All the King's Men

Currently reading a book on Ike and Dick. Inscrutable man that Ike behind his boyish friendly old man grin. Treated Dick atrociously, but then Dick was used to that, because his whole life long nobody liked him.

I guess we could loosely call utilitarianism the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, which leaves a lot of wiggle room, one of the greatest weaknesses of the theory. And I may not be exactly correct, but from my Philosophy 101 knowledge the stoics were a group of Romans who believed the world was too complicated and corrupt to deal with, so the path that wise man should choose is to keep himself morally straight and the hell with the rest of the world.

This is the contrast I want to make, between those who want to deal with the world and all it’s dirtiness and get themselves dirty too to remake it the way they want it to be, and those who see it as a lost cause and are more interested in keeping themselves pure.

And I want to take it to politics by comparing the ideologues who have a philosophy that appeals to them and that they think is morally right, and if it were just followed then it would be a better world, and politicians are judged by their willingness to follow or oppose that philosophy, and on the other hand the utilitarians, who in the words of one of my favorite characters, Willy Stark, from All the King’s Men, something like, “You want to make good in the world you gotta make it out of the bad, because that’s mostly what is there, you gotta get your hands dirty, you gotta deal with crooks, you gotta do a little bad yourself, or else you won’t get nothing done.”

What Willy is doing when he says this, something like this, I am just paraphrasing, is defending some crooked deal which would make some rich guy richer but also benefit the poor people. In the book/movie Willy goes from an idealistic honest guy who, as he rises to power, cuts a deal here, cuts a deal there, gets more and more corrupt until he is a despot. Power corrupts. Willy is based on Huey Long of Louisiana, himself a very interesting character. Very good movie based on it made in 1949, there is a later version with Sean Penn, but I hear it is pretty crappy.

Maybe the way to say it is the stoic believes it is a nation of laws, and the utilitarian believes it is a nation of men making laws, and if you want to get anything done you have to work with men who are imperfect vessels, while the stoic would wash his hands of these imperfect vessels and retire to some marsh in northern Michigan.

That’s the argument I am trying to set up.

I don’t think your idea of compromise is realistic. It’s not like I have my plan and you have yours and we split it down the middle because fair is fair. Nothing really fair about it. Each side tries to get the best deal they think they can get away with. If one side is more powerful, they get the bigger share. What you have to choose from is getting nothing done, or getting whatever you think you can settle for.

The law is not a single thing that is either broken or not broken. There are many laws and there are many interpretations of them. If the reps thought Obama was breaking the law they would be bringing a case against him instead of hollering insults on Twitter or whatever.