
"We're just days away from Elon Musk's presidency," notes Andy Borowitz in his latest missive — a preface to self-survival in the Age of Trump returned. More solemnly, one of his readers offers this bit of ancient Greek stoicism: "There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."
Epictetus clashed with Buddhism, which teaches that the only way to happiness is to cease all desire, that being the true root of our evils. Enter a Marxist internal contradiction: Striving to cease desire is desirous. Myself, I'm fond of Taoism, whose essence only a real imbecile of daily political commentary would boil down to "Fuck it ... whatever" — although that rings of Epictetus.
Still, there are joys on this journey. And a rather sizable one relates to the much-predicted civil war to come, should Trump lose another election. What a marvelous, even divine twist of fate: The idiot won, yet we're getting that civil war anyway — and praise Epictetus, Buddha or Jesus, the war is entirely between Trumpers.
Like all civil wars, theirs is vicious and bloody; but unlike other civil wars, this one is a delight to those looking on. The bloodbath is between Trumpian modernists and MAGA medievalists, personified by Elon Musk vs. Steve Bannon. And the war's most delightful aspect is that Trump has taken sides — that of the modernists, thereby shafting his far more loyal troops in Magastan.
Even the latter have their own little civil war going. Some are crying outright betrayal by Trump while others defend, claiming he has always supported skilled immigration, which, of course, is a lie, just one more being propagated by the panicky president-elect. As for the most bizarre aspect of this bleeding freakshow, Trump was right to ally with Elon. Why bizarre? Never before and never again will you read those three words: Trump was right.
But to get back to philosophy, my poet friend in the Land of Borderline Human Indecency — not that his country is borderline indecent, just that it borders one — there comes this, in prose: "Whenever I feel the need to listen to the speech of angels as they boogie on the head of a pin, I have only to read the latest review of the latest break-through book in philosophic thought. I will be told that it is all a matter of language."
There, as precisely as the matter can be conveyed, is the reason I no longer follow the latest roadblocks of breakthrough books in philosophic thought. Accuse me of the Middle Ages' scholastic obscurantism if you wish, or of its contemporary form — Trumpism — properly defined as an organized belief system engaged in the closing of minds. No need to accuse, though. I confess. On the rack of breakthroughs, they broke me.
"It is all a matter of language." Yes indeedy, modern philosophy has been mired in this rut since Wittgenstein's 1921 breakthrough Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which essentially declared that, because of language problems, answering philosophical questions is a nonsensical exercise; this, followed posthumously in 1953 by his Philosophical Investigations, which essentially gave us Emily Litella in writing.
What does this have to do with the joy of Trumpism's civil war? Writes my above-cited friend, Canadian poet Norm Sibum, in philosophy "one starts with a premise." One such premise might be: "Ramaswamy and Musk ... are partly right when they say that Americans are too attached to mediocrity to be of any use to the planet."
Ah, yes, but when they "call for excellence" instead, "one is justified in asking exactly what it is they are calling for," notes Sibum. In answer: "There is the matter of their own immense fortunes and the skill sets required to grow them along hothouse lines. In other words, these titans are in the market for something other than a moronic work force; they require mercenaries of a kind."
About that passage, I'll defy Wittgenstein by observing the usefulness of language. In this case, an obsolete definition of "hothouse" is brothel, workers in which are a definite sort of mercenaries — ladies of fortune whose skill sets are among the most treasured by men. Ergo (since philosophic lingo be on our minds), Musk's mercenaries are whores; highly educated, fancyass whores but whores nonetheless. They'd have to be to service that jerk.
Nevertheless, I'll upend Shakespeare and say I come not to bury Elon in vituperation, but to praise him. He helped ignite the civil war that Trump now has on his hands. And if that joy is not sizable enough to get you through this period, the one in which "we're just days away from Elon Musk's presidency," I just don't know what else to say.
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