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Texas: Working as Intended

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While the Texas storm might strike some as unusual, a similar event occurred in 2011 and scientists knew that such a severe storm could occur. While the explanations of the failures that made the disaster will include the usual foible and faults of humans, there are also ideological factors that contributed. In fact, the Texas situation provides an excellent case study of the professed ideology of Republicans/conservatives. Fairness requires pointing out the obvious: The United States has only two major parties that divide into left and right. This means that a broad range of views is packed into each party. The Democrats, for example, include AOC, Antifa folk, and Joe Biden. The Republicans, to illustrate, include Mitt Romney, Trump, and some Proud Boys. There are also distinctions between the policies of a party and the various ideologies within that party.

While conservatives need not be anti-science and anti-fact, the Republican party has consciously chosen to be anti-science and anti-fact in some areas. The most relevant example is their general anti-science stance on climate change. Back in the 1980s the Democrats and Republicans generally accepted the reality of climate change and the threat it presented. This changed as the Republicans made climate change an ideological issue. This played a role in what happened in Texas: The Republicans have worked hard to deny climate change and to prevent actions to address it—thus the storm and the lack of proper preparation for it.

While Republicans profess a belief in personal responsibility and condemn those who would blame others, the Republican Texas leadership rushed to put the blame on others. The governor blamed the utility companies for not being prepared for the event. To be fair, this blame is consistent with Republican ideology. Republicans profess to favor laissez faire capitalism with businesses being allowed to operate mostly as they wish. Because of this, Texas did not require the utility companies to winterize. Not surprisingly, the companies elected to focus on their profits and did not winterize. Hence, the large-scale failures. This is what one would expect: people, in general, tend to discount the future and the Texas leaders should have known that this is what would happen. This leads to questions about the nature and extent of government control.

On the one hand, one could agree that the state fulfilled its moral obligation of recommending that the companies winterize, and the companies are at fault. On the other hand, one could use an analogy here: imagine a coach whose explanation of why their team lost so badly is that while they suggested that the athletes practice, they did not want to compel them to do so. The coach believed that the athletes would realize practicing would be best for them and would practice hard. The fact that they did not is on them. Or perhaps this analogy: imagine a police chief whose explanation of why crime is so severe in their district is that while they suggested that people not do crimes, they did not want to compel them to not do crimes. The chief believed that the people would realize that not doing crime would be best for them and would not do crimes. The fact that they did is on them. What was he supposed to do?

After blaming the utilities for not doing what the state did not compel them to do, the Governor then used what has become a go-to tactic of many Republicans: making untrue and misleading about alternative energy. This seems to stem from their anti-science view of climate change and a pro-petrochemical view. While it is true that wind turbines did fail in Texas, these account for about 13% of the shutdowns. The governor also neglected to mention that the facilities failed because they had not been properly winterized: wind turbines can function in such conditions if they have been properly set up to do so. For example, the United States uses them at its Antarctica research facility.  Attacking alternative energy and the Green New Deal was a red herring and an attempt to score points against these things by falsely exploiting a self-inflicted disaster. Unfortunately, people profess to believe these claims, and many do not seem inclined to take even a few seconds to check them using Google. Or perhaps they do not bother to check because they already know they are not true. Now to talk about Ted Cruz.

As everyone knows, Ted Cruz used the influence of his office to get the Houston police to help him and his family get to the airport so they could fly to Cancun. While he cannot be faulted for wanting to get his family to someplace with electricity and food, using public resources to help flee to a luxury resort and then lying about why he went (also seeming to throw his kids under the bus) were morally wrong. While he was broadly condemned even by other Republicans, he did have his defenders.

One line of defense is that as a Senator, Cruz had no responsibility to remain in the state—he is not the governor or a state official. One could even claim that there is nothing Cruz could do as a senator. As such, while flying to a luxury resort would look bad, he did nothing wrong. This, of course, leaves out his use of police resources and his lies—but these are distinct from the issue of whether leaving the state was morally acceptable.

I do agree that his position as a senator puts him outside of the state leadership for such matters—unlike a governor or mayor he has no direct office-based responsibilities to address such matters. But he obviously could have used his influence for the good of his fellow Texans. As evidence, consider the actions of Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).

AOC used her influence to raise almost $5 million dollars to aid the people of Texas. She then flew to  Texas to assist other Democrats in distributing supplies. This was after Fox News and Republican politicians attacked her and blamed her for the crisis in Texas. Critics of AOC might claim that this is a political stunt, and she will use this as a rung on her political ladder.

While I do not know what is in her secret heart, even if AOC is engaged in politics, then it is worth noting that Ted Cruz also wants to be president. As such, if this is her motivation, then she must believe that helping people in a disaster is how to score points. In contrast, Cruz would seem to believe that leaving people to fend for themselves while he flies off to a resort is how to score points and seem presidential. Weirdly, some of Cruz’ defenders have tried to cast him as acting nobly for going to Cancun—they say he freed up resources to be used by others. One would suppose that these same people would be lavishing praise on AOC: she flew to Texas with $4.7 million in resources.  While this is but two examples, the comparison of AOC and Cruz does provide a clear juxtaposition of the difference between the professed ideology of the right and left: Cruz represents the view that government cannot (and perhaps should not) help citizens while AOC represents the view that government should do just that. While Cruz attempted to quietly depart Texas as a way of showing that he believed he had no role to play in helping people, the mayor of Colorado, Texas posted in plain language what Republicans normally at least try to put in coded language.

While Republicans do vary in their ideology, former Mayor Boyd asserted that “No one owes you are (sic) your family anything; nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout.”

While somewhat extreme for a crisis, this view of the role of the government and business is consistent with the general view of the Republican party. It clearly echoes the talking points of Fox News and reflects the view of disasters taken by mainstream national Republicans. Lindsey Graham serves as good example—back in the good old days when only 60,000 Americans had died of COVID, Graham asserted that he would only extend the additional $600 unemployment benefits “over his dead body.” Outside of disasters, this view is quite mainstream in the Republican party and represents the fruit of the Reagan era view of the role of government in helping citizens. The Texas crisis, which is taking place in the broader pandemic crisis, provides yet another test case of this view of government. It does not seem to be doing well for most of the citizens of Texas (and America) but is working exactly as intended.

 

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Fairness & Transgender Athletes II: Category Changing

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In my previous essay I set the stage for discussing the concern about people switching competition categories to gain something. It is to this matter that that I now turn.

The Sickle Cell 5K in Tallahassee is well known for having a really good masters award for the overall male and female masters runners—it is better than the second and third overall awards. One year a masters runner was third overall but decided that he wanted the male masters’ award instead. This created a bit of a problem—while there was no rule about this, there were well established running norms in place: overall places take precedence over the masters category and the masters category takes precedence over age group placing.  So, a 40+ year old runner who placed first to third would get the corresponding overall award. The first 40+ runner outside the top three would get the masters award and the next runner in their age group would win that age group. As would be expected, some people were rather mad about this runner’s efforts to get the masters award—he was breaking the award category norms and traditions to get a better award.

His argument, which was not unreasonable, was that he was the first masters runner and hence earned that award. This meant that the 4th place runner would get third overall. This might sound odd, but (as noted above) the running norms already allow for a person who finishes second in their age group to place first if the person who would win that age group wins an overall or masters award (most races have a strict no-double-dip rule). While his request did break the norms, he was legitimately in the masters category. One might say that he elected to identify as a masters runner for the purpose of the award category. He did end up getting the award when the original masters winner did everyone a favor by giving up his award and allowed the awards to continue. But this episode is still talked about today—switching categories to get a better award is seen as questionable. This episode can be used as an analogy.

Suppose that transgender athletes are like the masters athlete—they really do belong in their chosen category but they are changing from one category to another in order to get a better award (or win). The masters runner could have accepted the third place award, a transgender runner who identifies as female could stick to competing as male. But by switching categories, the athletes gain and thus they have a clear incentive to do so. They also are both picking a category they really belong in—so they are not engaged in a cheat or deceit. But their motive is to switch for a gain and in doing so they do harm another athlete. The masters runner took the better award from another runner and a transgender athlete who changes categories to win takes away a win from another female athlete. This can be used to ground a moral argument against allowing athletes to change categories to win. That said, there is an easy counter.

Imagine a runner goes to a Division 1 school and finds that they are good enough for the division but not good enough to regularly win. They switch to a Division 2 school so they can win regularly. They have changed their category to improve their gains and have also “harmed” other runners by doing so—they might displace a runner from the team and will take victories that would have gone to other athletes had they not changed their category. While this approach to sports might not seem morally ideal, the runner would not seem to be acting wrongly—they would legitimately be Division 2 even if they could have stuck with Division 1. Likewise, for an athlete who switches their gender category legitimately: one might take issue with such maneuvers aimed at gain, but they seem to be morally acceptable. But, some readers probably refuse to accept the idea that an athlete can legitimately switch categories, so I now turn to this matter.

Let us go back to the masters award incident but change it a bit. Imagine that the third-place runner is 39 years and 10 months old but decides to identify as a masters runner in order to get the award. In this case, the issue is easily resolved: age is an objective matter, and they are not a masters runner. Hence, they do not get the award. Likewise, athletes who claim to be female but are not have no right to switch categories. While this might seem to settle the matter, there are at least two replies.

One reply is to go back to the masters case. Imagine that the runner is 39 years old based on his birthday, but he is a devote Catholic who sincerely believes that life begins at conception and sets his age accordingly. By his standard of age, he is a masters runner. While the official age of runner for racing is based on their birthdate and not their moment of conception, the runner could make an argument based on freedom of religion—he is being discriminated against by the failure of the race officials to recognize that he is at least 40. Likewise, a runner who self-identifies as a female could argue that she is being discriminated against when she is not allowed to select her category based on her beliefs about what it is to be female. Both runners could agree that there is a fact of the matter about being a masters runner or a female runner, but they disagree with the standards being imposed upon them by those who they see as discriminating against them. As such, the debate becomes one of defining category membership.

In the case of age, the dispute would seem to be easy to settle: to avoid charges of attacking religious freedom, the rules about age could be put neutrally to specify that the time from birth is used to determine the competition age of a runner. The standard applies to everyone and intuitively seems fair. In the case of gender, the same approach should be taken: a fair set of standards to categorize people is needed. Unfortunately, the matter of gender is far more complicated than that of age.

If gender were only of concern in sports, then the matter would be much easier to address. But gender impacts every aspect of a person’s life and is, of course, now a key battleground in the culture wars. As such, even if one makes a good faith effort to develop gender standards for sports categories, then one will be facing a daunting task. This is not to deny that many people think they have the right answer already and think they could easily solve the problem by imposing their own views on everyone else.

There are, of course, some easy and obvious sufficient conditions for being admitted into the female category: people with XX chromosomes and female anatomy and physiology get an automatic admission (if they wish).  Beyond that, the debates begin.  Since this matter is complicated and not my area of expertise, I freely admit that I do not have a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. I do not even have a well-considered set of general principles.

One specific principle I do have is that it would be morally wrong for a male athlete to lie about his identify to gain a competitive advantage. The moral problem is, of course, the intent to deceive to gain an advantage. I also, obviously, also see any use of deceit to do something wrong as wrong—so a male who lied about their identity so they could see naked girls would be acting wrongly. This is analogous to my view that it is wrong for person to lie about their religious views to gain something—such as a person who just wants to use a religious excuse to get away with discrimination or to avoid paying taxes. My moral assessment would, of course, adjust in cases of sincere belief—even if the person’s belief turns out to be untrue. As with the religion case, there is the practical problem of sorting out when people are lying—though in the United States we generally do not put professed religious beliefs to much of a test.

While there does not seem to be a large crisis in sports involving male athletes switching categories in large numbers, allowing people to switch categories merely by saying they identify in that category does provide an opportunity for the unprincipled to exploit—just as allowing people to claim special treatment simply for asserting they have religious beliefs allows opportunities for the unprincipled. The moral and practical challenge is sorting out what test should be used to protect against such unprincipled exploitation while avoiding discriminating against people. We do not make people prove that their religious beliefs are true before allowing them to gain the benefits of professing belief and we need to be consistent when it comes to professed gender identity. One approach, which is what we generally do for religion, is take people at their word unless there is adequate evidence of an intent to deceive. For example, a male athlete who posted “LOL identifying as a girl just to win the 5K today, but fellas stay away I ain’t gay! After I win, I will be a boy again.” would seem to be intending to deceive and should, one would infer, not be allowed to compete in the 5K as a female.  Likewise, if someone bringing a freedom of religion lawsuit so they can discriminate posted “LOL pretending to believe in God so I can hate on the gays!”, then they should probably not win that lawsuit. But in other cases, we should accept their profession as sincere. I do admit this does not settle the matter.

 

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Fairness & Transgender Athletes I: Marking the Course

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Upon taking office, Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring that schools receiving federal funding allow people who self-identify as females onto female sport’s teams. Pushback against it has ranged from thoughtful considerations of fairness to misogyny masquerading as morality.

In addition to being complicated in its own right, the fairness of self-identified females being allowed to compete as females is also linked to other complicated matters, such as broader concerns of fairness in society and issues of gender identity. People arguing in good faith can make arguments in one area without realizing the implications of these arguments in other areas. To illustrate, consider the fictional character of Polly. Polly is a national level high school runner who holds to a principle of fairness. Polly’s brother, Paul, is faster than Polly but not a national level male runner. He jokingly suggests putting on a dress and beating Polly, which worries her—if a person can self-identify as a female, Paul could do that and suddenly be a national level female high school runner. In a panic, Polly thinks of her nightmare scenario: the top male runners compete as boys, switch identities, and win again as girls! Polly and her sister runners would be out of the competition, which would be unfair. In good faith, Polly can make a very good argument moral argument against allowing this based on fairness—but her seemingly reasonable argument might justifying harming people in the broader context of fairness in society—something Polly would not want. As such, we should be careful to consider the implications arguments about fairness in sports have in other areas.

People can also in bad faith, presenting an appealing fairness argument in the context of sports while not caring about fairness at all. Their intent might be to use the sports issue argument as a Trojan horse to lure people into their ideological agenda or they might want to weaponize the seemingly reasonable argument in the broader context after getting people to accept it in the sports context. This is not to say that arguing in bad faith entails that a person must be making false claims or fallacious arguments—a person can use truth and good logic in bad faith efforts. But we should be on guard against bad faith arguments. I will endeavor to follow my own advice and make good faith arguments while considering their possible implications.

From the standpoint of fairness, there are reasonable moral grounds to be concerned about allowing people to self-identify their competition category. To focus the discussion, I will use my own sport of running and the specific context of road races—but the general points apply across all sports.

Road races have well-established competition categories aimed primarily at fairness. Almost all races have gender categories (male or female). Most races also have age groups and some also include the master category (40+) and sometimes he grand master category (50+). A few races also add a weight category (Clydesdale or Athena). In addition to categories created primarily for fairness, races sometimes have other categories for other reasons. For example, the Bowlegs 5K in Tallahassee raises money for a college scholarship and has a special educator category. Since educators as a class have neither advantages nor disadvantages relative to other runners, this category is not based on fairness.

In most cases, these categories serve their intended purpose—they make competition fairer by sorting people into groups based on qualities that impact performance. In some cases, these categories can have the unintended effect of allowing a person in a generally advantaged category win in their category while losing to a runner in a disadvantaged category. For example, a 50-year-old runner might win nothing in his age group while also beating every runner in the younger age groups—he thus loses to inferior performances because of the age groups intended to allow older runners like him to fairly compete. So, he gets no prize while those he beat do. While this can be annoying, these cases tend to be rare and the overall positive impact of age groups and gender divisions outweigh the negative aspects. This is a good general approach to take to setting policies—a good policy will never be perfect, but a good policy generally creates more good than bad. But there are people who do try to exploit categories to their advantage. I will turn to this in my next essay.

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Sports & XY

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One basic ethical concern in sports is creating fair categories of competition. Age is a non-controversial example of this: elementary school teams do not compete against high school teams because that would be unfair to the elementary school team. Size is also a relatively non-controversial example in boxing—a heavyweight fighter will generally have a significant advantage over a smaller fighter. But there is a challenge in developing a good principle of category fairness. After all, there are many factors that can provide one category of athletes an advantage over others that intuitively should not be the basis of categorizing athletes to create fair competition.

As an obvious example, some people naturally have anatomies and physiologies that give them an advantage over other athletes. To illustrate, a runner with an ideal body type for running and excellent genetics for speed and endurance will have a significant advantage over someone with a body type that is biomechanically terrible for running and whose genes lack those advantages. One could also consider psychological factors (such as determination) and even economic factors (which can affect diet, coaching, and available training time). While trying to adjust for these factors would make competition fairer, it does lead to a reductio ad absurdum: the ultimate in fairness would be for each person to be in their own category, competing against only themselves. That is, there would be no competition.

The other extreme would be to have no categories at all (somewhat of a state of nature scenario in sports): everyone competes with everyone regardless of such factors as age, gender, or weight. This could even be fair: everyone is competing without distinction and the best will emerge victorious. But this would also be absurd (and dangerous): imagine elementary school students playing tackle football against the Patriots. It can also be argued that this would be unfair: professional football players enjoy far too many advantages over elementary school football players. As Aristotle would say, the right approach lies in a mean between these two extremes: neither too many nor too few categories for fair competition.

One category that does seem reasonable in most sports is that of gender (to use the term very loosely). Males generally enjoy significant physical advantages relative to females and genderless competition would tend to result in males dominating sports. As an example, if the Olympic marathon had no gender categories, all the competing athletes would almost certainly be males. There would, of course, be exceptions at individual competitions—a female runner might handily beat all the males at a specific marathon. As such, a case can be made that gender categories in sports are fair. While this might seem like a simple matter, it is complicated.

There are world class women athletes, such as Caster Semenya, who have XY chromosomes. While there are many bad faith arguments made about this issue, one can have a good faith debate about the fairness of allowing women with XY chromosomes to compete with XX women—after all, there are some reasons to think that the XY chromosomes can provide an advantage that XX women lack. It must be noted that the performance of elite XY women athletes does not match that of elite male athletes and XX women athletes can outperform XY women athletes in competition.

The easy and obvious reply to concerns about XY women is to point out that this seems to be the only case where people are worried about genetic advantages in sports. Athletes do not get tested to see if they have advantageous genes (or anatomy and physiology) to determine if they can compete. For example, very tall basketball players have an edge over shorter players, and this has a genetic component—but they do not get banned because of that genetic feature. In fact, elite athletes probably enjoy a range of genetic advantages over other athletes—but they do not get banned from the sport even when they greatly exceed even other athletes in their performance.

It can be countered that there are grounds for concern about allowing XY women to compete as women. We have accepted the categories of male and female in sports as a division needed to ensure fair competition. It can be argued that XY women should be excluded from the female category in sports on the grounds that they do not qualify for inclusion. This, one might argue, is based on fairness: XY males are excluded from competing against XX females based on fairness because they do not belong in the female category and would have an unfair advantage. This reasoning can also be backed up by an analogy.

Imagine that Sam has been adopted and is just young enough to be able to play one year of little league before aging out. When he tries out for the little league team, he finds that his somewhat unusual size and strength give him an edge over the other kids—people notice that he seems to be about the size of kids a year older. Now imagine that the parents of another child think that something is up—so they hire an investigator to check into Sam’s background. The investigator finds out that there seems to have been a mistake in Sam’s records—he might be a year older than what the official documents say. While Sam and his parents have done nothing wrong intentionally, it would be unfair for Sam to compete against kids a year younger than him. As such, Sam should not be allowed to finish the season because he exceeds the age limit. While this argument does have some appeal, it does raise important concerns.

While I do agree that dividing athletes into the male and female categories can be warranted on the grounds of fairness, to simply assume that XY women are not females would be unwarranted. What is needed is a well developed and defended set of principles for sorting athletes into these categories. These principles would also need to be consistent and consistently applied.

Going back to the analogy with Sam, he seems to be just a large person of his claimed age. But the parents of the other child believe the evidence provided by their investigator—by their standard, Sam is too old to compete in little league and must be excluded on the grounds of fairness. While age is clearly an objective matter, this lack of certainty is intentional to make the analogy fit: while some believe that XY women are not women, this is a matter of which standards one accepts. Just as one would need to argue for which documentation to accept about Sam’s age, one must argue for the standards used to exclude or include people in the male/female categories in sports.

If it is decided that the distinction is based on genetics (which it seems to be) and that XY women must be excluded from the female category because they have an unfair advantage, then consistency would seem to require doing a genetic analysis of all athletes to discern if there are genes that yield a similar unfair advantage. If such genes do exist, then allowing people with them to compete with those without would be unfair. If we should exclude XY women based on their alleged advantage, then the same would apply to these other athletes—they would need to be excluded as well. If one says that this should be limited solely to XY and XX, then they would need to provide a principled argument for making this the only genetic distinction that matters. While one could make a practical appeal to the cost of testing; the same would also apply to the XY/XX cases—one must test a person to determine if a woman is XX or XY.  And if there is a need to test for that, then there would seem to be a need to test for other genetic advantages.

One can also argue that the genetic advantages of top athletes are too diverse to identify and categorize—the XX/XY distinction is a simple one that allows the preservation of existing sports competition categories. There would also be degrees of advantage and sorting this all out would be needlessly complicated. But one could reply that we could create broad genetic categories analogous to age groups in sports. This could be countered by arguing that the distinctions and advantages are fuzzy and unclear—so why not let people compete without genetic testing and categorization? This would, of course, seem to also apply to XY women—while they might have some possible advantage over some XX women in sports, this does not seem to warrant creating a special category that excludes them from competing against other women. This does require accepting that the sharp and absolute male/female distinction that some people crave does not exist, that the boundaries are fluid and fuzzy—but this seems to reflect reality. While some might want “pure” Platonic concepts of male and female, we do not find them instantiated perfectly in this world. As such, XY women should be permitted to compete as women.

 

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Trump’s Supporters: More Epistemic Epidemiology

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The senate has acquitted Trump, thus setting two precedents. One is that a president with adequate backing from the senate can engage in impeachable offenses in the last days of their term without consequences. While there are bad faith arguments that impeachment cannot occur when a politician is out of office, this ignores the established precedent for doing so and ignores the fact that impeachment is not solely about removal from office but can also result in a ban on holding office. The second is that a politician, with adequate backing from their party, can engage in insurrection and attempt to overthrow an election with no consequences. Both are dangerous to American democracy. Trump’s victory also impacts his followers by either reinforcing their false beliefs or encouraging their bad behavior (or both).

I recently finished teaching the ethical theory of St. Thomas Aquinas and this provided me with the inspiration to write more about Trump’s supporters. While this is not completely faithful to Aquinas’ view, people can go wrong because of two reasons. One is a failure of knowledge: they want to do good, but their beliefs are in error. The other is moral failure: they are aware they are doing wrong but do so anyway because of moral defects. A person can, of course, also have false beliefs while acting wrongly because of moral defects. As in past essays, I divide this failings into epistemic defects (errors of belief) and ethical defects (moral failures). One area where Trump’s supporters fail is in their moral assessment of Trump’s virtues.

It is normal for people to have biases in favor of those they like and see them as better than they are. In most cases, this bias stays within healthy and sane limits. For example, parents tend to see their children as better than they are, but usually this does not become delusional or pathological. Those who create images of people they like also tend to stylize and improve on the original—think of a drawing done for Valentine’s Day by a talented artist for their beloved. As such, it is normal for Trump’s supporters to be biased in his favor—to see him as better than he is. In some cases, they stay within the realms of normal hyperbole—but many seem to go far beyond that.

When asked why they support Trump, often after he has done something awful, his supporters will often praise his exceptional virtues: Trump is strong, successful, generous, honest, patriotic, and manly. Debates about moral theories and the virtues can be quite reasonable as can debates about how exceptional a person is. For example, a sane debate can be had about who is the best basketball player in history and one can compare great players such as Jordan and Kobe—this is because the claims of greatness are founded in fact. But what about in the case of Trump?

While we can certainly quibble over how to define virtues and rate them, they are generally well understood and can be assessed with a high degree of objectivity. For example, honesty is a matter of telling the truth and this can be assessed by examining how consistently someone says what they believe is true. As such, when Trump’s supporters speak of his honesty, they are making claims that are utterly false. Trump is an infamous liar. As another example, his supporters speak of his great strength and images of Trump as Rambo (and other manly figures) are quite popular with his followers. But these claims are patently untrue. Even adjusting for his age, Trump is not strong—he can barely handle a ramp. The Rambo image is especially ironic given that Trump had multiple chances to be Rambo for real by serving in Vietnam, but managed to avoid the draft by getting a doctor to diagnose him with bone spurs. This creates a logical problem for his supporters: if Trump is a strong manly Rambo, then he must have lied to avoid the draft. If he lied to avoid the draft, then he is not honest. Also, if he is a strong manly Rambo, then he would have fought in Vietnam—as John McCain did. A defender of Trump could take Trump’s view that people who sacrifice for the country are suckers and losers—but in what would Trump’s great strength and patriotism consist in on that view? As far as Trump’s moral strength, that is clearly absent—he melts like a dainty snowflake and loses control under the slightest criticism. His weakness of character is thus evident. One could, of course, grind on and on showing how Trump is nothing like what his devoted supporters claim—but that would simply prove again what is already evident and obvious.

In terms of why Trump’s devoted followers profess this view of him, there seem to be two options (getting back to Aquinas). One is that they have a failure of knowledge: they are believing what is obviously false. Given the vast gulf between the Trump envisioned by his most devoted followers (the Rambo Trump) and the reality there are some grounds for concern that they have moved beyond errors of logic and belief and into the realm of delusion. That is, they could not be helped by developing their critical faculties and revising their beliefs in the face of the available evidence—they require medical treatment to even reach a place where they can attempt to start engaging with reality. This level of delusion is something common in cults and authoritarian movements and some of Trump’s followers have reached those depths. But there is some hope for even these people—if their moral conscience is still working, then they can be rescued using the same methods that have been used to recover people from cults and authoritarian movements.

There are also Trump supporters who praise him but are aware that he is not what they say he is. That is, they are simply lying to appease him and his base. In this case, the failure is a moral one. There is still hope for these people—at least if they have some residue of a conscience left.

In addition to the false beliefs (or lies) about Trump there is also the big lie, that he won the election. Trump engaged in 62 lawsuits relating to the election and lost 61. In court, his lawyers never alleged fraud—they know that lying in court carries consequences. Republican officials also certified the results and made it clear that the election was run properly. One could go on and on about the lack of evidence for widespread fraud, grind through each lie on the part of Trump and his defenders and assesses the vast evidence in favor of a secure and accurate election. There is also the fact that Smartmatic and Dominion are suing over the damaging lies told about them. Since truth is an absolute defense against claims of slander or defamation, it is telling that even OAN and other far right “news” operations have quashed the election lies. They know that they would lose in court because their claims are both damaging and untrue. Naturally, one could spin a crazy conspiracy story about how the Democrats control all the courts and intimidated the right with their cancel powers. The problem, as I have argued before, is that to make the conspiracy theory work they must postulate a conspiracy so vast that if all those involved in it simply voted for Biden, then Biden would have won.

While it is reasonable to have concerns about election security and fairness, believing that the election was stolen would require rejecting a sea of evidence in favor of sources that lack credibility. This does explain how some of Trump’s supporters can be engaged in what is merely bad reasoning. A person who believes and relies solely on sources such as Fox, OAN, Trump and Republican politicians would be committing many errors of reasoning (such as falling victim to fallacious arguments from authority) but they need not have crossed over into the realm of delusion. After all, we all engage in bad reasoning and hold false beliefs and do so without suffering from psychological disorders.

While there is not an exact line demarking the boundary, a person can leave the realm of bad logic and false beliefs and enter the realm of psychological issues. Being a philosopher rather than a psychiatrist or psychologist, I have no expertise in those areas—but I can assess when a person has gone beyond the realm governed by philosophy (epistemology, logic, and critical thinking). To use a fictional example, imagine a student who is using fallacies in their paper and making untrue factual claims based on what they hear from a scam web site—that falls under philosophy. Now imagine a student who thinks their roommate is a lizard person Satanist who is directing Jewish space lasers with their psychic powers to destroy the evidence that proves voter fraud occurred. While their claims can be assessed using logic and critical thinking, they have clearly gone beyond merely bad logic and merely incorrect beliefs. Treatment of such conditions goes beyond philosophy and would require professional intervention of another sort.

Given that there are so many sources and (dishonest) authorities pushing Trump’s big lie, it seems likely that most of those who believe it are merely using bad logic and merely holding false beliefs. But there certainly can be those whose belief forming mechanisms are so deranged that they have legitimate psychological issues that take them outside of the concerns of philosophy and into the realm of mental health. This sort of assessment needs to be strictly confined to medical professionals—there is, after all, a terrible history of using charges of mental illness as a weapon. As such, I would never assert that any specific election denier is mentally ill.

There are obviously Trump supporters who know that Trump’s big lie is a big lie. “Liddle Marco” is an excellent example of this—he knows exactly what Trump is (he warned us about Trump when he ran against him) and exactly what Trump has done. And yet he supports Trump.  With some notable exceptions, the Republican members of Congress also fall into this category: they know Trump lost and yet choose to support his lie and his insurrection.  For those who believe that truth and democracy are good, these people are evil—they are lying and doing grave harm to American democracy. On a positive note, since they are not delusional in terms of the facts, it might be possible to make a moral appeal to them. But perhaps they have placed themselves beyond redemption—they will heed no calls to do what is right and will instead willing serve evil. There will be some rewards for their servitude, but there will also be costs. For example, “Liddle Marco” seems to be suffering from his choice to back the man who humiliated and degraded him. There are also rumors that Trump plans to replace “Liddle Marco” in the senate with his daughter Ivanka. While Ivanka would be worse than “Liddle Marco”, there would be cruel justice in having what he traded his soul for taken away by the man he sold it to. But shed no tears for “Liddle Marco.” He has made his demon bargain and the price must be paid.

 

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Trump’s Acquittal

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There is a consensus that the Democrats made an extremely good case against Trump and his defense team was terrible. Fortunately for Trump, his defense team could have consisted of a possum hissing into the mic while his racoon colleague rummaged about in Ted Cruz’s beard and Rand Paul’s hair looking for bits of food. As expected, Trump was acquitted—only seven Republicans had the moral courage to defend the rule of law and American democracy.

In response to once again not being held accountable for his wrongdoings, Trump released a statement that read, in part, as follows:

It is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree. I always have, and always will, be a champion for the unwavering rule of law, the heroes of law enforcement, and the right of Americans to peacefully and honorably debate the issues of the day without malice and without hate.

 

Trump’s assertion that one party has been given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, cheer mobs and excuse rioters is true—but it is a description of his party. The Democrats made an overwhelming case for what is obvious: Trump is morally accountable for the attack on the capitol and he attempted to overturn the results of the election.

When considering my fellow Americans, I endeavor to be charitable. For those who profess to believe that Trump won the election, that the election was stolen by widespread voter fraud, and that the attack on the capitol was either justified or done by Antifa (or somehow both), then the most charitable view is that they have been deceived by the wicked and suffer from grave epistemic defects that prevent them from forming true beliefs about these matters. The least charitable view is that they are accomplices to the lies: they know that Trump lost, and they know that he attempted a half-ass coup, and they are morally fine with this. That is, they explicitly reject the rule of law and democracy in favor of fascist authoritarianism. Or, put another way, they are evil.

In the case of the Republican members of congress who back Trump, I do wonder who they think they are fooling when they use moral language and the language of democracy in their lies—after all they know they

are lying, and we know they are lying. But perhaps they think they are fooling the most foolish of Trump’s base? That said, perhaps it is a positive sign that they still feel the need to tell such lies—they might think that there are still Trump supporters and Republicans who are not in on the lies and need to be convinced. Or perhaps there is a faint flicker of a conscience that demands a feeble effort at rationalization.

Trump, as expected, appeals to the myth of victimhood—the idea that people who belong to dominant classes (such as rich, white men) are somehow the real victims of systematic oppression. This goes along with passionate denials that people in the other classes (such as poor people or minorities) are victims of systematic oppression. Put crudely, this is the claim that the rich and powerful are the victims of the poor and powerless—something whose absurdity is revealed by even a moment’s reflection.

While there is debate about the bugbear of cancel culture, the banning of Trump was justified. He violated the terms of service agreements and was actively harming people with his social media activities. Free expression, as everyone argues, is not absolute and Trump clearly acted in ways that warranted restricting his ability to do more damage. Likewise, for many others who have been banned. This is not to deny that people are silenced—as I have noted in other essays, employers have considerable freedom to use their economic power to silence employees. That is, they can fire employees for expression outside of work. I, of course, do favor free expression (see my many essays on this subject) but I also favor holding people accountable for their words and deeds. As others have said, freedom of expression is not freedom from consequences.

It goes without saying that Trump does not care about the rule of law—for him, law and order are tools to be used for his own advantage. One merely needs to examine his dealings with the law and review the list of the people he pardoned to confirm this fact.

As far as peacefully debating without malice and hate, this is certainly a noble ideal. However, even a cursory look at Trump’s Tweets will reveal how committed he is to peaceful debate without malice and hate. And, of course, one can also review videos that also show his malice and hate. There is also the obvious fact that he incited a mob to attack the capitol on his behalf—an act of malice, hate and violence directed at the very heart of democracy.

I would, as sad as it is, prefer to think that millions of my fellow Americans are basically good people who have been deluded by evil liars. If you are backing Trump, perhaps you do believe in your pure heart that what I have written is untrue and Trump and his fellows have been speaking the words of angels. If so, you give me hope: if you still have a moral sense, then there is a chance you will see through the lies, embrace the truth, and fight the evil you once held close to your pure heart. Or perhaps you are a Trump backer who knows the truth and you are fine with his evil. And, one assumes, your own.

 

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