A BLUE LAGOON: Stephens has fears about President Trump!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2024

But he also has fears about Us: Way back when, right there in our native Middlesex County, sacred Thoreau went to the woods for a largely time-honored reason.

He described his reason for that move right in the opening chapter of his famous book, Walden. This is what he said:

Walden; or, Life in the Woods

[...] 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion... 

Whatever! Reading that statement of purpose, a person might think of the famous dictum long ascribed to the version of Socrates which appears in Plato's works. The leading authority on the topic offers this thumbnail account:

The unexamined life is not worth living

"The unexamined life is not worth living" is a famous dictum supposedly uttered by Socrates at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, for which he was subsequently sentenced to death. The dictum is recorded in Plato's Apology...

[...]

Socrates believed that a life devoid of introspection, self-reflection, and critical thinking is essentially meaningless and lacks value. This quote emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and questioning one's beliefs, actions, and purpose in life.

The words were supposedly spoken by Socrates at his trial after he chose death, rather than exile. They represent (in modern terms) the noble choice, that is, the choice of death in the face of an alternative.

That's the way the famous statement has largely been understood. The dictum "emphasizes the importance of self-awareness" and the importance of "questioning one's beliefs [and] actions."

Sacred Thoreau explained why he went to the woods. He said he went to the woods to front the essential facts of life—"to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms." 

At the end of his November 7 column for the New York Times, Bret Stephens explains why he voted for Candidate Harris in the November 5 election.

Culturally and politically, Stephens hails from the unmapped region now known as Red America. That said, like Tim Alberta of The Atlantic, he crossed an unmapped border many years back when it came to the question of Candidate Donald J. Trump.

Like Alberta, and to his credit, Stephens thereby became a bit of "a traitor to his class." At the end of a rather acerbic column, he described why he voted the way he did in this year's election—but he also described an even larger concern about the party his vote supported:

A Party of Prigs and Pontificators Suffers a Humiliating Defeat

[...]

I voted reluctantly for Harris because of my fears for what a second Trump term might bring—in Ukraine, our trade policy, civic life, the moral health of the conservative movement writ large. Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change.

Oof! That headline is quite unfriendly to the Democratic Party, whoever that is supposed to be. 

Some serious name-calling can be found in that acerbic headline! Is every member of the party's rank and file some sort of pontificator / prig? Can that really be what that headline means? Because that's what it may seem to say.

That headline is quite acerbic! Still, Stephens did cross that unmapped border, and he did vote for the Democratic Party's candidate. In that final paragraph, he offers a thumbnail account of why he voted the way he did.

Why in the world did this figure from Red America cross that unmarked border, venture into the woods? He says he did so because of his fears of what President Trump might do this second time around—but then, he also says this:

He voices an even larger fear about those of us in Blue America. He fears we'll lack the type of introspection which could let us see where our political project has failed.  

How did we ever lose to that guy? As we noted yesterday, the question has been floating around dating back to the day when it appeared as a joke on Saturday Night Live.

Today, it's a point of major puzzlement for many Biden / Harris voters. Stephens says he fears that we "liberals" won't make a serious effort to answer that question. 

In effect, he says we may be inclined to stage a political version of "the unexamined life." He says we may fail to create a true account of what has just happened as we launch our "next excursion."

That's what Stephens says at the end of his column. We can't quite say that he's wrong.

For ourselves, we wouldn't say that the defeat of Candidate Harris was "humiliating." We do share the fears which Stephens lists in that closing paragraph.

We share the fear about what President Trump may do in Ukraine. More broadly, we fear what he may do to the international order writ large—and we share the fear Stephens expresses concerning "trade policy" (tariffs). 

To be honest, we think it may be too late to worry about this flailing nation's "civic life" or "moral health," which seem to lie in tatters. Given current arrangements, we see no obvious way that we Americans can find our way "back out of all this now too much for us."

We share those fears about President Trump's second bite at the apple. That said, we also share the fear Stephens expressed about our own reactions in Blue America—about our (deeply human) instinct regarding self-examination or the lack of same.

We Blues! Perhaps like humans everywhere, we're strongly inclined to name-call Others as a group and to place all the blame on Them. 

Stephens does some name-calling too, right in the headline of his column. It's an instinct widely found among Red and Blue alike.

Stephens does some name-calling too. Beyond that, we think he overstates a few complaints at certain points in his column, as he lists the various ways we Blues helped earn our way out.

That said, we think he adds some valid points of concern to the three topics Alberta listed when he appeared on Washington Week. Yesterday, we reviewed Alberta's list of claims concerning the failures of Blue America. Tomorrow, we'll work from the body of Stephens' column as we add a few points to that starter list. 

How in the world did we lose to that guy? It seems to us that those of us in Blue America need to be asking that question in a thoroughly self-critical way. 

Like humans all over the globe, we're strongly inclined to blame the Others for all the follies we survey. But have the Others always been wrong? Or is it possible that some of the reasons for November's defeat may track back to Us?

Will we Blues choose to live in a blue lagoon—in a soothing tribal paradise of our own imagination? Or are we willing to take ourselves into the woods, hoping to give a true account of what happened this year before we fling ourselves into our next excursion?

We can choose the lady or the tiger!  We voted for Candidate Harris too—but for our money, much of what Stephens says in that sometimes-acerbic column just plain simply isn't completely and totally wrong.

Some of his comments strike us as true! Is it possible that he sees Us in a way We Ourselves possibly can't?

Tomorrow: He adds to Alberta's list