"Doubt and Skepticism"

 Friday’s disastrous meeting in the White House is a reminder of how doubt and skepticism can help us observers, and our political leaders. Certainly, there was enough blame for each of the three participants – President Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Vice President J.D. Vance – to take a share. Besides watching a re-run of the events on YouTube, I read twenty interpretations of the afternoon’s events, from all perspectives. Yet, I am still unsure how best to allocate blame. It is common knowledge that Mr. Trump is thin-skinned and likes to be praised. Mr. Zelensky is stubborn and theatrical – look at how he dresses. Mr. Vance is smart but immature, at least in matters of diplomacy.

 

All three made mistakes in that Oval Office meeting, but especially, in my opinion, Mr. Vance. He should have kept quiet. In debate or argument, Mr. Trump, right or wrong, does not need defending. He often digs himself into a hole, but just as often extracts himself. Mr. Zelensky would have been better served to have kept quiet, not argue with Mr. Vance, and let the offered deal play out. Mr. Trump, as everyone knows, shoots from the hip, but he is also quick to walk back what he has said. I feel confident he knows that Putin is a dictator and that Zelensky is not. Was he wrong to imply otherwise? Of course. But did Mr. Zelensky believe he could win over Mr. Trump by publicly disagreeing with him and his Vice President? It would seem so. Contrast Mr. Zelensky’s behavior with that of Emanuel Macron and Keir Starmer when they met with Mr. Trump.

 

Nevertheless, there is doubt in my mind as to who bears most responsibility.

 

I hope you find this essay of interest.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Doubt and Skepticism”
March 3, 2025

 

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect

confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

                                                                                                                                Robert Hughes (1938-2012)

                                                                                                                                Australian author & art critic

                                                                                                                                “Modernism’s Patriarch”

                                                                                                                                Time Magazine, June 10, 1996

 

“Our doubts are traitors and cause us to miss

the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” 

                                                                                                                                Lucio speaking to Isabella

                                                                                                                                Measure for Measure, 1604

                                                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

As the two epigraphs infer, doubt is personal. In her Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, the American poet wrote “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” On the other hand, in The Selected Letters of Tennessee Wiliams, the playwright is quoted: “I don’t believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work…”

 

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Doubt, including self-doubt, and skepticism are not synonymous but are related. Doubt can be defined as uncertainty regarding one’s abilities (as Lucio infers). It also serves as questioning one’s judgement (as Robert Hughes suggests). It is intuitive, reflecting a lack of knowledge, as Thomas wanted proof of Jesus’ resurrection. On the other hand, a skeptic is one with an open mind who questions the truth of something stated or alleged, or at least who defers judgement until more facts are available.

 

This is not to argue that belief in one’s self is uncommon. When a youth, I was not skeptical about much and had few self-doubts. Many of us were raised on the American folktale, The Little Engine that Could. Theodore Roosevelt, allegedly, expressed a similar sentiment: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” All good advice, so long as it does not morph into cockiness, arrogance, or conceit. As I grew older, I read and thought more, I became more skeptical. I recall, when a teenager, the president of a brokerage firm who told me that the longer he worked in the business the less he felt he knew about finance.

 

Self-doubt is often a positive. Fyodor Dostoevsky struggled with doubt. In an 1855 letter to his friend Natalya Fonvizina, he wrote: “…the mind which does not labor will wither.”[1]Recently, I had a conversation with an old school friend, now living in Denver, and told him of my struggle with this essay. He reminded me of “Pascal’s Wager”[2] – that even if one cannot definitively prove the existence of God, it is better to believe in Him, as the potential benefits outweigh the risks of being wrong. Believe you can do it, he said.

 

But it is for our political environment I am most concerned, where skepticism has been overwhelmed by a tidal wave of hubris. In a 1901 letter to the Swiss professor of Greek and history Jost Winteler, the 22-year-old Albert Einstein wrote: “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” In our hyper politically-polarized world, neither doubt nor skepticism is widely extant. Instead there is an attitude of “either you’re with me or you’re against me.” This fractionalization has set brother against brother and friend against friend. Conservative students are hesitant about speaking out. In schools and universities, speech that is deemed “harmful” is disallowed. The dogmatism of progressives on the left and ardent Trump supporters on the right are notably void of skepticism.

 

At the risk of widening even further the gulf between conservatives and progressives, I place most (but not all) of the blame on progressives. Certainly, there are some on the right who don MAGA hats, pump fists in the air and, incoherently, raise their voices for Mr. Trump. However, most on the left do not just disagree with Donald Trump, they hate him, and they let hatred drive their responses; reason falls victim to emotion. In part, their aversion to Mr. Trump lies in his muddled syntax. Like Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter, Mr. Trump speaks in unintelligible riddles. Whether he is negotiating a deal, reflecting whomever he most recently spoke to, or speaking from ignorance, I don’t pretend to know. But I suspect he is neither as stupid nor as uncompassionate as he sometimes sounds. His opponents would be wise to let skepticism replace their instinct for immediate condemnation. 

 

We witness this arrogant audacity from media disciples of both parties, especially on televised cable evening news programs, podcasts and video-sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Twitch. Social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) make it easier for viewers to limit their news to only that with which they agree. Do Rachel Maddow or Jesse Waters ever have moments of doubt, of questioning their loudly proclaimed ideologies? 

 

There are, of course, situations when conviction should be paramount – love for family, belief in freedom, and faith in God. “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think,” said Christopher Robin to Pooh. But generally, skepticism is healthy and doubt drives creativity.

 

True conservatives tend to be skeptics. In 1967, the prescient Daniel Patrick Moynihan was invited to speak to the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa: “Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.” Conservatives are concerned of the power that accrues to political leaders and for the tendency of the state to expand inexorably. This concern is not only because of the difficulty of paying for ever more programs, but because such growth threatens individualism, the bed-rock of conservative thought. Doubt and skepticism are generally associated with reflection, not spontaneity.

 

“Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind” are words attributed to educator John Dewey. Like chastity, as the philosopher George Santayana is alleged to have once said, it [skepticism] should not be relinquished too readily. Truth (the holy grail of the skeptic) is illusive, perhaps never to be discovered; it is the search that is important.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] As quoted by Gary Saul Morson, professor of Slavic languages at Northwestern University, in the February 28 issue of The Wall Street Journal.

[2] Blaise Pascal, 17^th Century French philosopher.

"Who Else Besides Trump?"

  

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Who Else Besides Trump?”

November 19, 2024

 

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community,

they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

                                                                                               Senator Charles Schumer

                                                                                               The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC

                                                                                               January 3, 2017

 

“Too much power has been delegated to unaccountable bureaucrats.

Undoing this is necessary to restore American greatness – but

fraught with risk. The unelected elite are powerful and fight dirty.”

                                                                                                Liz Truss

                                                                                                Prime Minister, Great Britain, 2022

                                                                                                The Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2024

 

The paradox in Senator Schumer’s statement – a statement unchallenged by Ms. Maddow – is that he admitted to (and would have agreed with) Ms. Truss’s words written five years later – that unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats exert unacceptable power over our nation’s most powerful people, let alone the rest of us. Neither he nor Ms. Maddow acknowledged the irony embedded in their exchange.  

 

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As I wrote on November 6, I felt relief, not joy, with the election’s verdict. But as my wife and I spent six days driving around Pennsylvania and Virginia visiting grandchildren, I thought of the election and its consequences. And I concluded that the growing power of the state and its threat to individual freedom has become so powerful that a traditional Republican candidate might not be willing to confront such an oppressive force – that it would take an individual unafraid to incur the wrath of the administrative state. 

 

There is no question that a government that looks after 335 million people needs a professional bureaucracy. The President and the Executive Branch appoint roughly 4,000 individuals, a tiny fraction of the two million federal civilian employees. The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, prohibits partisan political activity among civilian employees in the executive branch of the Federal and District of Columbia Governments, even as it excludes those Presidential appointees whose jobs depend on Senate confirmation. Nevertheless, violations of the Hatch Act have become rampant in recent years, especially in intelligence agencies and within the Justice Department, as “lawfare” was waged against Mr. Trump and some of his backers.

 

It is, though, the natural instinct of people to defend their jobs, to expand their bureaucracies; it is how they personally advance. It is why slaying the dragon of government bureaucracies is so difficult. But unchecked government growth leads to inflation, bloat, bias, waste, and ultimately to either a government that collapses, or one that assumes dictatorial controls. That being an unpleasant prospect, some restrictions on that growth must be imposed, no matter how unpopular.

 

Is Mr. Trump the right man for the job? Obviously, the question is unanswerable. It is not that I am without concerns. Some of Mr. Trump’s nominations, especially former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, I find troubling, as I do the possibility that he might use “recess appointments” to bring on board those who may not receive Senate confirmation. Adhering not only to the words of the Constitution, but also to its intent, is paramount to the survival of our Republic. However, when I weigh what Mr. Trump proposes versus what has happened overseas, at our border, to inflation, to crime in our cities, and to our culture, schools, and universities over the past few years, I side with those calling out, “Halt!”

 

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Mr. Trump does not satisfy the traits I seek in a friend. He is crude. His bluntness in public is rude. He is incapable of humility. He seems barren of humor, especially the ability to laugh at himself. He is not introspective, nor does he seem to have an interest in history, or even in political philosophy. I don’t understand his love affair with the three trillion-dollar cryptocurrency market, and I believe markets that size should be regulated. I wish he had nominated Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo to be in his cabinet rather than the abrasive Matt Gaetz or the untested Pete Hegseth. But none of us get everything we wish.

 

Character is important, but that and my personal preferences are not necessarily the qualities we need in a political leader when we are drowning in debt, living with a collapsed border, and enduring an education system – the most expensive in the world – that has failed our youth, all at a time when cultural issues are more important to elements of the Democratic Party than defending the country’s citizens. The problems we face are not unique to the United States. Classical western liberalism is under threat, as western democracies seem to have forgotten that individual freedom needs defending against those who seek power, as exemplified by dictators in countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Evil, as the Bible teaches us, is ever-present. The United States is not perfect as we all know, but its form of government, and the liberty it provides the individual, is unique in the annals of human history. It is a country that has benefitted from capitalism, that understands the critical nature of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” encourages entrepreneurship, a country that offers, not equality of outcomes but equal opportunities to those who have ability and aspiration. Trump is a fighter for those things he believes in, for working-class people – regardless of race, nationality, or gender – and for all those who love this country, warts and all.

 

Despite being harried by a media that hates him and hounded by political opponents who used the power of the state to try to destroy him, and opposed by bureaucrats who do whatever it takes to defend their turf, he never quits. He is tenacious. The media and his political enemies claim he wants to become a dictator, but they don’t listen to all that he says – if they understood his proposal for a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – they would realize he wants to limit the power of the state, to remove onerous regulations and to reduce the taxes that fund the leviathan that has become our federal government. Writing about DOGE in Saturday’s New York Sun, Newt Gingrich stated: “Unearthing what is wrong and discovering what could be right is the ultimate contribution of this project.” A smaller government, with power returned to the people, is the goal. Nevertheless, there are risks. Can Musk and Ramaswamy work their magic with DOGE, without disrupting the economy and/or financial markets?

 

Mr. Trump is not my ideal of a President, but I understand why history called him at this moment: Respect for the opinions of others, accountability and personal responsibility are traits needed but in short supply in the media and in our governing classes, as the world moves further into the 21^st Century – a world that will never be free from enemies to democracy. Will Mr. Trump be up to the task of navigating these shoals? I don’t know, but I suspect it will take someone outside the slipstream of politics as usual. We need a course-correction – a secure border, increased defense spending, mutual respect, an assurance that the concept of personal responsibility is alive and well, and accounta

"Donald Trump - Antihero?"

 If we weren’t so uptight and fearful of offense, one might find humor in today’s politics. A hundred years ago Finley Peter Dunne would have had fun with what our political class has provided. Mark Twain would have enjoyed chronicling John Kerry’s chasing around the globe in his exhaust-spewing private jet warning the multitudes to stay out of the gas-guzzling vehicles they need to get to work. Mel Brooks, in his prime and without the puritans who now dominate our cultural and media institutions looking over his shoulder, could have made us look in the mirror at what we have done to ourselves and our society. But, sadly, the ability to laugh at ourselves has become a lost art.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Donald Trump – Antihero?”

July 28, 2022

 

“Recently, scholars have used antihero archetypes to describe politicians and

explain their effect and affect, including former U.S. President Donald Trump.”

                                                                                                                                Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

                                                                                                                                July 23, 2022

 

Antihero is defined as a character who lacks qualities of a traditional hero – morality, courage, an obeisance to traditional rules of behavior. Wikipedia lists such fictional characters as typifying the antihero: Shakespeare’s Othello, John Milton’s Lucifer, Jane Eyre’s Edward Rochester, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, and George MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman. Do you, as does Wikipedia, see our former President among that group? I leave you to be the judge.

 

No matter one’s opinion, the word ‘antihero’ may make wince the large swath of Americans who see Mr. Trump as a villain – some for his character, which was revealed in his lack of positive response during the afternoon of the January 6 riots; others for his antiestablishment/anti-elitist credentials, which threatened official Washington, including members of January 6 committee. ‘Hero,’ even when preceded by ‘anti’ would not be to their liking. 

 

Yet even those who despise him cannot ignore the fact he was (and is) a hero to his estimated twenty to thirty million die hard supporters, most of whom live in non-elitist communities and work in non-establishment jobs. His supporters, who encompass all genders and races, see big-city and suburban financial and cultural elites as sanctimonious, hypocritical, and uninterested in the social and economic mobility that has characterized the United States. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Joseph Epstein, wrote “My sense is that just as Mr. Trump gave us Joe Biden, liberal culture earlier gave us Mr. Trump.” I agree. Mr. Trump was thrust upon us, in reaction to those who derided American history, patronized minorites and who treated millions of white, working-class Americans as ‘deplorables.’  Those who now reject him most vehemently bear primary responsibility for his political rise. 

 

Donald Trump went to Washington to clean out the “swamp,” and the “swamp” fought back just as Senator Chuck Schumer said it would, when he told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC in January 2017: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you…he’s being really dumb to do this.” Ms. Maddow did not follow up, as a good investigative journalist would have done, on the implication that intelligence services have too much power, that they embody the “swamp.”

 

Had Mr. Trump been born five hundred years earlier, Shakespeare might have found him a candidate for one of his tragedies. He has an outsized ego and lacks principle, but he took on an adversary (the “swamp”) embedded so deeply into our culture that attempts to cleanse it were akin to Hercules’ task of cleaning the Augean Stables. Sadly, unlike Hercules, he failed.

 

Regardless of whether Mr. Trump is an antihero, hero or neither, it is my ardent wish – despite what he achieved: increased employment and incomes for minority workers, the Abraham Accords, restoration of pride in America’s imperfect greatness and more – that he retire from public life and release Republican candidates to battle issues not personalities. However, despite their demonization of him for his moral shortcomings following the 2020 election, Democrats do not want this to happen, for they recognize that their best chance of election success in 2022 and 2024 is to keep his name front and center, which is the fundamental – though unstated – excuse for the January 6 committee. Mr. Trump has become Democrats’ biggest asset and Republicans’ biggest liability. It is why Democrat PACs throw money at Republican fringe candidates supported by Mr. Trump. (Ironically and indicative of our odd state of political affairs, Mr. Biden has become Democrats’ biggest liability and Republicans’ biggest asset.)

 

Frankly, I do not care whether Donald Trump is considered an antihero or not. He is (and was) a force of nature that arose to contest an increasingly out-of-touch, entitled, moralizing and self-righteous elitist establishment – composed of people from both political parties – who instinctively disagree with the Chinese proverb that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. While Mr. Trump was (and is) a flawed man, there was good his Administration accomplished. And his Presidency was tragic in that it cost him a fortune, damaged what reputation he had, and the “swamp,” as we know through the ongoing (and unheralded) Durham investigation, survives. That is a tragedy for all Americans.

"The Appeal of Donald J. Trump"

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“The Appeal of Donald J. Trump”

October 13, 2019

“I can’t spare this man. He fights.”

                                                                                                Abraham Lincoln on Ulysses Grant,

                                                                                                after Grant was criticized for

                                                                                                heavy losses at Shiloh, April 1862

Accusations fly furiously around corridors of power in Washington and in newsrooms across the country. Neighbor no longer speaks to neighbor; children are distanced from their parents; colleges promote ideologies rather than encourage debate. Doctors tell us we have become stressed due to harsh and unrelenting political attacks. Serious debate is ignored, yet issues remain: What kind of government do we want? A state whose tentacles reach deep into our lives, or one based on self-rule that values individual independence? Should we tilt toward socialism or rely on free-market capitalism?

For almost a century, the nation has moved away from small government and citizen representatives, toward big government and professional politicians, bureaucrats and administrators – toward a “deep state,” defined by Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, as “consisting of career civil servants who have growing power in the administrative state but work in the shadows.” Both political parties have perpetuated this trend. Even under Reagan, for example, Washington bureaucracy continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace. But the Left has always been more aggressive. Think of FDR and the New Deal, LBJ and the Great Society and Barack Obama “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

As to when and where it began – the trust-busting policies of regulatory reformers in the late 19^th Century, the appointment of J. Edgar Hoover as director of the Bureau of Investigation in 1924, or the Alphabet Agencies of Franklin Roosevelt’s thirteen-year reign – is less important than recognition that an unfortunate consequence has been the expanding influence and power of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and administrators. It has been cozy, tacit arrangements that allowed both political parties to accommodate their special interests. It has permitted political and personal loyalty to germinate and expand within agencies – loyalty toward those who encourage the growth of their responsibilities and treachery toward those who challenge their positions.

Mr. Trump came to Washington to challenge the status quo. He promised to sweep out corruption and cronyism. From the get-go, his actions created resistance, which has blossomed. The ‘Resistance’ was founded on the belief that Mr. Trump had been illegally elected President, and that he had put democracy at risk. Whereas reality was that cozy, federal jobs were at risk – jobs that on average pay fifty percent more than equivalent private sector jobs, with better benefits and greater job security. Tools of the ‘Resistance’ includes defiance, leaks to the media and intimidation of Trump appointees. They have been abetted by reporters consumed with hatred toward a man who had the gall to question their objectivity.

In no part of government has this been truer than in the intelligence community. On January 3, 2017, newly elected President Trump expressed criticism of U.S. intelligence agencies. That same day Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community – they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” History suggests Senator Schumer’s forecast to be accurate. The backlash against Mr. Trump has been relentless, notably by biased, ethically challenged men like John Brennan, James Comey and James Clapper. In fact, Mr. Comey, the former (and fired) Director of the FBI, told Matt Flegenheimer of The New York Times last Saturday that he “pledged to spend the next 13 months working to drive Mr. Trump from power” – not words one would expect from a member of the federal bureaucracy. These are men who claim to have the interests of Country, but are, in fact, seeking to line their own pockets, while doing their utmost to destroy a duly elected President.

None of this has deterred Donald Trump. He ran (and won), at least in part, on his promise to “drain the swamp.” Like an energizer bunny, he went to work. He increased employment while decreasing unemployment. He put through a tax bill that hurt the wealthy in high-income states, while lowering taxes for low-and-middle-income people. He moved the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and made NATO nations pay a higher percentage of their own defense. He took on China for its unfair trade practices and for stealing our technology, and he abandoned the Paris Peace Treaty whose only purpose was to make signatories feel good about themselves. He re-fashioned NAFTA, while bringing home thousands of manufacturing jobs. He helped make the U.S. energy independent for the first time in decades. And he has told no foreign leader that he “will have more flexibility after the next election.”

Mr. Trump does not speak in the sophisticated, euphonious tones of his predecessor. He doesn’t exhibit the gentlemanly, effete attitude of so many of his fellow Republicans. He is crude and uncouth; he exaggerates. His words clash, and his metaphors get mixed; he uses too many adverbs and adjectives and, at times, appears incoherent. He does not always seem to think through what he is saying or doing. Referring to his decision to leave Syria, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that his foreign policy is “tactical,” not “strategic.” I am not so sure. After being criticized by all sides for announcing the withdrawal of the remaining 1000 U.S. troops in Syria, consider his explanation at a rally in Minneapolis  – after eighteen years, with 4,400 dead and almost eight trillion U.S. tax dollars spent, the Middle East is “less safe, less stable and less secure than it was.” He might also have mentioned the flood of refugees that inundated Europe. So, whose policy displayed the better strategy – his, or that of the two previous Administrations?

Perhaps because of his successes and despite the constant battering he receives, Mr. Trump retains one trait his supporters admire: He does not give up. Like Ulysses S. Grant, he fights. He is not part of the establishment and his loyalty is not to the elite; it is to the people who elected him. Until he became President, he had never been a politician. He has no embedded, loyal bureaucrats to protect, or to protect him. Unlike most of his predecessors, but like most of his constituents, he did not build a career in public service. Amidst a pack of professional politicians, he is a citizen President. He does not use identity politics to separate voters into segregated camps. Like most of his supporters, he looks upon people as individuals. He believes in old fashioned concepts, like aspiration, ability, diligence, hard work, meritocracy, independence and family. He shuns dependency, sloth and excuses. He understands that success and failure are natural aspects of life, and he recognizes that luck plays a critical goal.

A good character is always preferable to a bad one. Not knowing Mr. Trump, I cannot vouch for his, but I suspect it does not fit my ideal. But elections are not about discovering perfection but seeking the best alternative. I have seen nothing in any of the candidates now campaigning for their Party’s nomination that suggests a more honest, forthright individual. Certainly, we did not have that in 2016. With Mr. Trump, there is no hidden agenda. That truth was expressed by none other than Hillary Clinton on a recent PBS News Hour: “I said during the campaign, there was no other Donald Trump. What you saw was what you were going to get.” Mrs. Clinton inadvertently touched on another reason for Mr. Trump’s appeal. He is without deceit, a quality one could not apply to Mrs. Clinton. With Mr. Trump you do get what you pay for. Most important, though, he fights. He fights for all those forgotten, working, “deplorable” Americans, those who live apart from the coasts and the elite denizens who inhabit their murky waters. Love him or hate him, that is the appeal of Donald J. Trump.