Ignoble Lies

 It's no surprise that J.D. Vance has launched his opening salvo in the VP wars with a completely misleading and dishonest attack on his counterpart on the rival ticket. After all, dishonesty is baked into his chosen ideology. 

A friend of mine with more contacts in Silicon Valley circles than I have was giving me the low-down the other day on the key intellectual influences (if that's the term) on the Peter Thiel tech-fascist circles to which Vance belongs. It appears they have primarily modeled themselves on the Nazi theoretician Carl Schmitt (whose reputation, it must be said, the illiberal academic postmodern leftists have also revived—so we can't exclusively blame the conservatives for this one) and on the political philosopher and Plato scholar Leo Strauss. Or rather, on Leo Strauss as interpreted through various right-wing neo-monarchist bloggers, which may have very little to do with the actual Leo Strauss—I haven't read enough of his work to say. 

And one of the key tenets of the self-declared "Straussians" is the concept of the "Noble Lie." The idea—drawn from Plato's Republic—holds that it is necessary to delude the masses in order to justify and preserve the social order. Since the unequal distribution of power that Plato envisioned for his Republic would inevitably strike many of people consigned to non-guardian status as unfair, Plato believed that the elites of his dystopia would have to invent a myth to keep the masses in line. Specifically, they would have to tell the common people that they were composed of a different substance than the elites, and that Nature had therefore intended them for a subordinate role. Plato knew that this was not actually true; but his version of Socrates nonetheless argues that it is a necessary deception—hence a "Noble Lie." 

Knowing that this concept played a key role in Vance's intellectual development, a great deal of his behavior suddenly makes much more sense. We can see why he is so comfortable saying things that are the exact opposite of his own previously-espoused views. We can see why he seems to feel no flicker of conscience repeating Trump's lies about a stolen 2020 election with a straight face. We understand now why he can stare into the camera with his dead eyes and repeat brazen falsehoods that no one imagines for a moment he actually believes. He justifies this behavior to himself as a positive good. It is right to lie, in Vance's ideology. The masses must be deceived, in order for them to continue to accept the social order—or rather, to accept the MAGA dictatorship he is increasingly acknowledging he would like to install. 

The attack on Tim Walz's military record is just the latest of these "Noble Lies." Vance doesn't believe them himself. But he has found a way to compartmentalize and silence the part of the human conscience that ordinarily balks at uttering blatant falsehoods. He justifies it to himself as necessary in order to save the masses from themselves—to deliver the theocratic dictatorship that he believes to be actually in the masses' best interests—even if they do not yet know it themselves. And so he can go on camera and impugn a quarter-century of military service as if it were nothing. 

There's a reason, after all, that this current line of attack did not register in any of the pre-campaign vetting that Harris's team undoubtedly did of Walz before picking him for the VP spot. They did not notice this flaw in his resume because it is not actually there. It's not obvious, after all, how you can make a quarter-century of service in the National Guard look bad. But, Vance found a way; because he is not hampered by anything so trite and old-fashioned as honesty. He believes that the masses need to be hypnotized by a convenient myth. Intent on becoming a "leader of the crowd," as Yeats once put it—he resorts to the stock-in-trade of the demagogue. He "pull[s] down established honour" and "hawk[s] for news/ whatever [his] loose fantasy invents," as Yeats describes the scandal-mongering strategies of the typical demagogues, "as though/ the abounding gutter had been Helicon," and "calumny a song." 

It must be said, in fairness, that Walz went there first. The Trump era has set the low, demagogic tone of our political moment, and Democrats seem to be stooping to it. The new rallying cry seems to be "when they go low, we match their energy." And so, Walz was the first to rely on "alternative facts" to make his case against Vance. He referenced a made-up story involving Vance and a couch that started with an internet meme and never had the slightest basis in fact. This, it has to be said, is surely a "calumny" that only a "loose fantasy" had "invented." So Walz fought dirty too. (Though it can be said, in partial exoneration of him, that Walz made clear his couch reference in the speech was a joke; whereas Vance's attack on his military service has been uttered in deadly earnest). 

I would prefer not to attack the disinformation of the right with disinformation of our own. I would pass on the couch jokes—and the "lock him up" chants alike, please, by the way—especially since the Democrats' whole talking point about Trump is to try to deny that they are politicizing the criminal justice system; so saying that they should preemptively judge him guilty is rather proving Republicans' point for them. I would rather that we did not go low, just because Republicans go low too. 

Of course, people will then protest—don't Trump and the openly authoritarian and avowedly illiberal Vance pose an existential threat to democracy? Aren't any means therefore justified to try to neutralize this threat? But I would prefer that Democrats responded to this argument with something closer to Richard Lovelace's: "I could not love thee, dear, so well/ Loved I not honor more." 

But that's apparently not the political world we live in anymore. The age of "alternative facts" and "Noble Lies" is upon us. One can only hope that the people, the "masses," prove smart enough in the end to see through these lies. 

It must be said that it is a hope that has not always been justified. I was reading a Boston Globe story this morning that compared the attacks on Walz's military career to the "Swift Boat" campaign to slander John Kerry's service during the 2004 campaign (another attempt to "pull down established honour" and "hawk" deception "for news," if ever there was one). The article observed that many Democratic strategists in 2004 believed that the Swift Boat lie was so obviously baseless and easily refuted that no one would fall for it; and they therefore did not need to expend any effort challenging it. But it ended up significantly influencing the election. And so, we have to conclude, people do not always see through the lies on their own. 

And yet, the belief that they can eventually do so is the basis of the democratic faith. And so, we have to continue to hold fast to it: we must continue to entertain the hope that "the crowd" will eventually, as Carl Sandburg once put it, "learn to remember [...] who played me for a fool." Then, on that glorious day, there will be no more self-appointed tech-fascist elites who will be able to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. There will be no more "Noble Lies" or convenient myths, and the people uttering them will only make themselves look ridiculous. There will be no more cynical Yeatsian "leaders of crowds." There will be no more self-declared "guardians" who think they can dupe the masses into submission. "The mob—the crowd—the mass—," as Sandburg wrote, "will arrive then."