What to expect... [View all]

[babylonsister]

Sister posted on FB...

The Obama press conference was probably the last public act of rational deliberative government we will see for the next 4, possibly 8 years.

A Trump presidency will never engage with the press or the public via an exchange of ideas similar to how we all understand and experience rational "discussion" or "debate"--people offering ideas through language, listening and responding on the belief that we all accept the existence of empirical ideas/facts, thereby allowing us to arrive at agreed upon conclusions. Instead, the Trump administration will engage solely in a kind of public talk designed to transform reality via programatic scripts that undermine and call into question normal deliberation. This disjuncture between empirical reality and the attempt by the Trump administration to push their own version of reality will lead to a kind of mass frustration, cynicism, social and political paralysis.

We will all be caught in an endless cycle of needing to argue that the obvious, tangible world actually exists and the invented world of propaganda does not exist. Not sure what this feels like? Look outside your window: is it snowing? In a rational deliberative system, you see snow and the weather report says that it is snowing--you put on your coat and boots, drive to work. In an anti-rational system, you see snow and the weather report says that it is sunny and 75--you spend all day at home trying to figure out what the weather actually is. One strategy in this alternate system is to stop listening to public reports or news.