hindmost – the rest of us.

Trump is a very ordinary American monster.

_____

Christopher Bernard is a novelist, essayist and poet, and author of numerous books, including the award-winning collection The Socialist’s Garden of Verses. He is founder and lead editor of the webzine Caveat Lector and recipient of an Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.