 Trump's hold on the GOP is that he was the first to appeal only to emotion and not to reason. Yeah. Complete surrender to tribalism via motion for power, worship, Trump's fact and truth. Yes. Is this a postmodern view? Well, I don't know if it's postmodern because I think pre-postmodernism, this has been used effectively. It's been used effectively by authoritarians for generations. You know, this methodology, this way of seeing it, the way of manipulating people, the way of encouraging tribalism and getting people riled up around this kind of agenda is not new. You know, there's a certain intellectual strand of thought that is called postmodernism that takes these ideas and grounds them in a particular philosophy, pretty weak philosophy, pretty lame philosophy but a philosophy nonetheless. But this train of ideas has been around for a long time. Authoritarians have had it. Pragmatism has been around for a long time. Tribalism has been around for a long time. The use of tribalism via emotion has been around for a long time. So I don't think that this is postmodernism on the right because I don't think what motivates Trump is some postmodern ideology. I think what motivates Trump is pragmatism. Pragmatism adds it all out. Now, is there a difference between pure pragmatism and postmodernism in the view of truth? No, in the end there isn't. But pragmatism comes earlier philosophically than postmodernism. Pragmatism, William James and the other pragmatist philosophers were late 19th century, early 20th century philosophers. Whereas postmodernism is a phenomenon of the mid 20th century as an intellectual movement. So you can come to very similar conclusions based on very different philosophical ideas. And even though the conclusions about truth might be similar, the way they're applied and the way they're manifest is very different. But yes, what we're living today is an era in which significant portions of both the right and the left don't believe in truth, don't believe in reality, don't believe in principles. And where everything is mushy and flexible. And it's why in the end Trump cannot be successful. He lost. It's because he doesn't have principles. And imagine a true authoritarian cannot be a pure pragmatist. A pure authoritarian cannot be a pure pragmatist. Now pragmatism and being pragmatic are bad things. Being pragmatic is not a good thing. Being practical is good. The practical and the moral are what objectives stand behind. Being pragmatic is by definition a banding principle. That's what it means. And I know there's confusion when Americans talk about this. But what pragmatic means is a banding principle. And Trump was the ultimate pragmatist. And he acted pragmatically. I mean, that's what he is. And unfortunately, many businessmen are pragmatists because the only principles they've been taught are the principles of altruism, which they reject. And they associate principles with altruism. And therefore the only alternative they know is being pragmatic, which is abandoning principles. And unfortunately, many businessmen are pragmatic. Pragmatic and practical are not synonyms. It is a massive mistake intellectually, conceptually to treat those two as synonyms. And certainly, Anne Rand would be horrified by that idea. Anne Rand, whose concepts were important to her. Definitions, words were important. And pragmatic is a very different concept than practical. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who are liking it, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So you know, if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. 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