Motus Mentis

Another day, another insane violent leftist bent on partisan violence. (I refer, of course, to today’s foiled attempt to assassinate Donald Trump — the second in two months.)

Say what you like about Carl Schmitt, but the man had a keen eye for the truths of human nature. I’ve posted this quote before, but it seems apt to do so again:

Let us assume that in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable. The question then is whether there is also a special distinction which can serve as a simple criterion of the political and of what it consists. The nature of such a political distinction is surely different from that of those others. It is independent of them and as such can speak clearly for itself. The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.

The Concept of the Political (1932), p. 26

Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy.

Ibid, p. 37

That’s from a post I wrote back in April, prompted by a neighbor who referred to me as a “Trumper” (which is slightly more neighborly than “MAGAt”, I suppose, but in a Schmittian sense, hardly at all).

An excerpt:

In healthy and cohesive societies, with high homogeneity and trust, and the commonalities of culture, heritage, language, folkways, philosophical axioms, and moral principles that bind mobs into nations, the realm of the political can remain relatively small, confining itself to questions about which policies will most effectively implement generally agreed-upon goals. When, however, these commonalities break down, the sphere of the political expands to include almost every aspect of life, especially in large, managerial states, such as the United States has become, in which power once largely distributed to local communities has mostly been surrendered to the central government.

This has two important consequences. First, because decisions that affect everyone are now administered by the central State, control of that governing apparatus matters far more than it does in more subsidiarian societies. Second, as more and more of civic life is forced into the realm of the political, the essential characteristic of the political — the “friend-enemy distinction” — comes increasingly to the fore, and those with whom you might once have simply disagreed about, say, highway-budget priorities or zoning bylaws now become your enemy.

This in turn has further consequences. It’s in the nature of how we think about enemies that we seek to simplify them, to reduce them, to boil off their human complexities in order to avoid the natural tendency, in decent human beings, to have qualms about wishing others harm and ill-fortune.

So, this is where we are. It seems apt, also, to quote Clausewitz’s best-known passage:

War is a mere continuation of policy by other means… War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.

As I’ve said elsewhere, nobody should hope for civil war. But since the shooting has started anyway, I guess we’ll just have to see where it goes from there, and hope for the best. But remember:

“Si vis pacem, para bellum.”

Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure I’ll be voting for the guy these people keep trying to kill.