Comments on: Another Theory of the Trump Phenomenon

By: Massimo

Massimo — Sat, 14 May 2016 01:41:08 +0000

Building a wall and keeping people out is not violent. I know the open borders crowd argue that borders are inherently violent and foreigners are disenfranchised minorities, but that just doesn’t make sense.

Japan and Israel and the gulf states and even India and China have refused immigration more aggressively than Trump or Viktor Orban. Are those nations hyper violent and “literally Hitler”? That really doesn’t make sense any way you slice it.

By: lliamander

lliamander — Tue, 10 May 2016 00:43:18 +0000

> Girard was not a leftist. He had lots of fun skewering the pieties are the academic left.

Perhaps, but Girard’s thesis seems perfectly consonant with the progressive attitude towards spontaneous social order.

By: Woody Belangia

Woody Belangia — Mon, 09 May 2016 15:46:37 +0000

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. At least it afforded me the chance to remove the leftist taint that may attach to him as a French intellectual.

By: djf

djf — Mon, 09 May 2016 15:31:59 +0000

If I am one of the “other posters” to whom you refer, I was commenting on the quotation in Arnold’s post, not on Girard himself.

By: Woody Belangia

Woody Belangia — Mon, 09 May 2016 14:36:09 +0000

Arnold, I think you are misunderstanding Girard’s theory. For instance your dancing example is not apt. Mimesis as such is not inherently conflictual, but acquisitive mimesis for scarce goods is. The goods most liable to cause conflict are not material goods, but mimetic-social goods like power or prestige.

Also, to some of the other posters: Girard was not a leftist. He had lots of fun skewering the pieties are the academic left.

For any interested, here are some lecture notes of mine that introduce the fundamentals of Girard’s mimetic theory: https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/

By: asdf

asdf — Mon, 09 May 2016 04:54:26 +0000

As some of the failures and contradictions of our system come to the forefront, the elites running things need someone/something to blame.

Sometimes its an abstraction like “racism”. Why did blacks burn down Baltimore? It’s all because of racism. Where does this racism come from? Aren’t the mayor and police chief of Baltimore black? Isn’t the state legislature overwhelmingly Democrat? More and more elaborate theories have to be invented. Most importantly those theories have to be non-flasifiable. If you could actually test for racism somehow, then someone might be acquitted, and then what’s the excuse for what’s happening? It can’t be elite mismanagement or false doctrine…

Reminds me a lot of the role of original sin:
Why are things shit?
Original sin.
How can we test for original sin?
You know…things are shit. So it must be true.
Isn’t that circular?
It’s a great mystery.
Why am I guilty of something you can’t prove, and why should I have to alter my life based on it? Aren’t you clerics just corrupt assholes trying to control me?
What are you, some evil heathen? We have punishments for your type.

Racism plays the roll of original sin. Middle/working class white people create racism, that’s “privilege” (doctrine). Therefore, they deserve whatever is coming to them. Anything that seems to go wrong with the system isn’t because its doctrines or managers are corrupt, its because the evil wreckers (racists) are messing things up. Thus the elite has a scapegoat for their failures.

By: Steve Sailer

Steve Sailer — Sat, 07 May 2016 23:09:32 +0000

The trend in recent years is to define Cisgender Straight White Males as the evil group that deserves to be violently put down for their atrocities past and microaggressions present.

By: Andrew'

Andrew' — Sat, 07 May 2016 07:52:46 +0000

The 1% are chosen specifically to be a disenfranchised minority.

The Trump populism is basically the same thing without the genius marketing.

By: Ben Kennedy

Ben Kennedy — Sat, 07 May 2016 04:12:55 +0000

That’s not how Trump supporters think, that are supposedly the ones doing the scapegoating. Not to mention, Trump is happy to heap scorn on the Carriers of the world that want to ship jobs to other countries, and on the politicians that negotiated NAFTA and the deals that are supposedly “killing us”. This is a very different narrative than blaming all our problems on immigrants

By: andrewknorr

andrewknorr — Sat, 07 May 2016 01:47:57 +0000

First assume a world community, then the poor Mexican and Chinese immigrants are a disenfranchised minority. That may not make sense to you, but that’s how they think.