Let me begin by saying I don’t believe that countries should be ruled by philosopher kings.
For one thing, this is a moot point: a typical king (president, prime minister, dictator) can’t be a philosopher, whereas a real philosopher wouldn’t want to be a king.
The concept first appeared in Plato’s Republic, but the republic he knew first-hand, Athens, only had 250,000 inhabitants at its peak. That’s roughly the population of Exeter, the county town of Devon.
So yes, hypothetically a mayor of Exeter could be a closet philosopher, while discharging his low-level duties with distinction. But when you look at countries the size of the US, Britain or France, the appearance of a philosopher leader is unlikely to say the least.
I’d even go so far as to suggest that, should one such leader miraculously appear, he’d quickly turn despotic. Philosophers tend to believe that their doctrines represent absolute truth. When they find themselves in power, they realise that isn’t the case, become disappointed and usually take it out on the people.
Plato believed that philosophical study could produce absolute knowledge, which he considered a job requirement for a king. Actually, the only philosopher king I can think of was Marcus Aurelius (d. 180 BC), the Roman emperor who was a Stoic thinker in the afterhours.
Still, Rome in his day had roughly the population of today’s Birmingham, and at a stretch I can imagine a philosopher running its affairs. He certainly couldn’t do a worse job than today’s city council. Still, the same objection applies: a million inhabitants is one thing, but 50, 100, 300 million is quite another – qualitatively, not just quantitatively.
Having said all that, let’s agree that, while today’s politicians can’t and shouldn’t be expected to possess absolute knowledge, they must be knowledgeable relatively, say within the limits of a secondary school curriculum.
That’s not too much to expect, is it? Yet even this modest expectation doesn’t seem to be met in the country that’s supposed to lead the West.
For example, when the Ukraine and Russia swapping territory was the talk of the town, or at least the talk of Trump, the president promised that he’d make sure the Ukraine got “oceanfront property”. Since the Ukraine has never in her history had access to any ocean, I thought Trump was perhaps planning to cede to the Ukraine the north-western part of Spain.
It’s called Galicia, as is a western province of the Ukraine. However, I doubt the Spanish government would be sufficiently convinced by such nominalist considerations to agree to that transaction. Of course, another, likelier possibility is that the Donald has never bothered to look at the map of the world in general and Europe in particular.
The other day, he confirmed that suspicion. “Crimea,” he said, “is the size of Texas, washed by the ocean.” I think doing business with casinos in Atlantic City has given Trump a fixation with large bodies of salt water.
In fact, unlike Atlantic City, the Crimea is washed not by an ocean but by the Black Sea. And Texas is 26 times larger than that picturesque peninsula.
If I were in the business of offering unsolicited advice, I’d suggest that the president acquire some knowledge of secondary school geography before taking on the role of the world’s saviour. Otherwise, he might indeed end up demanding that Spain’s Galicia become part of its Ukrainian namesake.
Trump’s VP, JD Vance, is widely believed to be his likeliest successor – provided of course that the Donald doesn’t refuse to leave the White House when his term expires. One way or the other, the dynasty of woeful ignorance is to live on.
“If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation,” said old JD, trying to keep up with his boss.
To be fair, his knowledge has a different lacuna: so far, Vance has proved his ignorance of history, not geography. But give him time.
In fact, neither war he mentioned ended “with some kind of negotiation”. Both Germany and Japan unconditionally capitulated in 1945, while Germany and her allies also surrendered in 1918, when the Western Front collapsed.
It’s hardly profitable trying to drag history into current politics, especially if the former is falsified and the latter is pernicious. For Trump and Vance use the word ‘negotiation’ as shorthand for the Ukraine’s capitulation.
This is what Vance meant when, speaking of the Ukrainian government the other day, he said that all Trump can do is “ask them to negotiate in good faith.” That is to stop being bloody-minded and accept Russia’s terms – ending the war with the kind of ‘negotiation’ that supposedly concluded the two World Wars.
It’s scary to think that these two ignoramuses believe they can tell the world, or at least the Ukraine, what to do. And the scarier thing is that they may be right.
At least, Trump and Vance are relative newcomers to the field of international politics, which is partly why they so often spout drivel. Peter Hitchens doesn’t have that excuse: he has been writing on the subject for decades.
To be fair to Hitchens, not all the drivel he writes is motivated by ignorance. His affection for Putin’s Russia, which he calls “the most conservative and Christian country in Europe”, is a more significant contributor.
Yet he too makes ignorant references to older wars, perhaps trying to go old JD one better. Thus: “As in the equally futile 1914-18 war, too many passions have been unleashed for anyone to accept the sort of shabby deal that used to end wars in the old days.”
We’ve already established that the two World Wars didn’t end in any “sort of shabby deal”, unless this term stands for capitulation. But then Hitchens explained the nature of the on-going war, taking care not to say anything to upset Putin.
“The conflict really belongs to the US, which goaded Russia for years, and to Russia, which eventually lost its temper and moronically did what the US wanted it to. Poor old Ukraine just serves as America’s battering ram and as the scene for their quarrel, as Vietnam did in another age.”
Anyone boasting even cursory familiarity with the on-going war knows that every word in that passage is either a lie or a display of ignorance.
The US never baited Russia, nor has Russia ever swallowed America’s bait. The moment the current KGB government fronted by Putin took over Russia, their boy made explicit his mission to reverse what he called “the worst geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”. That was made manifest in every pronouncement he made, especially the so-called Munich Speech of 2007.
Everything that has happened since is Russia carrying out that KGB mission. This is criminal, but not necessarily “moronic”, at least not the way Hitchens means it. Poor naïve Russia didn’t do “what the US wanted it to do”. Her KGB government is systematically carrying out its plan to subvert the West and reconstruct the most evil empire in history.
The reading public gets it coming and going. Trump, Vance, Hitchens et al. are feeding it a bunch of porkies, some springing from ignorance, others from malevolence. We aren’t well-served by either politicians or hacks, let’s agree on that.
P.S. To be fair to Hitchens, he can talk ignorant rubbish on any subject, not just Russia and the Ukraine. In the same article, he attacked Lucy Connolly, who was unjustly sentenced to prison for an intemperate tweet.
Not so, writes Hitchens. “She pleaded guilty to a criminal offence and was sentenced according to law, and then released in due time…”
What kind of criminal offence? “Mrs Connolly had gone on Twitter to urge others to set fire to buildings full of people.” She didn’t.
I wrote about this case the other day, but, as a reminder, this is what Mrs Connolly wrote: “Set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b******s for all that I care. While you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them.”
To any objective reader this only means that Mrs Connolly wouldn’t have minded to see something like that happening. “For all I care” is a dead giveaway – she didn’t urge rioters to set fire to migrant hotels or to “the treacherous government and politicians”.
She did plead guilty to writing that tweet, but it was up to the woke court, instructed by our woke government, to declare it illegal. To put it in a context close to Hitchens’s heart, if one day the pro-Putin nonsense he writes is criminalised, as I sincerely hope it will be, he’ll have to plead guilty to having written it. But it will be up to the court’s interpretation to decide whether he committed a crime.
Now I’m dispensing unsolicited advice, here’s some for Hitchens. Don’t try so hard to be original, mate. Originality is something you’ve either got or haven’t got. When you haven’t, but try to force it, you end up sounding ignorant – and often much worse.