Analysis, Commentary, Opinion
09.15.2018
Relativism and Donald J. Trump
Trump
stepped in it this week when he questioned the official death toll for the
disaster that befell Puerto Rico last year, in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Nearly
three thousand Americans died during and in the aftermath of that storm, most
of the deaths occurred after the storm, in the midst of the ridiculously inept
response by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). The power grid failed,
and the lack of electricity led to deaths, especially from the elderly, due to
heat exposure and dehydration, for lack of potable drinking water.
It
was a mess, and while it is true that the government of Puerto Rico bears some
responsibility for its lack of preparedness, the federal response was an absolute
failure.
The
numbers for the official death toll in Puerto Rico last year were only recently
reported. The late reporting does not lead to inaccurate results, in fact the
type of study that produced these numbers provides the most accurate results.
An
exhaustive survey was conducted, hospital records were examined, the records
from local law enforcement and emergency medicine providers was sifted through,
families were interviewed, death certificates were produced. When all of that work
was done the data gets processed by a set of statistical mechanics,
In
the end they determine how people died in the aftermath of the storm and how many
would have died in a normal year, and while this is a gross simplification of
the statistical analysis, the difference between the two numbers speaks to the
actual death toll of the hurricane, people who died who otherwise would not
have died.
This
is a valid analysis, but the relativism of Donald Trump, which is not unique to
him or to his wing of the republican party, it is proof against this kind of
information, and any arguments based on such data sets.
Let
us not forget that the right wing, denies that human beings are changing the
climate of planet earth, many of them believe that the earth id flat, that we
never went to the moon, and that the universe is only a little more than six
thousand years old, whil at the same time believing that human beings once
walked with the dinosaurs.
This
insidious relativism does not just infect the T-Rump and his minions.
The
same type of statistical analysis was used to arrive at the real death toll of
the Second Gulf war. The American Media and many political pundits on both the
right and the left are scoffing at T-Rump now, but they did not cover the story
of the real body count from the Second Gulf War, they gave it no play at all, they
buried the story. Politicians on the left and the right, many of whom are still
in office, they buried it. They refused to hold the Bush administration
accountable.
They
did this because the data, compiled by John’s Hopkins University, with
statistical analysis conducted by MIT, and with the report published in the
LANCET (The British Journal of Medicine), was devastating to the cause of the
United States in that conflict. That report estimated that as many as 800,000
people died as a result of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Iraq
ministry of Health, controlled at the time by the Interim U.S. Government, put
the number at about 88,000, which is still a devastating number but only one tenth
of the actual.
T-Rump
is not the first person to retreat into relativism when he dies not like the
story, most of the pundits who are crying foul this week, are guilty of the
same thing, right and left.
While
T-Rump is a particularly easy mark to fault for this, because he lies almost
incessantly, his lack of a commitment to veracity, and the unconcerned response
to it by his followers is not unique to the right wing. In fact, the historical
beginning of their relativistic view of the world begin with the intellectual
left, and are a product of many notable philosopher such as, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.
We
get what we play for, and in T-Rump we can see that the chicken has come home
to roost.
