So I\u2019m watching Ezra Klein interviewing Christopher Caldwell of the Claremont Institute about Trumpism. \u00a0Caldwell is describing Trumpism as being concerned with small-d democracy, beurochracy (the Deep State), inequality (the Global Elites, the technocrats). He cites the Iran War as the point at which Trumpists throw up their hands in incredulity, having not expected this at all based on their understanding of Trump.<\/p>\n
In science, we have theories about theories, all of which are questionable, but nevertheless \u2026 Scientists craft theories to fit a set of known generally-acknowledged facts. \u00a0There may be more than one competing theory. Theories are evaluated not only on how well they fit the facts, but how good their predictive powers are: can a theory predict new facts? \u00a0Is it conceivable that we can find facts that contradict the theory to the extent that we can prove it\u2019s wrong, or at least incomplete?<\/p>\n
There are at least two popular competing theories of Trumpism. \u00a0One is that described by Caldwell. \u00a0Another is that Trump is a classic authoritarian. \u00a0Caldwell is saying that people whom he classifies as Trumpists (Meghan Kelly, Joe Rogan, \u2026) didn\u2019t predict, and are surprised by, the Iran War. \u00a0On the other hand, theories of authoritarianism explicitly predict that tyrants will start wars of choice for a variety of reasons having to do with their hold on power.<\/p>\n
There are useful things to know in Caldwell\u2019s explanation of how and why Trump gained the power that he has gained. \u00a0But in some scientific sense, surely authoritarianism is a better explainer for Trump than Caldwell\u2019s tortured description of Trumpism?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So I\u2019m watching Ezra Klein interviewing Christopher Caldwell of the Claremont Institute about Trumpism. \u00a0Caldwell is describing Trumpism as being concerned with small-d democracy, beurochracy (the Deep State), inequality (the Global Elites, the technocrats). He cites the Iran War as the point at which Trumpists throw up their hands in incredulity, having not expected this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1681,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions\/1681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}