possibility of a loyalty that we can now
attribute to such statements.
We can represent the world in a co-herent
way and combine that with the
requirement that anyone wanting us
to believe them must allow us to test
whether their story is falsifiable. This
grounds us more securely and safely
and allows us to design a more solid
world, for example, construct bridges
safe for family cars, navigate difficult
diplomacy, create an environment safe
from crime and pollution and war, and
grant a measure of autonomy, privacy
and prosperity for our individual lives.
Blurring reality and fakery
Politics allows us to link truth with jus-tice,
statements with truth and assertions
with later deniability, but puts truth and
morality together as a path for us to live.
Political talk, even mundane talk, always
reveals. Blurring reality and fakery -
Trump’s daily patter - from crowd size
at the inauguration to the infectiousness
and danger of Covid-19 - puts at risk
human welfare and flourishing.
That said, the election occurred.
What we know of Trump is increasing-ly
well-settled, based on his own ac-tions,
his own words, the recollections
of friends and family, the reports of his
former colleagues, and any number of
things of direct relevance. He is funda-mentally
transactional.
The essence of a legal or economic
transaction is a quid pro quo, something
in return for something given. Essen-tially,
the difference between a gift and
a contract is whether the quid pro quo is
tendered on both sides. Trump has made
it clear that it is only for some advantage
that he would engage in any conduct. If
he cannot understand military service
because it is non-transactional, he is
equally unable to understand any char-itable
giving. For a man of his immense
wealth, one can find little record of gift-ing.
One sees little charitable impulse,
let alone striving for the eight steps of
charity of Maimonides or the service by
one person to another suggested in the
parable of the Good Samaritan.
Political talk,
even mundane talk,
always reveals.
We make sense of the world, unders-tand
each other, and move to scientific
progress through discovery, testing, and
empirical hard-headedness on the one
hand, and moral understanding, em-pathy,
charity and justice on the other,
through an enriched notion of truth, an
ancient notion fortified in the Enlighten-ment,
proven through the genius of the
explanations of physics and the medical
therapies of biology, one advanced in
modern democracies by allowing better
candidates, sounder policies, and more
creative solutions to triumph.
Donald Trump undermined this by
denying that there was such a thing as
truth and, in the end, the truth of the
election proved his downfall, and, for
those of us who understand the value
of truth, proved him wrong.
Joel Levin has been a commercial litigator
and civil rights advocate, university teach-er
and author for 40 years. His four books
include How Judges Reason; Revolutions,
Institutions, Law; Tort Wars; and The Ra-dov
Chronicles. His play, Marrano Justice,
is an historical drama (with music) based
on the life of Justice Benjamin Cardozo. He
received his B.A. and M.A. at the University
of Chicago, his J.D. at Boston University, and
his doctorate at the University of Oxford. In
addition to founding two high-tech com-panies,
he has taught law and philosophy
in Russia, Canada and a number of Ameri-can
universities, including, since 1982, Case
Western Reserve.
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