Civilization is based on a lot of assumptions. If you are willing to break those assumptions, you can Trump civilization. But is this good? I don’t think so. You can’t undermine the ground you stand on, and stand for very long.

This is why Chicago is so uncivilized. As Obama said while campaigning, “if they bring a knife you bring a gun”. He was talking about the political race and defeating Republicans but the same is exacted daily in Chicago. It’s easy to break into a room full of civilized people having a political debate and start shooting. But that’s the old way, civilization has moved past that. If you want to win in our arena, you have to bring the best idea.

This is how terrorism works, the West operates by democracy and debate. The terrorist is trying to bring back cave man rules, because he has no ideas. The ideas of Muhammed were dead 600 years before he ‘thought’ them up, when Jesus the Christ died on the cross and gave us another path. Killing your enemies doesn’t work anymore, because Jesus was killed and he came back. And since that day Christianity has marched across the globe making everything better. Muhammed lost, but he can’t admit it so he throws a fit, to this day. His only power is when we play by the old rules, or allow him to do so. Interesting that I bring up terrorism, since Obama actually launched his political career in the home of a convicted terrorist Bill Ayres.

But there is another candidate playing by the same rules. And his rules work, because the rest of us are playing by another set of rules. We are civilized, compassionate, thoughtful even. It’s easy to walk into a room full of business men who are operating by numbers and force your will on them by charm or any number of other devices. Maybe you could threaten them? Maybe you could threaten to walk out? Maybe you could call them names? But this is not debate, this is not how you get the best ideas to market, this is how you get your ideas to the market. This is how the mafia operates. Or else. Now we understand that we must meet our enemies with force, but is this how we want to determine our internal politics? Do we want to go from the English law tradition of Parliamentary debates to a freak show or a gun show?

The sad part is that society seems to be moving towards his rules, backwards towards the cave man. The media likes Trump because he draws ratings, he draws a crowd. Because apparently many of the American people would rather be entertained than choose the best statesman. Which sounds eerily familiar to the Gibbon critique of the fall of Rome. We need to demand better, if we accept the new rules of Trump which are really the old rules of violence we will soon be governed by them. Do you really want to determine your leaders by putting them on the field to have a sword fight? Humanity has figured out a better system, we have lived in the world of violence, now we have established rules for debate. We have identified fallacies, and structures and systems, because they work better. Of course there are problems with our system, but Trump has never proven he understands them or will make them better.   Don’t throw the whole system away in exchange for some temporary entertainment.