From pragmatism to authoritarianism, a very American temptation

The practical character of American life is so extreme, Americans can seem dishonest and manipulative when their intentions are good and they are merely weighting every theoretical statement (trying to understand what things and events really ‘mean’ or are ‘about’) or constative one (‘truth’ claims: asserting any worldly state of affairs whatever to be truly represented as being ‘the case’) with a practical sense. The danger of this is that its extreme will destroy what remains democratic in our republican society by transforming every statement into an implied performative utterance merely telling people what they are supposed to do. The discursive style of Mr. Trump performs this performative turn rather blatantly, as he utters obvious lies while demanding that they be recognized as “true” on the principle that it is the boss who decides what is true, or: might makes right.

Bosses often do this in work settings of some kind: “Fool, when I said 2+2=4, what I meant is, do your job!” (And of course it is true and I could give you the chapter and verse of the demonstration (if you disagree, that’s your opinion, which you have the official and meaningless right to hold private and assert but not try to act on, not here anyway), and of course that is not what matters, which is just to do your job, and don’t argue, lest we think you have an attitude problem, might would only be a matter for psychologists to give you reparative correctional treatment for; after all, the boss decides and says what is what, and if you have a problem with that, it’s only your problem).

Authoritarianism may thus be built from the bricks of pragmatism. Which when working well may be pleasantly, even joyfully, cooperative. Are we in the space and time of Beethoven and Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” or its perverse propagandizing of terror and barbarism? Wasn’t fascism (including its Stalinist variant) partly just that?