Strange bedfellows in history
Machiavelli and Franklin and several more
Most people are at least familiar with the name Machiavelli. I studied The Prince in high school and again in university and still have the book.
I’ve been writing about power the last couple of days, and I thought I’d find my copy of the Florentine’s 16th-century treatise on power and politics, take it off the shelf, and peruse it. A few things stood out.
Lots of my own marginalia.
Not that my handwriting is great now, but it appears I wrote with a child’s hand, lo those 30 years ago.
I had no idea how to take notes, but I’m glad I did.
Marking important passages with the highlighter looked like the best thing I did with that book.
My impression from the first time I read The Prince was that its underlying philosophy should not have been taught at a nominally Catholic high school or university. But to be fair, there were many more egregious examples that should have deserved attention first.
Ban books? “Who do you think you are? Ron DeSantis?”
Banning has a negative connotation, but my objection is more about the inability of some instructors or students to parse through the nuance of the prose.
We read about a moral code in The Prince, but one in the Christian context that is understood to be avoided rather than embraced.
Why? Primarily because the author takes immorality for granted and justifies such behavior—or at least appears to do so—if it results in achieving more political power. He separates completely “public” and “private” morality.
Frankly, that’s something I still can’t cotton to.
Keep in mind, I first read this tome in the early Clinton years—prior to the cigar, blue dress, and all the rest of it. I abhorred the then-president and all he stood for. Still do, in fact.
Within the Clintonian context, I was “trying hard to make the whole thing blend,” as Van Morrison sang.
The treatise is not, however, a manual for wickedness. Reading it over again, there are some prescient insights. Machiavelli was good at the “if this, then that” scenarios.
Although I cannot find mention of the specific idea, he was talking about “tradeoffs” in many of the situations he described. At its core, this is economics, really, more than the ambiguous term of “political science.”
For instance, in Chapter IX (The civil principality) Machiavelli writes:
A man who becomes ruler through the help of the nobles will find it harder to maintain his power than one who becomes ruler through the help of the people, because he is surrounded by many men who consider that they are his equals, and therefore he cannot give them orders or deal with them as he would wish. On the other hand, a man who becomes ruler through popular support finds himself standing alone, having around him nobody or very few not disposed to obey him.
To couch it in today’s politics, the former describes Joseph R. Biden and the latter Donald J. Trump.
Consider the entire political apparatus and the legacy media as “the nobles.”
Ice Cream Joe has many men who not only consider themselves as his equal, but indeed know they are superior to him in any number of ways (particularly intelligence). If you hear people say that “Joe Biden isn’t really running the country,” it is easy to figure by using this method of analysis.
Alternately, The Donald had a groundswell of popular support in 2016 and 2020. Virtually zero support from the nobles so-called.
Trump stood alone, almost literally. Very few would obey him.
To prevent another Donald Rising, the nobles have doubled down and Trump stands largely alone once more. He could still “win” the 2024 election, but what chance does he stand to meaningfully govern?
Furthermore, is Biden the puppet many of us believe him to be? Machiavelli says,
Moreover, the nobles cannot be satisfied if a ruler acts honorably, without injuring others. But the people can be thus satisfied, because their aims are more honourable than those of the nobles: for the latter want only to oppress and the former only to avoid being oppressed.
Biden, thus, is not an honorable actor. There is no incentive for him to be, according to Machiavelli, the “father of political science.”
Let’s examine, in the words of the Florentine philosopher himself, what another Trump term may portend…
Furthermore, a ruler can never protect himself from a hostile people, because there are too many of them; but he can protect himself from the nobles because there are few of them.
Today’s nobles, perhaps like those in Renaissance Italy are powerful, but not all that impressive.
As Hal Holbrook’s Deep Throat character says about the fellows in Richard Nixon’s White House in All the President’s Men (1976), “The truth is, these are not very bright guys…”
But it doesn’t matter if they are bright or not, they wield power.
In the case of Trump and Nixon, the “nobles” leveraged their power through the media infrastructure they built into turning a good portion of the “people” into hostile actors.
The noble Woodward and Bernstein fit Deep Throat’s description as well. Not all that bright, but pawns in the game, now seen as heroes to the noble class as they made it to the back of the board—promoted.
It makes no difference that the “noble” class was (and is) remarkably more corrupt and devious than anything Nixon or Trump could have imagined.
As stated earlier in the week, “Democrats are terrific at gaining power through political means … Republicans are terrible.”
The nobles and the hostile mind-controlled people win these battles. We—the hoi polloi—nevertheless suffer.
Now, in a rational world, the upcoming choice for the 2024 presidential election is like that of Buridan’s ass, a paradox that describes a donkey suffering equally from hunger and thirst and who is placed precisely in the middle, betwixt a stack of hay and a trough of water.
If he chooses water, the animal dies of hunger. Food instead? The beast dies of dehydration.
A rational decision cannot be made.
Thus, the ass chooses neither and dies of both hunger and thirst.
But we live in an increasingly irrational world, while the calculus here in the “real world” is also not so simple. It’s “non-binary,” to use the parlance of our times.
I guess I’ve also got until the fall to endorse (or not) any candidate I see fit. This is not the time.
What it is time for, though, is to start thinking in terms of power.
Not the rank, immoral political attempts at securing a job or sphere of influence, but defeating these people at their own game—morally, ethically…and kindly.
You are not required to be “nice” about it. Kind is fine, but nice holds no currency in the real world.
In these pages a while back, I revealed the first of O’Leary’s Laws: Nice is not a virtue.
Mollycoddles, for instance, prefer nice over the truth and mollycoddles are powerless.
How do we gain power in our personal lives so that it makes it easier to disregard the shenanigans in Washington?
Improve the way you communicate. We can all learn something. (Even I can afford to “massage” my language every now and then.)
Do you want help in that arena? Our new program, the Inner Sphere, is a virtual mastermind program, with our first round specifically designed with communication in mind.
What’s a mastermind? It is a support team, a focus group, a brainstorming group, and more … all rolled into one. A group of people with the same goal.
In our first cohort, we are focusing on improving communication, in particular:
The written word.
Spoken word.
Video.
Ideas and topics that revolve around these three pillars.
Everyone will bring both their strengths and weaknesses into the group. Members then leverage the strengths of others to eliminate or curtail their own weaknesses.
We all become better for it. The model is as old as human society, and it works. It’s powerful stuff.
Benjamin Franklin started his “JUNTO,” a mastermind also known as the Leather Apron Club, in 1727 and it lasted for about 40 years. Their group was focused on self-improvement. Franklin wrote in his Autobiography:
[W]e met on Friday evenings. The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy [physics], to be discuss’d by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased.
We’ll be doing some of the same things that the colonial polymath implemented with his people. Some of what we do will be modernized, of course. Computers, for instance. Leather aprons optional.
It might not be for you, however. Every few months we will come together around a different goal. Maybe a future session is up your alley…
Fair warning… after those 4 decades of meetings, that blue-collar group of tradesmen and artisans—definitely not the nobles or elites of the day—gave way to what we now know as the American Philosophical Society.
We’re launching the first one of these things later this spring. Improving communication is our mission and purpose for the initial go-round.
For more information and to be one of the first on the list, go to:
http://OLearyMastermind.com
You never know, 300 years later, like Franklin and his band of workingmen, you might be known as one of the folks who made a substantial impact on the future of this culture.
Only one way to find out. Start now.
As always,
Brian
P.S. — If you sign up for more information at OLearyMastermind.com, I’ve also been giving away a copy of my e-book, Run at Thunder, Volume 1: Lessons in Portland & Oregon History.
If you don’t want any help improving your life but still just want a good bit of an entertaining romp through the 19th and 20th centuries, the link for the free e-book is here: