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If It Feels Right, It Is Right.

Near the end of his book Madoff: The Final Word, written shortly before our president won his second term, Richard Behar asks comparative questions about the con man Bernard Madoff and Donald Trump, including: “Do the 2020 presidential election deniers have anything in common with investors who blindly followed Madoff? And can denial be contagious and transmissible across huge segments of society?”

It may seem that Madoff investors have much in common with the election deniers and others who accept Trump’s falsehoods, but there are different dynamics at work for each. With Madoff, many have said that the investors should have known that their returns were too good to be true. Gains of fifteen percent or more every year, every quarter no matter if the market or the economy was up or down were beyond belief, so how could anyone believe them? The question ignores human nature. Few challenge something that is benefiting them. Human nature and history have produced relevant adages. Don’t kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Madoff apparently delivered golden eggs. Such a goose is unbelievable, but if I had one, I would not probe it to see how it was constructed in case the eggs would no longer come.

Behar tries to find out why the Securities and Exchange Commission was not on to Madoff much earlier than it was. The SEC does not have enough resources to monitor closely all the investment businesses in the country. Their investigations are invariably triggered by complaints, and those invariably come from those who lose money. No one complained about Madoff. Investors only thought that they were making gains.

There are reasons that since the time of Charles Ponzi over a hundred years ago (and no doubt before), humans have been willing to believe the promises of Ponzi and related pyramid schemes. That is human nature for many of us.

Unlike Madoff investors, Trump supporters who accept his falsehoods do not get a direct material reward. But many of them have a sense of grievance. They feel that their lives are not as good as they should be, and America is not as great as it should be. It does not matter if Trump is divorced from factual truth as long as what he says feels true about their grievances. After all, what are facts compared to what I honestly feel?

Think back, if you are old enough, to Ronald Reagan when something similar happened. Reagan was politically popular even though polls often showed widespread disagreement with many of his specific proposals and policies. Even so, Reagan was able to project an overall message that resonated with many. Ethan Bronner in Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America examines the phenomenon and finds this lesson: “People would go with you if they were attracted to the feel of your campaign, even if they disagreed with many aspects of it.”

The roots of these dynamics predate those Republican presidents. Sources can be found in the academy of a generation ago. How to read a novel was debated in graduate schools. Was the goal to find the author’s intentions? The response increasingly became that the readers should seek individual significance, what a book meant to them. Since each reader had unique experiences and perspectives, a book had no single meaning, and all the meanings discovered in the literary piece were equally valid. A novel did not have a single, objective “truth” but many subjective ones. Meaning was “contingent” depending on the reader’s perspective. This was said to be a “postmodern” reading.

Such thinking jumped the literary fence into other disciplines. Some maintained that societal truth varies depending upon your experiences and perspectives. Your viewpoint shapes what is true for you. There are multiple truths that should be respected. From the path seeking to broaden understanding of why people hold different opinions and viewpoints, this broadened into the assertion that there is no objective reality and that truth and morality were only “contingent.” This led to the conclusion that all opinions should be considered and analyzed, and that all opinions must be respected. However, this respect morphed for some into the idea that all opinions were of equal validity. If something were true for you, then it was true. Facts were always subjective. There was no objective truth.

This philosophy became associated with lefties who maintained that not only was history written by the winners, but that the winners, the privileged, controlled societal “reality” and “truth.” Their reminder that things looked different depending on where you stood in the societal hierarchies was valuable. “Truth” and “reality” were contingent, but conservatives lashed out and mocked those who could not tell right from wrong or could not tell there was a recognizable, firm truth.

We have had a switch. Now “conservatives” say something similar to what leftists said in the past. Rudy Giuliani, for example, stated that truth is relative. Other conservatives have spoken of “alternative facts.” Conservatives deny evidence about climate change suggesting that science, too, is relative–that it is only political. Conservatives seem to have adopted postmodernism, but they have gone beyond it.

In this postmodernistic world, we don’t have to go to the trouble of ascertaining what is true because what matters is what is true for me. Many of his supporters surely know that what Trump says is not only false but errant bullshit, but he says what the Trumpistas want to believe. The important thing is that what he says feels true to his audience. And if it feels true to them, then it is true.

The appeal and power of accepting falsehoods because they feel right, because they are true for me, should not be underestimated. We might think that when everybody has their own truth individuals are separated from each other and the world is atomistic. It is true that in the postmodernist world I don’t have to engage with those who hold other truths. I can remain segregated from them, but believing in falsehoods also brings people together. What Lawrence Wright in Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief wrote about a new religious movement has broader applicability: “Belief in the irrational is one definition of faith, but it is also true that clinging to absurd or disputed doctrines binds a community of faith together and defines a barrier to the outside world.”

Wright’s insight helps explain our modern world. Many who believe that we should distinguish truth from non-truth to formulate policies and action have their own faith in rationality. They are surprised that as the breadth, depth, and frequency of Trump’s bullshit becomes increasingly apparent that Trumpistas have not fallen away. These rationalists see the falsehoods as a negative for Trump, but in fact they are a source of the president’s strength. His falsehoods have produced a feeling that such utterances must be true, ought to be true, are at least emotionally true. As a result, they have bound his supporters together, helping to define a needed barrier with the rest of society.

In this world, it is enough to say that it could be true, it might be true, or it has not been disproved to my personal satisfaction. This world does not have to abide by the standards of good historical, scientific, sociological, or anthropological inquiry. Acolytes don’t have to grapple with the strengths and weaknesses of sets of data. Well, yes. Life is a lot easier without that hard work. Others can foolishly spend their time looking for facts and truth, but we don’t need to. The truth is what we want it to be. And this prevents Trumpistas from having to change their views. They never have to confront what T.H. Huxley said about science: “The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” Leisure increases and life is simpler without a responsibility for discerning or establishing facts. I can just stop with my inquiry once something feels right for me. I don’t have to uncomfortably confront information or views I don’t like and the conflicts, external and internal, that they can cause. My belief is as true as yours. Discourse, analysis, and research are all a waste of time. My life is easier.

A sizeable portion of the population does not care whether what Trump says is true or not, much less whether he believes what he says is true or that he knows, like the liar, that it is not true. A sizeable audience is indifferent to how things really are. In words of Harry Frankfort (see post of August 22, 2025 “Trump versus Madoff”), this group is content to be fed bullshit, and that, alas, almost guarantees that bullshit will proliferate.

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Postmodern Trumpism

If Trump lied, he would not be as dangerous as he is as a bullshitter. Frankfort writes, “By virtue of [not paying attention to the truth], bullshit is the greater enemy of the truth than lies are. . . . Through excessive indulgence in

[bullshit]

, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the ways things are may become attenuated or lost.”

There may be many causes for Trump’s bullshit—his narcissistic ego may be the prime reason, but there is at least another one. “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” Those of us concerned with the truth should give up the notion that Trump will learn what is true and what is not and that the falsehoods will decrease over time. As long as Trump continues to talk about things he knows little to nothing about, the bullshit will continue.

The real issue is not why Trump excretes so many falsehoods, it is why so many people accept, even desire, his bullshit. This is where postmodernism comes in. In a postmodernistic world, we don’t have to go to the trouble of ascertaining what is true because what matters is what is true for me. Many of his supporters surely know that what Trump says is not only false but errant bullshit, but he says what the Trumpistas want to believe. The important thing is that what he says feels true to his audience. And if it feels true to them, then it is true. Postmodernism, once a leftist phenomenon, has found its zenith in a conservative world.

The appeal and power of accepting falsehoods because they feel right, because they are true for me, should not be underestimated. We might think that when everybody has their own truth individuals are separated from each other and the world is atomistic. It is true that in the postmodernist world I don’t have to engage with those who hold other truths and I can remain segregated from them, but believing in falsehoods also brings people together. What Lawrence Wright, in Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, wrote about a new religious movement has broader applicability: “Belief in the irrational is one definition of faith, but it is also true that clinging to absurd or disputed doctrines binds a community of faith together and defines a barrier to the outside world.”

Wright’s insight helps explain our modern world. Many who believe that we should distinguish truth from non-truth in order to formulate policies and action have their own faith in rationality. They are surprised that as the breadth, depth, and frequency of Trump’s bullshit became increasingly apparent that Trumpistas have not fallen away. These rationalists see the falsehoods as a negative for Trump, but in fact they are a source of the president’s strength. His falsehoods have produced a feeling that such utterances must be true, ought to be true, are at least emotionally true. As a result, they have bound his supporters together, helping to define a needed barrier with the rest of society.

Something like this postmodernism has also affected some who do not support Trump. I have several friends, not Trump supporters, who have said that whatever you think about the president, you have to concede that he has kept his promises. I begged to differ, although a bit more forcefully than that. I referred them to the factchecking website Politifact’s Trump-O-Meter which tracks 102 promises made by candidate Trump in 2016.  It reports that he has kept 18% of his promises, broken 17%, compromised 11%, and the rest are “stalled” or “in the works.” This hardly indicates that he has kept his promises unless keeping less than one in five looks like a promise-keeper to you.

But all promises are not equal. Perhaps he has kept the important ones. All may not agree on what should fall on this list, but Politifact’s list of Trump’s top five promises concludes that only one has been kept, and that was to suspend immigration from terror-prone places. Two are rated as compromises: “Everybody is getting a tax cut, especially the middle class” and “The Trump Plan will lower the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax.” (These ratings raise the question: Can you compromise a promise or is a compromised promise a broken promise?)

The other top Trump promises, according to the fact-checkers, were to repeal and replace Obamacare and to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. Politifact lists both these promises as stalled. That begs the question of how long a promise can be stalled before it is broken. But whether the stalled characterization is correct, it seems clear that these promises have not been kept.

Even so, my knowledgeable and non-conservative friends say that Trump has kept his promises. When confronted with the information showing that he has kept few of them, my friends reply that the specific things he promised do not really matter. The attitude he projects about immigration, Obamacare, taxes, and the like show that he is keeping his promises. My friends are really saying that the truth of promise-keeping does not matter as long as it feels as if promises have been kept. How post-modern of them!

(Concluded January 15)

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Postmodern Trumpism (continued)

          The postmodern view that truth is subjective has important epistemological consequences. We no longer have to listen to each other: we don’t have to try to reconcile competing claims and information. If you maintain that thousands were massacred at Wounded Knee on that day in 1890 while I contend that no one was killed, if we believe that there is an objective truth, we would engage each other. We would investigate what support there is for the competing positions, and perhaps do more research. As a result, we might abandon or modify our original assertions. If, however, truth is subjective, if truth is what is true for each individual, we will not undertake this shared enterprise seeking a better understanding of the truth. Thousands dead is true for you. Nobody died is true for me. End of story. It’s all relative.

          The notion that truth was relative wedged its way into a wider world and crept into many areas of thought outside of academia. For example, Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote: “What is true is what is true for you. No one has any right to force data on you and command you to believe it or else. If it is not true for you, it isn’t true. Think your own way through things, accept what is true for you, discard the rest. There is nothing unhappier than one who tries to live in a chaos of lies.” (Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.)

          It also entered an Ivy League seminar room. I don’t remember the topic discussion for the class I was recently leading, but when I called on one student, she said, “Don’t you want to know what my opinion is?” I snapped “No!” The bright young woman had a shocked look. Surely her opinion was valuable. Others around the table were concerned. Many looked as if this was the first time a student opinion was rejected. I went on to say, “I want your facts; your information. What relevant experiences have you had? Then you can tell me how your opinion arises out of those data.” She went silent. But in a world where truth is subjective, all opinions are equally valid, and she probably thought that I should have allowed her to present her truth no matter how it was derived. (I got one bad teaching evaluation from this seminar. I assume that it was she, but that is just my opinion; I don’t have facts to back it up.)

          Postmodern thinking has affected diplomats. Michiko Kakutani’s book The Death of Truth quotes a Russian propagandist. “All narratives are contingent, Surkov suggested, and all politicians are liars; therefore, the alternative facts put out by the Kremlin (and by Donald Trump) are just as valid as everyone else’s.” Surkov “invoked Derrida-inspired arguments about the unreliability of language—to suggest that Western notions of truthfulness and transparency are naïve and unsophisticated.”

          Postmodernist thinking even invaded science. On The Big Bang Theory it is a laugh line when Penny’s not-overly-bright boyfriend says to Leonard and the rest of the Caltech crowd: “Agree to disagree. That’s what I love about science. There’s no right answer.” But supposedly bright people began to maintain that science was merely socially constructed and that science could not claim to be neutral. Science could not seek universal truths because it was fatally affected by a scientist’s identity and cultural values. (Tell that to the scientist spouse and watch her seethe!)

          One of my leftist academic colleagues adopted this anti-science position. The United States Supreme Court had written an opinion about what scientific evidence could be admitted into trials. I appeared with my colleague on a panel at a neighboring law school discussing this decision. My colleague denigrated the decision by glibly saying that science like other knowledge was merely “socially constructed” and subjective. On the other hand, I knew that she had taken an elevator to the conference room, and I wondered if she truly thought that the principles that allowed that lift to ascend and descend were mere subjective social constructions. If we truly believed that there was no objective scientific truth, we could not operate in the world. No one really believes what she was trying to peddle. Instead, a more sophisticated approach might have allowed that science does not produce absolute truths because it is always trying to refine its knowledge or that scientific funding, which influences what gets studied, can be affected by cultural and society forces. But we all know that there is a universal truth behind the physics of gravity and friction.

(continued January 10)