Tale of Two Ts: What the Philosopher Can Teach the President, Teil 2
Todorov also had something else to teach our present Tweeter-in-Chief. “He always refused to make superficial comments — or to react immediately after an event,” Olivier Postel-Vinay, founder of the French magazine Books, recalled after the philosopher’s death on Tuesday. “He used to write a monthly column for Books, and I remember that this monthly pace was something very stressful for him. He wanted more time to think. He was worried about the growing superficiality of the so-called analysis in the media and on TV.”
More time to think. Something the world of Twitter, along with that of the 24-hour news cycle, could decidedly use more of… something we all might make more use of.
Clearly, our present Commander in Chief is not one to waste precious time with such useless diversions as reading. But a glimpse or two into Todorov’s opus at this particular time in history might indeed prove useful. „The fear of barbarians,“ Todorov wrote in his similarly-titled opus, „is what risks making us barbarian. And we will commit a worse evil than that which we initially feared. History teaches us this lesson: the cure can be worse than the disease. (italics mine) Totalitarian regimes presented themselves as a means for curing bourgeois society of its failings; they created a more dangerous world than they were fighting against.“
Policies like those presently being carelessly embarked on by the Trump administration, Todorov warned, „lead[s] to a twofold failure: They makes the enemy stronger, and make us weaker. This is first and foremost because the aggression to which it is a response is not a matter of states but of individuals… who cannot be reached by massive bombings or army occupation.“
Or, I would suggest, can they be reached by immigration bans as well.
„In addition,“ the now-dead philosopher continued, „this policy destroys the Western world from within, since, in order to defend the democratic values that we cherish, we are led to abandon them! (italics mine)
Doesn’t it make sense, then, that every time I hear our present Chief Executive speak these days, I hear the voice of Tzvetan Todorov instead. Would that Mr. Trump might listen to it as well.