Day: May 5, 2025

Thank you for being here. You all meant a lot to my dad, and he appreciated your presence in his life.

Waiting for a phone call that will never come is hard.

After his cancer diagnosis, my dad called my sister every day without fail. 7:00 am, except for holidays and weekends. Then 8:00 am. He wanted her to know that he was okay and not to worry. He was a very thoughtful and reliable man; you could count on him, and he loved his family.

For years, he would call me on Sundays. As men, we had mastered the manly art of saying a lot with few words. Hence, we just needed the one call a week.

When he was teaching college, we would talk about our classes and students.  We’d also commiserate about meetings and how they should have been emails. He was a great teacher. Whenever I went anywhere with him, we’d run into former students and their faces would light up, so I knew he had made their lives better.

One reason I became a teacher was because of him; like him I want to help make people’s lives better. He was good at math and even better at teaching it in ways students could understand. I could never do that, so I teach philosophy. Math is hard.

We would also talk about our dogs, sharing stories of the crazy things they had done that week. We both agreed we had the smartest, best dogs in the world. And we were right.

As I got older and started talking about “back in the day”, we’d reminisce about our adventures together. One of his favorite stories was about the insane number of fish we caught on an ice fishing trip; the flags were popping up like it was a parade and we went home with more fish than bait. Another was when we went smelting and I gave up on the net and jumped into the water and started grabbing them with my hands. It worked. Really.

My dad preferred  fishing with a pole, and had extensive fishing wisdom, such as his saying that you  “can’t catch fish if your fly is out of the water.”  He loved going to Tim Pond, and introduced my sister and her husband to the place. When they couldn’t catch anything while he was reeling in his limit, he shared another bit of fishing wisdom, saying, “that’s why they call it fishing and not catching.” 

As a boy he dreamed of owning a hunting camp in his hometown of Norway. That dream came true when he and his father built it. His best friend, Don Soler, helped him build an add on to it, and they spent many deer seasons hunting from there. My sister and I would sleep in the loft, with Beth asking him and our mom not to tell the bears they had children.

Beth survived the bears to work at L.L. Bean. Her most important job was advising him on which new Bean flannel shirts to buy, although his closet was already full of them. But you can never have too much flannel.

Before her passing, dad would tell me what his wife Carolyn was up to. This usually involved Roger’s Farm. A place she loved and where she practiced her role as a master gardener.

When Nancy Blanchard became part of his life, he’d tell me about their week together. Every Friday they went to Pepper’s Landing. Nancy always had the same thing, which is something I can relate to. Once you find something good, you stick with it.

Another bit of wisdom my dad liked to share is that “Every day is good, some are just better than others.” While today is a sad day, it is good that we are together and thinking of him.

I’ll end this as I did our phone calls: I love you dad.

Prior to Trump’s first victory mainstream Republicans attacked and criticized. His victory not only silenced almost all his conservative critics most became fawning Trump loyalists. Lindsey Graham provides an excellent example of Trump’s transformative power: he was polymorphed from a savage attacker to Trump’s attack dog. Few dared oppose him during his first term, such as John McCain and Mitt Romney. But the Republicans in congress now act in accord with his will and whims. There are a few surviving conservative critics of Trump, but they have proven politically irrelevant. This does make sense, as Trump is the logical result of decades of GOP strategies and efforts. If the Republican party were a Pokemon, Trump would be the final evolution of the party.

The surrender and assimilation of the Republican leadership was not surprising; the party focused on winning and holding power rather than developing and advancing meaningful policy goals. Whatever ideology once defined the party has become a devotion to power for the sake of power and profit. Under Trump, all talk of a balanced budget, all worries about deficits and have ceased.  What is more interesting is the impact Trump has had on his followers.

When Joe Walsh  made a futile effort to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination. During his effort, he asked Trump supporters if Trump has every lied. They said that he had not. Walsh brought up Trump’s criticism of Obama playing golf and Trump’s claim that he would be too busy as president to play golf. While most people did not care about, some insisted Trump had never played golf as president. His supporters also believed that hundreds of miles of the wall had been built and paid for by Mexico and that the Democrats in congress are treasonous liars.  Walsh closed by noting that he “…realized once and for all that nobody can beat Trump in a Republican primary. Not just because it’s become his party, but because it has become a cult, and he’s a cult leader. He doesn’t have supporters; he has followers. And in their eyes, he can do no wrong.” This raised some interesting philosophical concerns.

Some might respond by saying “what about the Democrats?” and accuse them of being a cult. While one could debate political cults, this “what about” would (as always) be irrelevant. Even if the Democrats were a cult, this would prove or disprove nothing about Republicans. My concern is with looking at the epistemology and thinking of the voters Walsh encountered.

One possible explanation is that Trump voters have normal epistemic abilities and hold to true beliefs but are lying in this case. They believe that Trump lies, that the wall was not paid for by Mexico and so on. People often lie in support of people they like, especially when they think those people are being attacked. This is a matter of ethics: believing that it is right to lie in defense of someone you support especially when speaking their opponent. While subject to moral assessment, this need not be cultish. After all, people will lie to defend their friends.

A second explanation is that these voters’ epistemic abilities and critical thinking skills have always been defective and they are unusually bad at forming true beliefs and critically assessing claims. This could be due to various biases and the usual reasons people fall victim to fallacies and rhetoric. But this need not be cultish since believing false things because of epistemic defects or failures in critical thinking is a common occurrence. On this explanation, Trump supporters are wrong, but they are not wrong because of being cultists. Rather, they are following Trump because they are wrong.

A third explanation is that these voters’ epistemic abilities and critical thinking skills have been corrupted by Trump’s influence. That is, they reject the rational methods of forming beliefs and critical thinking in favor of believing in Trump because Trump tells them to believe in him. They are wrong because they are following Trump. In this case, they might be cultists. They would be accepting a “Trump command theory” in what Trump says is true is true because Trump says so and what Trump says is false because Trump says so. If this explanation is correct, Trump is shaping the perceived reality of his followers. They are not lying to defend him or themselves, they are true believers in Trump’s false description of the world. That is, they are a cult with a charismatic leader.