The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent
“Easy is the descent to the lower depths; but to retrace your steps and to escape to the upper air — this is the task, this is the toil.” — Virgil
In essence, what Virgil is describing is degradation and decline — whether of an individual and his soul or of a nation and its soul — and, again, per Virgil, how easily degradation and decline can happen both to individual and to nation, mainly through inattention to the task.
Which is why I have titled my recent ongoing series of commentary, Can America Save Itself from Decline? This series soon extends from volumes I and II to Volume III.
In the case of America, loss of soul would mean loss of the singular idea animating our origins as a democracy — a form of government that elevates the individual over a king or a throne. With the individual so central to the conception of democracy, the individual citizen must remain ever vigilant of his high task, as poet Walt Whitman wrote in “Democratic Vistas,” his vision of democracy’s soul. And if the individual were a citizen of a superpower such as America, he must tutor himself on the responsible exercise of that superpower.
On “the moral obligation to be intelligent” — Lionel Trilling
But at present, it is the case, is it not, that fully one-third of the electorate, or 30,00,00 citizens, tell pollsters they are committed to casting their vote for Donald J. Trump, convicted felon with 34 indicted counts and a pathological liar whose recent press conference was lie upon lie, some of very old vintage, whose idea of a novel foreign policy would be to tell Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who’s currently trying to wipe Ukraine off the map, that he (Putin) can do “whatever the hell they want” to his delinquent NATO neighbors, an admission Trump would not abide by the defense treaty’s Article Five promising to come to the mutual aid of our treaty allies.
What an irresponsible exercise of a superpower’s foreign policy! As for the citizen’s vote, what an irresponsible waste of the precious franchise!
When I first read the literary critic Lionel Trilling quote about “the moral obligation to be intelligent” — it is the title of a book of his essays — I thought, yes, how apt to cast the idea of being intelligent as a moral obligation, because there are indeed times when the choice to be intelligent is morally obligatory, bearing on the rightness and wrongness of things, like the opportunity coming up in November, i.e., to vote.
Is it really conceivable that a third of our electorate would vote a convicted felon into the highest office in the land and the most powerful job in the world? Not if the electorate takes their duty to vote as a moraI obligation, one bearing on right and wrong.
Because if America is in decline — and it is — all our choices to hoist ourselves out of decline must be intelligent. And it would not be intelligent to vote for a convicted felon in this instance.
And in this instance, I address myself principally to Republicans, who in their recent national convention dedicated themselves to a felon, Donald Trump — in a group rapture, it seemed, so the dedication to Trump must be particularly potent.
Question: How can people as ostensibly intelligent as Republicans claim to be, compared to Democrats, believe all the bilge Trump spoons to them? Like the first pillar in the Trump canon of grievances, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, when even Trump’s own election officials said the 2020 election was “the most secure” ever in our country’s history? And how can Republicans believe the January 6th rampage of the U.S. Capitol was a mere sight-seeing tour and how can the Republican National Committee call the rampage “legitimate political discourse”? And yet the RNC censured Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for serving on the January 6th Committee investigating the insurrection which Mr. Trump incited. (These now former members of Congress engaged in illegitimate political discourse?)
And now that President Joe Biden has stepped down as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and now that Vice President Kamala Harris has stepped up — to wildly enthusiastic crowds, and has snared the nomination, with equally enthusiastic crowds greeting her pick of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate — expect Republicans to engage in an alternative history of recent events with even greater audacity, because they are desperate. My fellow Americans: Please, exercise your intelligence and don’t believe any of it! And, please, don’t pledge allegiance to any part of Project 2025, the Trumpians’ plan to destroy American democracy.
During my year of graduate school abroad (in Italy) I always defended my fellow Americans as having a native intelligence that would never, ever allow them to fall in line with a Hitler or a Mussolini. But now, I see that belief of mine in Americans’ greater native intelligence was just a myth, a cultural myth. Because now I see far too many Americans — perhaps a critical mass? — are ready to fall in line with a dictator, because Donald Trump shows every tendency of becoming a dictator (he has even announced his intention.)
The moral obligation to be intelligent: If — if — we take the obligation to be intelligent as a moral one, we can avert tragedy in the near term — by not voting a felon and would-be dictator into the White House in November — and, similarly, in the longer term, if we continue to act intelligently, we can save our democracy and reverse our decline.
Let’s do this, people!
