In the human journey to create the most peaceful, stable, and perfect society, the ancients considered many issues, conditions, and regimes to govern themselves. In Book IV of The Republic of Plato, Socrates, while brainstorming a perfect society with his students, suggests that if virtues like wisdom, moderation, and courage were established in a city there would be no need for laws. Further, that if each man pursued his particular and unique skills to the best of his ability to affect what economists later termed “division of labor” and “economic specialization” while taking care to manage his appetites by his commitments to reason and goodness, that a natural harmony—a state of justice—would prevail.

More than two thousand years later, our founders had a more skeptical view and laid down a Declaration and Constitution to provide a framework within which laws would be made to guide and guard our pursuit of living in peace and harmony. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson both maintained lists of virtues they frequently reviewed to assess their compliance and self-govern their characters. These lists and the founding documents of our nation were strongly influenced by the ancients (in particular Cicero) as well as English and Scottish philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Franklin suggested the founders had given us a “republic if you can keep it” at the time of our nation’s birth. In our nearly two-and-a-half centuries of the American experiment we have kept it. In the election of 2024, a majority of us selected a leader who, unlike the ancients and our founders, has no apparent subscription to any virtues (let alone a discernible conscience) and believes norms and laws—in addition to serving in our military—are for “suckers and losers.” My, how far we have fallen.

Trump’s conceit of contempt targets virtues and laws in the nature of elitist arrogance that holds he is above following any rules meant for people lesser than he, what the Greeks called the hoi poloi, meaning the masses. As a result, whether or not our republic makes it to a third century is now a serious concern. A rogue virtue-free leader may appeal to America’s maverick mythology, but also risks all we have built as the exemplar of freedom in the world. In the next four years, we may look more like Victor Orban’s Hungary than the United States of America. One might feel that our founders would be extremely disappointed, but I expect they would also be surprised the republic lasted this long; late-life correspondence between Jefferson and John Adams shows that founders didn’t believe the republic would make it out of the 19^th century.

However, in the election of 2024, this conceit of contempt was not only expressed by Trump. It was at the core of the losing campaign by Harris and the Democrats, albeit of a different nature with different targets. Their conceit of contempt was an elitist form of judgment deployed with the blame ‘n shame game, which can be an effective form of manipulation (commonly deployed by organized religions), but not a successful method of persuasion. Their targets were not virtues and laws, they were voters. Trump certainly also aims his contempt at people—his enemies—but not at his supporters. He brings his supporters alongside his own (baseless) victimhood as their protector. He forms a duplicitous yet sturdy bond with them. His contempt acted to attract voters, while Harris’s acted to repel voters.

In my last post, the Sunday before the election, I suggested that “Trump could win—maybe even by a large electoral margin” due in no small part to Harris’s mistakes. Many of my Democrat readers let me know how much they did not like my prediction. Fair enough, but I am compelled by my own center of gravity to write things as I see them—as they are, rather than the way I might wish them to be. I also suggested that “Four more years of Trump will be devastating for our country and the world.” If we consider ourselves proper guardians of our republic, we must understand how to appeal to people in a persuasive manner. Understanding this is really fairly simple; it is based in the nature of how humans support and curate their egos. Then we have to give them a reason to identify (in a healthy way) with better candidates.

At the essence of human flourishing is a healthy sense of self-worth. If this essential element of personhood is not established early in life, destructive behaviors to one’s self and others are inevitable; all in a twisted and nearly-always futile attempt to fill the void where worthiness belongs. In relationships, those lacking a strong sense of self have little hope of ever forming an intimate, authentic, and strong bond with another human. Those so afflicted are like human wrecking balls in social structures, especially families.

Among Americans today, who we are and why we are—our sense of worth—is in abject jeopardy. It is a borderline epidemic and insidious human tragedy; especially tragic (and perplexing) considering that we live in an age of abundance. From anxious to angry to chronically depressed, many Americans feel like victims; they feel unworthy. “Woe is me” is not conducive to a healthy mindset. These people are always looking for external affirmation inasmuch as self-affirmation is difficult to impossible. Incidentally, this condition frames the fundamental appeal of cults, which a number of sociologists have suggested fits the MAGA movement, referring to it as a “cult of personality.”

All humans strive to feel good about themselves. Those with fragile egos often seek psychic nourishment beyond their immediate social support system by a referent. Referents come in many forms through the processes of self-identification that shape and continually curate the ego. They are those things—usually persons or ideas or beliefs—that without acknowledging and understanding make it impossible to completely consider who someone is, or at least who they would like us to believe they are.

Trump (who himself struggles with a fragile ego) has become a referent for many Americans who are fed up with the conceit of contempt many political movements and campaigns—including too often Harris’s—used to target them. Trump identified with voter’s sense of victimhood and offered them absolution through him in much the same manner Jesus Christ offered absolution to his followers. It was a slick con. His supporters will learn soon enough that, unlike Christ, he couldn’t care less about them. He is, and always will be, concerned only with himself. Disgruntled Americans (most bizarrely many evangelicals) might have chosen a deity with a durable track record, like Christ, but opted for a con-man from Queens.

The blame ‘n shame game has been central to many political movements like the environmental/climate change movement, Occupy Wall Street, Me Too, calls for reparations, Black Lives Matter, and others. Mostly considered Liberal movements, or movements of the Democratic Party. Similarly, as we saw in the later stages of Harris’s campaign, the Obamas in particular were dispatched to shame men—particularly black men—to vote for her. Women were also targeted with a sense of gender-allegiant guilt (as they were in Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign) to vote for Harris. These movements and campaigns have another thing in common other than being somewhere between less-than-successful and outright failures: they each prove that a conceit of contempt is no way to affect persuasion in human beings.

This is the subtle yet deep and instructive lesson of the 2024 election. Notwithstanding the proclaimed brilliance of party loyalists, pundits, columnists, and pollsters who have been making their many and varied claims of election omniscience after the fact, none of them I have read have a clue when it comes to this lesson that actually produced the election results this year.  None recognize that this conceit of contempt in America is endemic and toxic—across both political parties and all segments of our society. They apparently are blind and/or numb to its pervasive rampancy.

If you have followed my posts over the last few years, you know I continually advocate for lifting people up to persuade them to follow a virtues-founded course in life. The ancients did get that part right, and while our founders worried about the prospect of divisive “factions,” they also recognized the extraordinary opportunity for a union in a free land characterized by abundant resources. In the political realm, I have recommended Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign of 1984 as a model for politicians to follow forty years later. Alas, what we face now is mourning for America.

In life, we often toggle between enjoy (to be in-joy) and endure (in this usage to be in-suffering). This conceit of contempt—regardless who deploys it—is responsible for much of the social, economic, and political destruction we must now endure. I would say shame on us, but I recognize blame ‘n shame does not put anyone on a path to en-joy.

America today is a sad society. The barbarians are at the gate, although they are not arriving from beyond our borders, they are from within the republic. Socrates would probably call us “feverish” and “unhealthy,” which are inherently unstable and ungovernable conditions. We seem locked-in to our preferences for contempt over respect, suspicion over trust, falsehood over truth, and delusion over reality. Further, we cannot deal with anything except very short-term issues, leaving the substantial but longer-term issues of our national debt and climate change beyond our capacity to consider.

A superpower must lead to maintain its relative power in the international system. In today’s America, we are stuck in a cycle of reactivity swinging our fists at each other and perceived boogeymen that are like ghosts lurking in the shadows. Not exactly enlightened or reliable leadership. We need to get our act together and soon. Our allies are deeply concerned and our adversaries can’t wait to see us fall.

The stakes are high and there is much work to do. We must work on ourselves first—we must heal our own dispositions—then work with each other. Above all else, we need to set aside our contempt for each other. There is no better time to begin repairing and restoring ourselves and our society than in the present moment—regardless of who is president. Waiting four more years may render our republic beyond any prospect of restoration.