KNAVE : DECENCY : : FOOL : SENSE
A dichotomous typology of nonsense spewers and the principal corresponding trait absent from each
We live in disorienting times.
According to a Monmouth University poll released last week, 30 percent of Americans believe that President Joe Biden owes his 2020 presidential election win to voter fraud – down just a shade from the 32 percent who believed this according to six polls Monmouth released from November 2020 through January 2022 and up from the 29 percent who reported believing this in the three polls Monmouth administered later in 2022. Among Republican respondents to the most recent poll, 68 percent believe this.
How is this possible? The question has been litigated for years and the case for the “Big Lie” thoroughly debunked. The report of the January 6 Committee, released in December 2022, explored in great detail the dishonest means by which the former guy and his accomplices starting even before the 2020 election deployed bogus arguments to discredit the anticipated unfavorable outcome. (Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating likely criminal violations associated with this effort.) This past April, Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle the latter’s defamation lawsuit, but only after the public release of private texts among Fox News hosts made clear that Fox knew that its hosts’ relentless claims of voting machine fraud were themselves fraudulent.
No fair-minded person can in good faith dispute the outcome.
And yet disturbingly many do continue to dispute it – not just ordinary people responding to a poll or mouthing off on social media but also elected officials, media figures, and “thought leaders.”
How? Why?
The “why” of it I explain with two terms: “knave” and “fool.” Below is my definition for each.
KNAVE: A person who knowingly spews nonsense in order to manipulate and/or propitiate fools.
FOOL: A person who earnestly believes the nonsense that knaves spew.
I use these terms in conjunction with the traits that make up the title of this newsletter: Decency and Sense.
People possessed of decency act in honest and principled ways. Knaves, lacking decency, behave otherwise.
People possessed of sense do not subscribe to nonsense. Fools, lacking sense, readily accept absurdities that reinforce their attitudes and outlooks.
Much more has been and can be said about the various motives among knaves. I see three, non-mutually exclusive objectives:
To advance a fundraising grift,
To secure institutional and/or political power,
To remain in the good graces of the MAGA base.
And the fools – having been molded over many years by the firehose of lies spewing from their preferred cable, talk radio, religious, social media, and other outlets – are eager to believe the nonsense, which reinforces their grievances against those in the larger society whose values and outlooks diverge from their own.
Knaves and fools associated with the MAGA movement represent a clear and present danger to our democracy. A distinguished former federal judge spoke about this one year ago in testimony to the January 6 Committee. One of the leading lights of the conservative movement, J. Michael Luttig had been on President George W. Bush’s short list of candidates to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court.
In a guest essay that appeared in the New York Times yesterday, Judge Luttig spoke of the ignominy of Republican Party leaders supporting the 45th president as their choice for 2024 presidential nominee even following his federal indictment on charges of having, post-presidency, willfully retained and otherwise mishandled federal documents, including highly classified ones and those containing national defense information.
Here is an excerpt from Judge Luttig’s essay:
The stewards of the Republican Party have become so inured to their putative leader, they have managed to convince themselves that an indicted and perhaps even convicted Donald Trump is their party’s best hope for the future. But rushing to model their campaign on Mr. Trump’s breathtakingly inane template is as absurd as it is ill fated. They will be defending the indefensible.
On cue, the Republicans kicked their self-defeating political apparatus into high gear this month. Almost as soon as the indictment in the documents case was unsealed, Mr. Trump jump-started his up-to-then languishing campaign, predictably declaring himself an “innocent man” victimized in “the greatest witch hunt of all time” by his “totally corrupt” political nemesis, the Biden administration. On Thursday, he added that it was all part of a plot, hatched at the Justice Department and the F.B.I., to “rig” the 2024 election against him.
From his distant second place, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida denounced the Biden administration’s “weaponization of federal law enforcement” against Mr. Trump and the Republicans. Mike Pence dutifully pronounced the indictment political. And both Governor DeSantis and Mr. Pence pledged — in a new Republican litmus test — that on their first day in office they would fire the director of the F.B.I., the Trump appointee Christopher Wray, obviously for his turpitude in investigating Mr. Trump. It fell to Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, to articulate the treacherous overarching Republican strategy: “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
There’s no stopping Republicans now, until they have succeeded in completely politicizing the rule of law in service to their partisan political ends.
The individuals that Judge Luttig called out – Governor DeSantis, former Vice President Pence, and Speaker McCarthy – are knaves seeking to manipulate and/or propitiate MAGA fools. In promising to undermine the rule of law and in advancing the electoral prospects of a person who is catastrophically unfit for the presidency, they and so many like them are engaging in extremely dangerous behavior.
Perhaps you are familiar with all of this and are wondering why I rehash it.
I have two reasons for doing so.
It is vitally important that people who are both decent and sensible and who are aware of what is going on stand up for our democracy against the very real threat that knaves and fools pose.
In standing up for our democracy, it is vitally important to reach decent and sensible people who are not aware of what is going on and stir them to action.
When it comes to discourse, the category in which a spewer of nonsense falls is largely immaterial. Whether the person does so knowingly as a knave or as a true believing fool, such a person is seldom subject to persuasion or correction. It is best not to waste energy attempting to win an argument with such a person, especially as the likely outcome is only to gratify and/or reinforce the person in knavery or foolishness.
However, I repeat, it is urgent to identify people who are neither knaves nor fools and convince them. I will speak more about this in future essays.
I like this essay so much. Thank you.
Eric, you did it! You finished the essay.
I kept thinking of my conservative friend throughout. He's a good person, not a fool. But there's some inner need he has in adhering to right-wing talk radio even though I've repeatedly pointed out the falsehoods they spew. He calls Prager, Hewitt and Shaprio "my guys". They absolutely are knaves as far as I'm concerned. Anne Applebaum in her book "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism" calls them political entrepreneurs. He gets something from his adherence to them. I think his identity is wrapped up in this adherence which is why he deflects . Identity is a very strong thing.
As I reflect on him and what I know about Trumpers, mostly from reading, I think people can be decent AND also be taken in. The most comprehensive explanation of them, that I've come across, is forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee. See "The Shared Psychosis of Donald Trump and His Followers" (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-shared-psychosis-of-donald-trump-and-his-loyalists/). She cites drastic social change as the cause of the psychosis on his followers end. That makes sense to me.