Frank's Musings

To whom do facts matter?  There are those who believe that only matters that they experience themselves are important and worthy of concern.  These creatures think that anything that does not result from events while they are alive is imaginary.   They also dismiss as trivial the history of things that are supposed to have happened before their own existence.  While they may enjoy speculative fiction, they don’t think that accounts of past events are any different.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that the world and other creatures in it exist independently of their own consciousness.  They may believe in an afterlife and govern their behavior so as to conform with their assumptions about conditions and expectations of that subsequent supernatural order.  Alternately, they may, in a Rawlsian sense, base their behavior on the principle of altruism.

Facts of the world that is assumed to be real by the latter class of persons (the realists) are irrelevant to the behavior of the former (the solipsists).  However, certain realists may be attracted to the policies advocated by the solipsists.  The solipsist’s disregard for scientific findings and for the practices of democratic institutions can be accepted by realists when even only one of their results benefits their perceived self=interest.

When a calamity such as the COVID-19 pandemic breaks out or suffering from human inequality becomes unbearable, it matters to the realists that their leaders behave in a manner correctly to resolve the problem.  It is important to the realists that their leaders have the same realistic attitude towards social and governmental policy as they, whether or not they agree with all the consequences of particular policies.   Donald Trump does not behave as though the welfare of the realists has any importance outside of his own narcissistic mind.  Moreover, no facts exist because the rest of the world, against which truth may be judged, does not exist independently of him.  The only choice of realists is either to accept that they are nothing but figments of the solipsist’s mind or to deny him that power by depriving him of any means of control.

Of course, no realist could accept the solipsist’s monomania.  But it might serve certain realists’ objectives to empower him if the solipsist’s actions would help accomplish their goals.  They could achieve this strategy by helping to create allegiance to his ascendance to political rule.  The chief methods of establishing that dominance  have included obscurantism (willful denial of knowledge) fanning of prejudice or, as in the present case of Trump’s regime, corruption of democratic goals from serving the greater good of all to serving the greater good of each individual.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much guile to transform even a long-lasting democracy into a rubber stamp of immoral government.  It is not sufficient that  many of the realists who understand what has happened rely on the corrupted electoral process automatically to re-instill a commitment to democratic values in the voting public.   It will take an active persuasive effort to right the ship of state’s course.  I wonder if we have a promising leader to guide us to achieve that goal.