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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 11/20/16

Humility, Anyone?

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In Lisa Fullam's view, the characteristics of humility include that "it builds communities and cultivates a morally attentive other-centeredness" -- characteristics that are at odds with the Trump's successful campaign rhetoric (page 172).

Not surprisingly, Aquinas does not use twentieth-century terminology about psychopaths and/or sociopaths. But he does use certain other terminology that could be used to characterize Trump.

For example, according to Lisa Fullam, Aquinas "constructed humility as a restraining virtue on the appetite for our own greatness" -- an appetite that Trump has been cultivating for most of his adult life, and an appetite he encouraged his supporters to embrace with his campaign slogan of "Make America Great Again" (page 119).

The goal of humility is not to discourage us from desiring greatness or from undertaking great projects, but to direct us to pursue personal expressions of greatness that are pro-social and other-centered.

Now, as Sam Wang shows in his post-election review of the election results, Hillary is also in need of "a heavy dose of humility." Like many other post-election commentators, he notes that if 55,000 Trump supporters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had cast their votes instead for Hillary, she would have emerged with a narrow victory.

However, as Sam Wang points out, "Mrs. Clinton did not even visit Wisconsin after the Democratic convention." Oops. In 20/20 hindsight, that looks like political hubris on her part. Humility is an antidote for hubris. Bring on "a heavy dose of humility" for Hillary, eh?

In the Republican presidential primary in Wisconsin, Trump had not emerged victorious. However, he subsequently chose Governor Mike Pence of Indiana as his running mate, and then the Trump/Pence ticket emerged victorious in Wisconsin and in certain other crucial battleground states.

In nearby Minnesota, where I live, Trump also did not emerge victorious in the Republican presidential primary, which Senator Marco Rubio of Florida emerged as the winner. In the Democratic presidential primary, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont emerged as the winner in Minnesota. But in the general election, Hillary narrowly beat Trump in Minnesota.

Because Hillary championed legalized abortion, we should note that many white Protestants and Catholics who have been anti-abortion zealots voted for Trump, who made big-sounding statements against legalized abortion. He is not known as a religious person. But the anti-abortion zealots who voted for him in Wisconsin and certain other crucial battleground states were evidently not especially concerned about that.

Exits polls reported that 52% of Catholic voters voted for Trump. Your guess is as good as mine as to how reliable those exits polls are.

Perhaps by putting Pence on his ticket, Trump shrewdly enhanced his attractiveness, at least symbolically, to the anti-abortion zealots who in the end voted for him.

However, I seriously doubt if the pollsters polled likely voters about their attitudes regarding legalized abortion, even though this continues to be a hot-button issue politically.

Incidentally, Garry Wills, a practicing Catholic, has pointed out that Aquinas would not embrace the mistaken notion that distinctively human life begins at the moment of conception. On the contrary, Aquinas almost certainly would embrace the standard articulated by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade in 1973 -- the viability of the fetus to live and survive outside the mother's womb.

In theory, humility might help temper anti-abortion zealotry. But the end of anti-abortion zealotry does not appear to be in sight.

In conclusion, first, Sam Wang ate a bug on CNN as a form of public humiliation and punishment, Next, he publicly explained his humiliating mistakes in an op-ed in the New York Times and promised to teach his spring course at Princeton with "a heavy dose of humility." Perhaps "a heavy dose of humility" will help safeguard him against future public humiliations on television and in print. As a rule of thumb, public humiliation often signals a need to cultivate humility.

In C. G. Jung's terminology, all American voters today carry within us a collective unconscious in which we somehow carry within us deep collective memories of our human ancestors' honor-shame cultural orientations. Shame typically involves humiliation.

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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