“So, what are you going to do about it?“
Protest!
“Whatever.“: “Vance ironically acknowledged the yelling and shouts of ‘You ruined this place!’ [Kennedy Center for the Arts] with a smile and
a wave,“ notes The Guardian.
“Department of Education to investigate UC Berkeley for DEI-related claims,“ The Daily Californian.
“...Federal officials told [Columbia] university it must immediately place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under ‘academic receivership for a minimum of five years.‘ The demand was among several described as conditions for receiving federal funding, including $400 million already pulled over allegations of antisemitism,“ AP, i.e., protesting Israel’s degree of military activity.
Numerous experts on Constitutional law prospect that Trump might ignore U.S. Supreeme Court rulings—which anyway would be issued late, given the viscosity of procedural justice, district level upward, relative to Executive license (with near-term damage).
Impeachment for impunity toward jurisprudence won‘t happen because GOP Congresspersons‘ districts would find a MAGA-tribe candidate bankrolled against them, 2026; and standing power wants to preserve itself, because “morality is for losers.“
If an appalled inquirer looks into the MAGA appeal, they find that relatively low educational level is strongly determinative. So, no wonder that the Tribe wants to maximally constrain the efficacy of public education (beyond outsourcing Department of Education programs to other departments which lack the expertise, lost through a dissolved Dept. of Ed.).
The moral philosopher has his seminars and award-winning scholar-
ship, but highly enlightened graduates fade into a work world that denies citizens time to do more than protest the defundng of educa-
tional excellence (or not care about that, due to their own low interest in learning).
Pithy punditry finds merely an elite audience, one whose Red state news editors have to cater to what keeps their advertising, thus catering to provincialism.
So, we hope for the 2026 elections, though leading pundits (e.g., the New York Times and Washington Post opinion pages) fear that U.S. credibility is already severely harmed, not to mention that soft power is now to be snuffed by foreign policy stoked on “lethality.“
The road back from 19th century “Great Power“ politics and neo-Yalta parsing of post-Hiroshima “spheres of influence“ may be a long way, while hotter and hotter Earth has no morality at all: Life doesn‘t need humanity. And air conditioned, gated “communities“ don‘t need to care about the “food insecure“ masses.
The story is tired and apparently pointless. The E.U. will plod along without U.S. sponsorship. The population of autocratic China‘s workforce will keep its productive capacity four times larger than the U.S.
The lesson that the U.S. cannot prosper without E.U. partnership (and soft power) will be learned, eventually. But the inertia of ignorant power and crises of sustainability will likely slow progress well into mid-century.
Party like it‘s 1999...in 2050.
Elderly readers can mourn less about nearing death, because maybe the best years of contemporary humanity have been known and passed.
But genomic research is closing in on extended life expectancy due to reversal of aging; so, our grandchildren may expect to have a healthy life beyond 120 years—more time to service the national debt that was charged to unborn heirs by our to-become-ancestral era of The Great Immoralists.
Astute concern for future generations isn’t new, echoing past centuries of calling for “the good ancestor“ within each of us, especially by way of religionist appeals, as well as by the U.N inspired climate leadership (the Paris Accords) and efforts to ensure sustainability, broadly conceived.
But can we keep moral calling effective insofar as citizens are deeply habituated as consumers, and political market hucksters know how to make propaganda work, as long as moral educational excellence is minimized?
Anyway, the U,S. will likely have a little recession this year. Trump will back off, but claim that it all powerfully worked for some future good that‘s vastly deregulated and de-moralized of DEI “wokeness“ and litigious “scum.“
Meanwhile, the moral calling echoes “the better angels of our nature.“
So, we plod on, like marketing a product by pushing its availability over and over and over in every possible venue. Moral calling can prevail. But it‘s a lot of work.
The fact of Our shared humanity and the value of paying forward for unborn heirs we can love to anticipate can prevail over consumerist provincialism and narcissistic power.
But realistic hope requires devotion—and, for some of us, audacious conceiving and undaunted persistence.
Philip Kitcher helps higher educational excellence by asking (again, so common to ordinary life) What‘s the Use of Philosophy?
It’s good for...
- natural goodness!, Philippa Foot would argue.
- caring, grown from excellence in moral educaiton, Nel Noddings would argue (and Michael Slote—grown, to my mind, from “authentic potential for being,“ Heidegger would argue).
- one life to lead, Samuel Scheffler now argues.
- whole-hearted humanity, Harry Frankfurt would argue.
- truth and truthfulness, Bernard Williams would argue.
- higher desire prevailing in actional policy, Michael Bratman might argue.
- the “unity of reason in the diversity of its voices,“ Jürgen Habermas would argue.
- the moral nexus!, R. Jay Wallace argues. and
- moral progress, Kitcher would argue.
to natural caring of this life whole-heartedly in truth and truthfulness for reasoned action whose nexus of belonging (from attachments to all manner of relationality) may contribute to moral progress.
