I’ve heard it said that Trump may represent some approximation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, and I think that’s deeply mistaken. But the reasons why it’s mistaken can help us think about what Trump actually is. First, it’s wrong because Trump represents everything Nietzsche hated. The philistinism, the mediocrity, the worshipping of money for its own sake — this is exactly the opposite of what Nietzsche advocated. By Übermensch, Nietzsche meant someone who could live beyond good and evil, beyond conventional values, who refused to appeal to herd instincts.
There’s a passage in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra in which he talks about the Übermensch, and I think it’s quite relevant. Zarathustra, the protagonist, comes down from his mountain retreat and tells the people in the town square that he’s going to teach them about the Übermensch, about what mankind should become, and the people are having none of it. They don’t want to hear that they’ve stopped believing in God; that life is chaos; that nothing lasts; that they’re living in illusion.
Zarathustra realizes the people are too decadent to hear this and so he decides instead to teach them about the “Last Man.” And the “Last Man” is the kind of person who doesn’t want to think, who fears progress, who is risk-averse, and desirous of comfort — who just wants everything to stay the same. Of course, the people erupt in joy when they hear this because this is what they really want.
This is what Trump is to me. This is what he represents. He’s a kind of “Last Man” demagogue, telling the people that he’s going make things great again, which is to say simple and how they once were — and they love him for it.
For Nietzsche, the celebration of a man like Trump was the inevitable result of a democratic culture built on the virtues of ignorance and self-fulfillment.
–Hugo Drochon
In What Nietzsche’s Philosophy Can Tell Us About Why Brexit and Trump Won
“Eric.” It sounds like the title of some claymation film. But more Mary and Max than A Close Shave. But I thought it might be a compelling title to this article. I had been thinking of trying to make these 8:05 posts more often little personal essays where I talk about the things that are on my mind or conscience or whatever. I was really thinking about that.
It’s 8:05 am. Normally, there would be some quotation here. But instead, I thought I would take a moment to apologize to you all. I’ve always seen this blog as a community. And a big part of that is interacting with you all in the comments. But I haven’t been doing that. In a sense, I don’t need to. James is an amazingly good simulacrum of me. I often find that I respond to a comment only to find that James has already responded as I did — but more thoughtfully. Also: in a nicer way. James is a much nicer guy than I am.
Oh, Joomla! For those who don’t know, Joomla! is the second most popular content management system (CMS) on the internet — a distant second to WordPress, which is what we use here at Frankly Curious. But it causes constant problems for me in my professional work, because I have to deal with sentences like this, “The three most popular CMSs are WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal.” You will probably see the problem: I hate following an exclamation mark with a comma.
Schumer’s idea is a faithful reflection of the way Congress thought about politics years ago, when Schumer was coming up through the system. It’s a totally plausible model, which assumes that vulnerable members of Congress can shore up their standing by proving to their constituents that they can win concrete achievements. That is how Schumer has built a career, and he wants to help Democrats in red states do the same, by finding some bills where they can shake hands with Trump and cut ribbons on some bridges, and so on. Schumer’s idea can be boiled down to:
As regular readers know, I’m not keen on capitalism. But that doesn’t mean that I’m against markets. This causes no end of confusion with people, who think that capitalism is the only economic system with markets. As far as I know, there is no economic system that does not have markets. It’s just a question of how those markets are controlled. And I want to demonstrate how leaving markets to themselves really screws things up. (Capitalism just makes it all that much worse, but I’m not going into that today.)
People wondering why Republicans are so hell-bent on repealing Obamacare even though that would cost 20 million Americans their health insurance haven’t been heeding the old investigator’s maxim to “follow the money.”
Digby wrote an article yesterday, 
Knowing that I had this difficult Wellesian period in my sights, friends sympathized with me — “how sad it is,” they said, “such a terrible decline.” But I have never shared that view. Welles did it his way. If he had modified his behavior — if he had trimmed his sails, if he had pulled in his horns — he could have made many more films. But he would not then have been the force of nature that he was. He would just have been another filmmaker. As it was, this period in Welles’ life left behind him at least two films, Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight, that are remarkable by any standards, plus extraordanary work in several other media — but above all I looked forward to tracing that arc as Welles struck out towards the unknown region.
The Intercept, during an election campaign between a competent, moderate liberal and an unprecedentedly unfit and corrupt candidate who ideologically represents a cross between George Wallace and Calvin Coolidge, devoted a substantial amount of resources to analyzing hacked emails from the campaign of the former. And rather than admitting that they had been sent on a snipe hunt by an Australian libertarian who was plainly trying to throw the election to Wallace/Coolidge, they decided to hype up inane trivia (“Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a PUBLICIST!” “Candidates say snarky things about opposing candidates in private emails!”) as if they were revealing the Pentagon Papers. And, as Paul [Campos] says, they did this in the context of media coverage being dominated by the coverage of Clinton non-scandals that revealed no significant misconduct, drowning out coverage of the countless examples of Trump’s actual misconduct. I can’t blame Glenn [Greenwald] and his publication for wanting to be preemptively absolved of any responsibility, but it won’t fly. It is absolutely true that The Intercept — like mainstream publications — also published coverage critical of Trump. Both Sides Do It was perfectly good enough for Trump, and while that it helped Trump in itself doesn’t condemn the press coverage the fact that this effective false equivalence is utterly ludicrous certainly does.
Since the election, I’ve been clinging to voices of sanity. Anyone with a brain. I like imagining they aren’t outliers. Scientific lectures, comedy, even politicians talking — if the author has something to teach me. So, I’ve wondered, where has Ta-Nehisi Coates been? After all, Trump ran the most overtly racist campaign since George Wallace. Coates is one of our finest essayists — especially on racism in America. He would certainly have a unique way of viewing the election.
Racism greeted Obama in both his primary and general-election campaigns in 2008. Photos were circulated of him in Somali garb. Rush Limbaugh dubbed him “Barack the Magic Negro.” Roger Stone, who would go on to advise the Trump campaign, claimed that Michelle Obama could be heard on tape yelling “Whitey.” Detractors circulated emails claiming that the future first lady had written a racist senior thesis while at Princeton. A fifth of all West Virginia Democratic-primary voters in 2008 openly admitted that race had influenced their vote. Hillary Clinton trounced him 67 to 26 percent.