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1) It's not the profound lesson I wanted to learn from all this, but one thing Trumpism + pandemic have taught me is that the US has a much higher percentage than I thought of adults who are simply immature. It's been astonishing to see people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s act out.
2) I'm of the generation that supposedly never grew up, needs cheap symbolic affirmation ('participation trophies!'), lives in our parents' basement, etc. But in terms of civic duty, there are far too many grown adults metaphorically living in my basement right now. Get out!!!
3) I think an important part of maturity is the ability to make small (sometimes large) personal sacrifices for the greater good. I consider wearing a mask--which is proven to reduce viral transmission--during a pandemic a small personal sacrifice.
4) But even if you're not mature enough to make that small sacrifice and wear a mask, are you mature enough to go shopping at Target without wrecking a mask display because it offense your political sensibility? https://www.tmz.com/2020/07/05/arizona-scottsdale-woman-destroys-target-face-mask-40k-rolex/
5) In 'What is Enlightenment?' Kant famously defined immaturity as 'the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another,' envisioning a state of intellectual immaturity as dependence on institutions to tell one what to think ...
6) In the US we have the opposite problem: too many of us haven't developed a concept of motives beyond the self. A lot of people would say it's the 'me me me' culture, it's selfishness. But I think this is (also) a devastating form of emotional and *intellectual* immaturity.
7) As a material example of what I mean, consider: voting. On one hand people say the US electoral system suffers from too much cult of personality, not enough concern about policy among voters. But ...
8) There's a deeper, more basic problem than that among the US electorate, of which desire for cult of personality is a symptom: Americans consider voting an exercise in expressing ourselves and our personal interests and desires. I find this ridiculous.
9) A mature electorate sees voting as a civic duty to elect the best people for the flourishing of everyone, not as a chance to further a personal or niche cause. This is a practical approach as well as a moral one, as I see it, because individuals are generally terrible at ...
10) ... predicting how large-scale systems like governments will process their personal, individual issue-fetishes. This is presumably why really rich people donate to both parties: to hedge their bets and gain favor regardless of outcome.
11) I'll back off the armchair political theory & come back down to earth: Too many Americans apparently haven't been able to wrap their heads around the idea that sometimes not getting their way is actually a good thing and might yet make getting their way more likely later on.
12) And I think this is a form of immaturity--intellectual immaturity (a flipped version of Kant's notion) foremost that probably also fosters emotional immaturity, e.g. throwing a tantrum in target over masks. /end
Addendum: Note, for example, the immaturity of Trumpist political speech: Boo Boo Biden is a big loser, Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Ted, Silly Billy, Wooble Wobble, gimme ur lunch money KID!!! I have the biggest hands!!!!!!!!1111
I mean this is not exactly Herodotus but damn if these people aren't claiming to 'defend 'Western Civilization'' on top of it.
