I thought Dick Rorty was one of the smartest of my colleagues at Princeton.  Now he has proved it – from the grave. His 1998 book Achieving Our Country (Harvard University Press) has suddenly caught on, after Donald Trump and his pals fulfilled what Dick predicted:
 
“At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”
 
I n the Times for November 21 Jennifer Senior tells the story of the reception of Rorty’s 1998 book, then and now. But, of course, Rorty’s predictions only came fully true because of our bizarre Electoral College system; it’s import to remember that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Trump is a minority president much as he may hate the word.
 
But Rorty’s observations raise questions that start in the political realm and reach more deeply into our culture, not least What is a genuinely diverse education?   That question surfaces now, not because  of Trump’s contemptible rants, but because of  the well-intentioned strategy adopted by Hillary Clinton.  
 Hillary, I am convinced, made a bad blunder in accepting the advice of those advisors who were sure that a coalition of women, African Americans, Hispanics and other “identity groups” could assure her election.  Demography would triumph over Trump’s trumpeting of his devotion to the working class.  
 
That strategy didn’t work - not because its emphasis on diversity was rejected by a bunch of bigoted rend-necks. It failed because its brand of diversity was not  inclusive enough. It sent the message, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that she did not really need, or especially want the support of white working class men. They got the message and so did many women of this class.  Many of these men and women voted for Trump, others just stayed home and opened the door to Rorty’s strongman.
Hillary turned out to needed these votes; she needed more diversity, not less.  That simple point, clear in the voting statistics, raises a wider cultural and educational question:  how do we achieve a truly inclusive culture?
 
The answer will not come, I am sure, by rolling back the accomplishments of the past half century, nor by insisting that colleges and universities turn their bacs on affirmative action, or abandon their diverse course offerings that have been developed.  Instead, we need to be sure every student, whatever sociological or demographic group he or she may fall into, experiences a genuinely diverse education, one that opens up the rich experience of cultures beyond the one with which they most readily identify.  That would be a strategy of inclusive diversity. We need t in politics and in education. It’s a winner.
.
 
November  23rd,  2016
 
 
 
 

No matter what happens in tomorrow’s election, the United States is well on its way to becoming a plutocracy.  One the one side a billionaire; on the other a candidate who has accepted huge honoraria from investment houses and banks, in this country and abroad. The roots of plutocracy go deep in America, but the movement toward plutocracy has rarely been so strong. That’s true in the two senses of the term. The  Citizens United decision gives new, anonymous power to wealth in the electoral process.  PACs in both political parties take full advantage of this ruling. Money flows and money speaks, but  it also hides and obscures it influence.
 
But plutocracy flourishes in another, more insidious sense – as  an idea,  the unspoken assumption that wealth deserves respect, honor, influence and power.  That’s deeply engrained in our culture, and it provides force and cover for the more strictly political sense of plutocracy.
 
Since ploutokratia ise a Greek word, I wanted to see what Greek political thinkers had to say about it.  To the best of my knowledge, the word is used only once in classical Greek.  Socrates used the word, according to Xenophon who presents him as discussing the difference between kingship (basileia) and despotism (tyrannis), then turning to aristocracy, contrasting it to plutocracy and democracy:
... where the officials are chosen among those who fulfil the requirements of the laws, the constitution is an aristocracy: where status  (timemata)  is the qualification for office, you have a plutocracy: where all are eligible, a democracy.
Xenophon Memorabilia 4.6.12 tr. Marchant, modified
 
So, in Socrates’ view it’s all about eligibility for office.  That’s a very narrow understanding of plutocracy, but it’s more than one finds in Plato, Aristotle and other political philosophers or historians.  
 
Why is plutocracy so rarely discussed in antiquity? A suggestion: plutocracy, of all the principal forms of governance is the queen of the masquerade ball.  It’s a genius at disguising itself, making it appear as aristocracy in some settings, and as populism – demagogia – in others.  It’s often hard to make out the plutocratic side of Greek politicians.  They were loud-mouths (aazones) proclaiming their devotion to the ordinary citizen, yet making sure that a city’s policies never seriously challenged the structures that gave wealth its influence and prerogative.  Cleon is the perfect, but not the only, ancient example.  Trump has Greek forbearers.
 
Populism, along with nativism, racism and attacks on intellectuals and other “elitists,” are good disguises for plutocracy.  Discussions of Athenian politics often described such tendencies as “radical” or “extreme” democracy.   If something goes wrong, its easy then to blame “democracy,” rather than look under the surface at the power of wealth to get its way.
 
Students need to learn how to identify plutocracy and the fallacies behind its rhetorical appeal that is correct, liberal education has a new section in its job description=   – unmasking plutocracy and challenging the ides that gives ii its appeal and power - -that wealth is a measure of personal worth and a mark of fitness to rule. Distance over soqce and time  may help  students and others put  plutocratic tendencies in perspective. Where is Cleon when we need him? 
 
 
 
 
 
​

​ 
A few days ago Michael Lurie sent me a link to an article demonstrating how rarely published scholarship  gets read. Here is the link:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/why-professors-are-writing-crap-nobody-reads

At first I dismissed the article as old hat.  My hunch is that if scholars write about issues that genuinely concerned then, people will read what they have to say.  But, if I could figure out how to get scholars to write about what they really care about, I would have done it years ago. All I can do now is try to figure out how to write that way myself. If I succeed, the headline will be OLD SCHOLAR LEARNS NEW TRICK!
 
But the issue is more complex than that.  This morning I picked up the New York Times and read David Brooks’ op ed piece  on Martin Buber:   http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/opinion/read-buber-not-the-polls.html?_r=0 .  His essay  made md wonder if the I-Thou relationship can apply to the past as well as to personal relationships in our lives.  I recognize that scholarship often has to be an I-It relationship to the past? But must it always be  that?  Are there forms of engagement that, whether we recognize it or not, involve an I-Thou relationship to texts, works of art or cultural phenomena? We see that now and then, I think, in works where a scholars’ love of his or her subject matter shines through.  We crave, I-Thou relationships, wherever we can find them, and, I  suspect, will read whatever work emerges from such a tie.