One definition C. S. Lewis has offered for the idea of "faith" is "the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."[1] The idea, as I understand it, is that reason leads us to a conclusion. As long as reason continues to lead us to that conclusion, we ought to continue to endorse it. And yet our moods--by which I think he means our emotions, but perhaps also something like "how things look in the short term on an impressionistic level"--get in the way. They tempt us to adopt beliefs that reason has shown to be wrong or to disbelieve things that reason has shown to be right.
Yes, Lewis was writing about religious faith, particularly Christianity. But I don't bring his statement up now to write about religion. I'm writing instead about the temptation I face to support Donald Trump.
Reason tells me to oppose Mr. Trump. I believe he is wrong. I believe he represents something that is deeply wrong even beyond his own personal wrongness.
The most ready example is his efforts to undermine the presidential election. Reason tells me that there was no widespread or wholesale fraud and that almost all the lawsuits are frivolous. Reason tells me that the non-frivolous ones raise only minor points that even if true, wouldn't control the election. Reason tells me he was preparing for his fraud argument even before election day.
But being the most ready example, it's perhaps not the best. It's quite possible that people like me have been making an idol of "norms," but the norm of gracefully accepting defeat and not asserting fraud for which one hasn't any proof is a good one and ought to be honored. That's probably too easy.
I don't believe I have the prerogative to call Mr. Trump, or anyone, "evil." But reason gives me the tools to discern evil in the movement of which Mr. Trump is the head.
My moods sometimes tell me otherwise. I reflexively want to support Mr. Trump. In 2016 especially, but also in 2020, I wanted, on some level, to pull the lever for Mr. Trump. I really wanted to stick it to the preachy, elitist liberals--among whom I have to count myself if I'm honest. And what passes for satire among Trump's critics reinforces that attitude in me, makes me want to support Trump. A Seth Meyer monologue probably drums up more support for Trump, at least among some people, than Trump's supposed plainspoken populism.[2]
I don't know if it's my inner racist or inner authoritarian or something else. But I don't believe I'm much more racist than the median "woke" liberal or much more authoritarian than most people. And that applies mutatis mutandis for any other "ism" you can think of. But I suppose I can always be wrong about that, and the fact that others might just as bad or worse than I am doesn't excuse me.
And here is where I disagree with C. S. Lewis. I cannot blame the temptation only on "moods." Reason, too, falters or is not enough.[3] The moods create or provide a basis for a train of thinking that is in its own way logical or reasonable. My repeated calls for empathy and for understanding the Trump voter have a reasoned base to them, however my moods and inclinations toward evil might influence them. Not only do I find empathy important for instrumental reasons, for changing minds. I also see it as something we owe to our fellow human beings. And yet those reasoned views mix in a strange and almost inextricable way with the moods.
The converse is true also. Reason doesn't by itself lead me to discern the wrongness behind Trumpism. It's also a felt sense--a "mood"--about something not being right about it. The pictures of families broken up in detention facilities doesn't describe something bad only because reason tells me that it's bad. It's shocking on an emotional level.
That, too, informs my faith in the right and wrong of the matter. And frankly, I sometimes outsource my views about good and bad, too. Will Truman's post a while ago on Mr. Trump's bigotry inspires me to engage in the very outsourcing of moral determinations that he wrote that post to combat. I do so in a way that agrees with Will's overall argument, but that's no defense of the road I take to get there.
The right-wrong distinction is fragile. The right, as I am given to see the right, is to oppose Mr. Trump and Trumpism. But this whole mess is calling into question the distinction for me.
Most of us make moral compromises and support what we should know, at the time, is insupportable. Or even if we always choose rightly, we're often, very often, sorely tempted to choose wrong.
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