My hope that US nettimer would throw some light Hillary Clinton’s
weirdly stupid and sinister outburst was richly rewarded by Ted’s
detailed and illuminating analysis, particularly the possibility that it
maybe a way of firing up her base by borrowing from the populist
playbook of deploying an outrageous and attention-grabbing statement.
Even richer was the descriptive paragraph describing Clinton as
representing “a nexus of political-economic structural biases hidden
behind a glass of Pinot Grigio and repartee made up of denialist,
'splainy "truths." Going on to describe a “fragile edifice of
self-seeking hypocrisy”
It is this focus on Clinton’s hypocrisy (and presence of hypocrisy
general in democratic politics) that suggests a clue to the paradox of
the Trumpian trope of the honest liar. It suggests not so much the value
of honesty as the value of ‘sincerity’. The phenomenon of the sincere
fraud often being preferred to the honest hypocrite. In a recent podcast
(a discussion between the novelist Zadie Smith and political philosopher
David Runciman) Trump is described as a Dickensian figure (vivid but one
dimensional) in which the name, the mask and what is behind the mask all
line up creating a kind of literal integrity -what you see is what you
get-. In contrast Clinton as the honest hypocrite dances around the fact
that we are all playing two or more roles. But struggles to deal with
the fact that she is leading a double life. When the test came people
picked the sincere liar over the honest hypocrite.
In the same podcast novelist Zadie Smith compares the public for this
kind of double think to the split over the OJ Simpson trial. She
describes how when she first went to the US she couldn’t understand why
her black friends were defending what to her was a clear miscarriage of
justice. To her it was clear he was was guilty. But her friends would
insist that “this court system is guilty”. So (the argument goes) it
really doesn’t matter whether he is guilty or not we are going to break
this system”. This approach is hard for those on the liberal left who
like to think of themselves as rational actors to take on a position so
deeply irrational. But should we be facing the fact that its impossible
to ignore the fact that the irrational in politics makes a huge
difference and we might need to think whether an in what way we might
need to these facts on board and even consider harnessing that
irrationality as effectively as the right has in recent years.
--
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