There is so much to be said about the current unpleasantness, which we may soon be referring to as “the crisis,” that it’s paralyzing. How does one say anything without saying everything?

One lesson is that prudence is a moral virtue. A failing of advanced modernity has been the tendency to treat prudence as an intellectual virtue (to use Aristotelian language) rather than a moral one. Prudence does involve intellectual excellences but it also involves moral ones.

There would have been no room for Trump if one (1) of the more respectable candidates had moved to assuage popular anxieties about immigration and, more broadly, national identity and solidarity. This could very easily have been done in a responsible way, without catering to racism or nativism, or endorsing unwise proposals. Indeed, much of the I Have a Dream speech is devoted to countering a reliance on racism for national identity and solidarity by constructing non-racist sources of national identity and solidarity. We must do the same.

Why did not one of the other candidates take this prudent course of action? Because the party donors didn’t want them to, and our politics is dominated by idolatry of money. The power of agency and control over events is attributed not to the decison-making capacities of image-bearing human beings, but to the dumb idols made by human hands known as dollars.

Ironically, part of Trump’s shrewdness has been his recognition of how much it is possible to do in American politics, given the right conditions, without having to spend nearly as much money as is normally spent. As a result, the donors are now bowing the knee to a candidate rather than vice versa. The irony is almost biblical (the only thing about Trump that could be said to be so).

Coming soon: rationality as a moral virtue. Here is the reading assignment. Come to class having read that article and prepared to discuss its relevance to the current unpleasantness.