The Era of Absurdity

The Era of Absurdity

No reason to get excited / The thief he kindly spoke /

There are many here among us / Who feel that life is but a joke

Bob Dylan

As the historic November election approaches and we try to contain the giddiness of imagining what it might feel like to wake up some morning—perhaps days or even weeks after the actual election day—and realize that Trump was defeated, it’s time to sum up our experience of his Presidency.

One pundit has an interesting proposal. The writer calls the Age of Trump the Era of Stupid. At first it appears to be a plausible description, given the endless list of stupid things Trump has said.

But that characterization doesn’t seem quite right to me, for a number of reasons—although it’s in the ballpark. It doesn’t capture the mood, the peculiar feeling of strangeness surrounding Trump’s presidency.

Stupid may be an impolite reference to a person who is just not very intelligent. I wouldn’t call Trump stupid, although his stupid utterances are common and, despite calling himself a very stable genius, he appears to have at least an average level of intelligence.

We sometimes associate stupidity with foolishness, when someone acts contrary to her self-interest. Stupid has the sense of being imprudent or unwise. For example, it has been unwise, that is, stupid, in these times, to attend a large gathering of people without a face covering.

The way that Trump responded to the pandemic was politically stupid, as well as disastrous for the health and well-being of Americans; it was unwise for his electoral prospects. Yet his presidency doesn’t fit a consistent pattern of foolishness. It’s been more like a chaotic mishmash of actions that have produced mixed results in terms of his interests.

There is another sense of stupid that places us closer to our main theme, in both content and mood. Stupid may refer to claims, statements, ideas, or arguments, as well as to persons or foolish actions. A stupid claim is often a false claim, and a false belief may be irrational, contrary to reason and evidence.

At times an irrational claim may strike us as extreme, preposterous, outlandishly unreasonable—absurd. Absurdity suggests a kind of metaphorical extreme distance or discrepancy between a reasonableness we expect and an irrationality that we find. Think of some of the ridiculous conspiracy theories being floated today; they are absurd.

For me, stupidity doesn’t capture my (our) experience of Trump. It fails to describe the curious emotive quality of our reaction to the latest Trump howler or action, the outlandishness of an utterance or a situation, which causes us to wonder how such a man became President of the United States. How could this have happened? It’s absurd!

I was struck by this sense of absurdity when I saw the picture of Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, with an array of Goya products—including Goya beans!— placed in front of him on this symbol of the power and majesty of the American presidency. He has his thumbs up, like he just made a long putt, and he has a goofy smile on his face. Our president is hawking beans—in a time of pandemic! (And he’s probably violating ethics rules.)

Another image, at an April coronavirus briefing. Trump is suggesting that we might inject disinfectant into the body to defeat the virus, as Dr. Birx appears in the background with an uncomfortable look on her face in response to his bizarre claim.

Consider the image associated with sharpie-gate. Trump is showing reporters a weather map, doctored by a sharpie, indicating that the path of hurricane Dorian would threaten Alabama, just as Trump had falsely asserted as the storm approached the U.S.

The notion of absurdity is sometimes associated with existentialism and the view that life is meaningless or that there are elements of any life that are fundamentally out of whack. But it is also a useful category when we apply it to situations in life, not to life as such, or to features of situations, as well as to claims or statements.

The philosopher Thomas Nagel offers an insightful analysis of the concept of the absurd, as well as amusing examples. In ordinary life a situation is absurd when it includes a conspicuous discrepancy between pretension or aspiration and reality: someone gives a complicated speech in support of a motion that has already passed; a notorious criminal is made president of a major philanthropic foundation; you declare your love over the telephone to a recorded announcement; as you are being knighted, your pants fall down.

As the Queen steps forward, she finds the noteworthy person’s pants are around his ankles. The absurdity isn’t the bare legs or the spectators’ feelings of awkwardness; it’s the comic incongruity between the solemnity and dignity of the ceremony—its very purpose—and the wardrobe malfunction.

The incongruity of pretension or aspiration and reality describes our sense that a situation is both absurd and comic: hawking beans in the Oval Office; suggesting, in the company of health professionals, that injecting disinfectant might beat the coronavirus; attempting to cover one’s ass by altering the past, using a sharpie!

Trump talks and the pretense is that he wants to inform and persuade, or he wants us to be impressed by his genius, his bright ideas and creative aspirations. We could buy Greenland! Maybe we could nuke hurricanes to stop them from making landfall in the United States!

My nominee for best comically absurd performance by a political leader in 2020 goes to Donald J. Trump, who proclaimed his unprecedented cognitive abilities by acing a dementia test! Trump is a self-proclaimed cognitive all-star because … he can identify the elephant and remember a five-item phrase! Person, woman, man, camera, TV.

Here's Trump’s idea about how to reduce the number of cases of the virus in the U.S.: reduce the number of coronavirus tests! Fewer tests mean we would find fewer people suffering and dying. (On this reasoning a useful method of countering overpopulation would be to administer fewer pregnancy tests.) Trump’s suggestion about tests isn’t just stupid; it is absurdly incongruent with good reasoning and reality—and dangerous as well.

Joel Feinberg argues that there is an essential element in absurdity. Where there is absurdity there are always two things clashing or in disharmony, distinguishable entities that conflict with one another. This element is referred to variously as the ‘divorce,’ disparity, discrepancy, disproportion, or incongruity between discordant objects. In general, things that do not fit together—means discrepant with ends, premises incongruous with conclusions, ideals disharmonious with practice, pretentions in conflict with realities—are found wherever there is absurdity.

Feinberg’s analysis clarifies and broadens the notion of the structure of absurdity. It may refer to a relation, the incongruity or disharmony at issue, or to one of the discordant objects.

Trump’s behavior is always to be understood and evaluated against the background of the office which he holds and the power he wields. It is often said that we must respect the presidency, but what if there is an absurd gap between the ideals, both moral and intellectual, of the presidency, and the actual behavior of the president?

For the sake of the ideal of truth we would expect a president to resist silly conspiracy theories, including QAnon, which claims: There is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who rule the world, and they control everything. They control politicians, and they control media. … And they would have continued ruling the world were it not for the election of President Donald Trump.

Instead, Trump promotes this conspiracy theory (as well as others) by retweeting accounts supporting QAnon. The theory is absurd, as are presidential tweets and Trumpster responses endorsing such nonsense. Trump hawks conspiracy theories like he hawks beans. He’s a carny at the state fair, cajoling us to stop and spend our money in a rigged game to win the stuffed animal.

Perhaps the defining aspect of Trump’s presidency is his bullshit, his unconcern with truth. As we entered the last part of his time in office (we hope), the number of his false or misleading statements reached over 20,000. Here the disharmony or incongruity that constitutes the absurd is stark. The discordant objects are the volume of claims put forward as true and realities which disconfirm the claims, the discrepancy between assertion and evidence related to the pandemic and possible voter fraud and immigrants and Russian interference in our election, and on and on.

It is absurd that our president, the leader of our country and the free world, utters falsehoods at such an astonishing and outrageous rate.

There is also an astounding incongruity between Trump’s conception of himself—the posturing and grotesque sense of his abilities and self-importance—and the reality of the smallness of the man. Nagel’s notion of a conspicuous discrepancy between pretense and reality is vivid.

Trump proclaims himself a stable genius. He never apologizes because he thinks he’s never wrong. He never takes responsibility for the bad consequences of his actions because they are never misguided; others are at fault. He apparently doesn’t read very much (while spending an enormous amount of time watching television) because he doesn’t think he can learn very much by reading—he already has the requisite knowledge in any area. He absurdly repeats, over and over, that he knows more than anybody about numerous topics. He ignores experts since he knows more than they do. He reports that his gut can tell him more than anybody else’s brain could tell him. He’s an absurd figure whose self-assessment is outlandishly at odds with the true nature of himself.

In ordinary life we would dismiss such a man as a pathetic blowhard who, sadly, works overtime at convincing himself and others how great he is. We could walk away. But for us, he’s always there. He’s our president!

Like the knighthood ceremony, we bring lofty expectations to situations in which we interact (indirectly) with the president. There is a grandeur, a magnificence attached to the office of the presidency. We expect seriousness and dignity. Among other things, we expect truth (honesty), caring, civility, depth, learning, expertise, articulateness, sophistication, authenticity, and wisdom.

With Trump, the discordant elements of his presidency aren’t merely minor frictions. They are exaggerated incongruities that conflict with the elements above: falsehoods, narcissism, immature name-calling, shallowness, ignorance, incompetence, elementary literacy (his limited, middle school vocabulary), crudeness, fakery, and foolishness. The incongruities dash our expectations; we don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

When the prospective knight’s pants are hanging around his ankles as the Queen struggles to maintain decorum, the incongruity is comic. Absurdity has a close relation to comedy and humor. Hence, our reaction to Trump hawking beans in the Oval Office is bemusement colored by a disgusted smirk, as if it’s difficult to believe what is happening.

But Trump’s presidency has been no laughing matter, despite its comic elements. As Feinberg says, Perhaps not all funny things are absurd, and surely not all absurd things are funny, but discordance is an element common to many comic and absurd things.

The Age of Trump is not the Era of Stupid. We should call his presidency the Era of Absurdity. History has played a painful joke on us.

Abortion and the Illusion of Moral Certainty

The abortion wars are interminable. Red state governors used the coronavirus outbreak as a pretext for restricting access to abortion, deeming it a nonessential procedure that could be postponed in order to save medical supplies. Federal judges saw through the transparent attempt to ban abortions by exploiting a public health emergency.

The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts’ surprising alignment with liberal justices, was vilified by conservatives for striking down a Louisiana law requiring physicians performing abortions to have admitting procedures at local hospitals. The attempt to restrict abortion was again cloaked in bad faith, as if the primary issue was women’s health rather than the more obvious intent to restrict access to abortion.

State lawmakers continue to attempt to enact laws that would effectively ban abortions, despite the fact that neither constitutional precedent nor public opinion is on their side. A recent Pew Research Center report said, A majority of Americans (61%) believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Public opinion has remained remarkably steady for many years despite the anti-abortion tactics of the states.

And there is no doubt that many (one-issue) voters will manage to stomach the sewage of Trump’s character because they see him as the best bet to advance their anti-abortion agenda.

Current events caused me to re-read an article I published over thirty years ago, in 1987, when I was struggling to come to grips with the abortion debates taking place in the public as well as in the arcane pages of academic philosophy journals. There was a striking disconnect between the philosophical complexity of the articles by professional philosophers and the elemental character of the public rhetoric surrounding abortion. The articles were full of interesting analyses of a number of perplexing issues: the nature of personhood; criteria for membership in the moral community; the foundation of rights; how we resolve conflicts between rights claims; the interests of future but not actual persons.

In reviewing my thoughts, I was struck by how little has changed in the language of public discourse: pro-life vs. pro-choice, anti-abortion vs. abortion rights. Also, noteworthy now (as well as then) is the atmosphere of what I called, in the article, the luxury of moral certainty among opponents of abortion—a phrase I borrowed from a source now forgotten. It’s a notion well worth considering.

I rejected the notion of moral certainty to express a degree of intellectual modesty in offering my own arguments in the face of the substantive and growing philosophical literature on abortion at the time, and my dissatisfaction with the various options on the permissibility or impermissibility of abortion—liberal, moderate, and conservative—in light of the moral status of the fetus and the apparent conflict between the interests of the mother and the interests of prenatal life.

Moral certainty—being absolutely sure about one’s moral views—may not be easily purchased in life. Hence the notion that it is often a luxury when we don’t know what to do. We don’t always have the attitudinal luxury of fighting Nazis or confronting slaveholders or challenging the mob of Klansmen seeking to lynch an innocent Black man. Life is often more messy than this.

The continued indefatigable efforts to ban abortion suggests that opponents are morally certain of their position, despite its minority status in America. Why are they so certain of their position? Ought they to be certain?

In my view there are at least three sources of abortion opponents’ moral certainty: an appeal to religion, a linguistic sleight of hand, and a common fallacious argument.

First, both polling and anecdotal evidence indicate that many people derive their beliefs on abortion from something more fundamental: their religious beliefs and commitments. A common view for Christians is to claim that human life is sacred because it is a gift from God. Therefore, fetal life should be respected and be given legal protection from the moment of conception.

However much we should respect individual conscience and religious beliefs, as long as moral convictions are defended in terms of religious appeals such arguments can’t be expected to be persuasive to nonbelievers unless premises are shared and the key concepts— unborn child, human person—can be given a secular defense. Appeals to the sanctity of human life, as a sacred reflection of God’s creativity activity, will be logically hollow for various kinds of religious skeptics or for those who hold a nonpersonal conception of the Divine. (Analogous things could be said for religious believers’ attempt to impose their views on end-of-life decisions, the morality of homosexual behavior, and same sex marriage.)

Another problematic aspect of the appeal to religious arguments is the attempt to derive moral certainty from an uncertain foundation. Adherents of a faith seem to act as if they know, in some relatively strong sense, that their religious beliefs are true, and that these beliefs are as certain as the moral convictions grounded in their faith. But they can’t claim to know such things, since they are matters of faith and must compete with other incompatible claims in a religiously diverse world. We don’t know who is right.

Abortion opponents may say these responses are unfair, since the language used to describe abortion is secular, not religious. Abortion is the killing of an unborn child, a human person, a baby with full moral rights. No religious language is used. Moral certainty is no luxury if abortion kills children.

However, it is not self-evident that a unicellular zygote is what we normally mean when we speak of a person or a baby or an unborn child. As the late philosopher Joel Feinberg points out, in the early developmental stages of a fetus (using this general term to include the more detailed terminology used by embryologists), it has no face, no limbs, no organs, no brain, no nervous system, no consciousness, no rationality, no concepts—nothing at all that we could recognize as belonging to an actual person, even though it is undeniably a potential person.

In other words, for many people it is extraordinarily counterintuitive to say that a one-celled zygote is a person, or that fertilized eggs are people. If we agree that a newborn infant is a human person, but a unicellular zygote is not a person, then we are left with the very difficult issue of attempting to draw a nonarbitrary line at some point between conception and birth such that, at this precise point—implantation, brain waves, heartbeat, sentience, quickening, viability— the fetus has achieved personhood.

According to a moderate (as opposed to conservative and liberal positions on abortion), early abortions do not constitute the killing of human persons, and the question of when a fetus becomes a person is essentially a disputed one about line-drawing.

At this point some abortion opponents may object and claim that we have overlooked the central nonreligious, even scientific argument for their view that a newly fertilized egg is a person. The argument is so common and seemingly persuasive it is often called the Standard Argument. It deserves to be called the central argument for the luxury of moral certainty. But it is a bad argument. In the language of logic, it is unsound because it has at least one unacceptable, unsupported premise.

The argument is closely related to a common but misleading way to raise the key issue of the moral status of the fetus. When does human life begin? Is the fetus a human being? How do we decide whether a fetus is human?

The Standard Argument goes like this. (1) It is morally wrong to kill innocent human beings. (2) A fetus is an innocent human being. Therefore, (3) Abortion, the killing of an innocent human being, is morally wrong.

In the 1970s, relatively early in academic debates about abortion, philosophers saw the problem with this argument. Unfortunately, their criticisms didn’t filter down into everyday thinking and discourse.

Notice that human can be used in two difference senses. It may refer to a biological, genetic fact: being a member of the species homo sapiens. But it may also be used in a moral sense, referring to a full-fledged member of the moral