Trump's consistency and foolish academics

A NY Times op-ed writes:

But the most highly educated Americans — those who have attended graduate or professional school — are starting to come together as a political bloc.

Last month, the Pew Research Center released a study showing that nearly a third of those who went to graduate or professional school have “down the line” liberal views on social, economic and environmental matters, whereas this is true for just one in 10 Americans generally. An additional quarter of postgrads have mostly liberal views. These numbers reflect drastic change: While professionals have been in the Democratic column for a while, in 1994 only 7 percent of postgrads held consistently liberal political opinions.

There are various explanations. The most obvious is that academia is subject to groupthink. Right-wingers are tolerant of others having independent views, but left-wingers require conformity.

In case you think postgrads are better at analyzing politics, just look at the silly things they say about Donald Trump. Even philosophy professors fail to grasp elementary logic.

Michael P. Lynch, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, writes:

Consistency, Emerson said, is the hobgoblin of little minds. Perhaps no one in American public life channels this thought more than Donald J. Trump. He not only doesn’t fear contradiction, he embraces it. And he is downright scornful of those little minds that are bothered by his performances.

Mr. Trump’s willingness to be inconsistent — even in a single interview, or the same speech — has baffled political strategists for months. Even more puzzling is his followers’ happy toleration of it. ...

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the protagonist is tortured until he agrees that two plus two equals five. The point, his torturer makes clear, is to make him see that there is no objective truth other than what the party says is true. That’s the deep power of contradiction.

No, the point is to make him accept what the party says, whether it is true or not.

The Left depends on denying objective truth. Currently, the Obama administration is obsessed with denying the existence of male-female distinctions.

Emerson did not say that. He wrote in Self-Reliance:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Lynch's article does not give an example of a Trump inconsistency. The closest is to point out that Trump disavowed David Duke, but refused to make a blanket disavowal of other unspecified groups. Trump also said he loves Hispanics, but not the one who come here illegally and commit nasty crimes. These are not inconsistencies at all.

Trump has, of course, revised his position on some issues, and had to occasionally had to issue a clarification after he misspoke. But Lynch is not concern with those examples.

Newspapers like the NY Times seem clueless about Trump's popularity. They just do not get it.

It is nutty for Lynch to say that people like him for his inconsistency. The truth is more nearly the opposite. Trump has been in the public eye for decades, and he is an authentic man who is just what he appears to be. He opinions show a consistent world view. He is much more consistent than Hillary Clinton.