the rule of law versus the role of madness
THE RULE OF LAW versus THE ROLE OF MADNESS
One conception of
politics, according to Paul W. Kahn, involves "a commitment to both
history and territory" (time and space), and "the rule of law is an
organization of institutions, practices, persons, and objects with the ongoing
historical and spatial project that is the state. The state occupies time and
space not as an object in the natural world, but as an imaginative construction
of temporal and spatial meanings. The
state's time is history; its space is territory. These are the subjects of a legal aesthetic"
[The Cultural Study of Law ( Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999), 40].
It is unfortunate that few of us were ever taught that the United States
of America as a state is actually a work of fiction upon which we are
obligated, as citizens, to impose a patriotic sense of something possessing
four dimensions, celebrated in flags, song, pledge, and prayer. It is unfortunate that few Americans want to
admit that we live in a fiction that we constantly write and rewrite. The few of us who dare to make the admission
live in abject agony, because we realize the main protagonist in the 2017
fiction is not an epic hero but an epic disgrace. Yes, tweet boy, of thee I sing.
In its ideal iteration, the Office of the President has
an honored place in the rule of law, despite the foibles of individuals who
have occupied the Office since George Washington. We respect the Office even if our ideologies,
party affiliation, wretchedness, needs,
and desires preclude our giving allegiance one occupant or another. When the occupant tweets his disrespect for
the Office on a daily basis, we are
---to put the case obscenely ---in deep shit! The swamp is the cesspool, and all of us
stink appropriately. President Trump and
his most loyal, unconditional supporters have served notice that the work of
fiction is profane and ungodly. It is
stupid to hope for better, to bury our heads in patriotic sand. How can we hope when our senators and representatives
are complicit in the plot?
Perhaps we have just what the minority of voters wanted in November 2016 and had confirmed by the
Electoral College ---the replacement of democracy with a fascist tweetocracy. Cognitive dissonance is a faithful American
servant, and it cooks and cleans with
all the gusto white uncles and mammies can muster. And the Master and his trophy Mistress can
never be satisfied. The state is
rendered infirm by the role of madness.
If we are capable of being surprised by anything, we are
likely surprised that President Trump hasn't sworn on a stack of false
religious texts that Harvard Business School has denied him the affirmative
action he was born to inherit. Anthony
J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria chose not to write about him in their excellent book
In Their Time: The Greatest Business
Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Boston: Harvard Business School Press,
2005). Leaks from the WH condemn them
for being left-leaning and unkind. But
it is judicious for Mayo and Nohria to be unkind. Theirs is a study of "contextual intelligence ---the profound
sensitivity to macro-level contextual factors in the creation, growth or
transformation of business" (xv) from 1900 to 1999. They are concerned with pristine
capitalism. When they published the
book, the rule of law was intact.
Grounds for excluding Trump can be found in the seven key lessons they
itemize in the epilogue, pages 354-360:
1. Context matters --moving beyond the "great
man" theory
2. Different paths to greatness
3. Great
leadership is a function of context plus personal characteristics plus adaptive
capacity
4. Betting on the right person for the right time
5. Betting on the right company at the right time
6. The importance
of business history
7. Enhancing your
contextual intelligence, becoming a "first-class noticer"
Despite the fact that our protagonist did make a great
deal of money by calculated accidents, he earns a grade of "F" for
each of the seven lessons. Methinks
Henry James and William Dean Howells sketched Trump's prototype in the
nineteenth century. What a shame the
President of the United States of American is not worthy of being in the
company of Cyrus H. K. Curtis, Henry
Ford, Sarah Breedlove, Earl Graves,
Christine A. Hefner, Peter H. Coors, and
Reginald F. Lewis. His shame anoints us with unadulterated dread.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. August 1, 2017
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