Waving his phone und schreiend.

 Waving his phone und schreiend. 

Waving his phone with one hand (like a preacher waving a Bible, angry, accusing) -  waving his phone with one hand, clinging to the rail with the other, stomping, stumping, stumbling, down he came, down, down the stairs, sputtering fractured German (who is fluent in English and French), schreiend, »Ich glaub’s nicht« - Uncle Albert.  He stopped to catch his breath.* “I don’t believe it,” he said.

     “What?” I said.

     “Utilitarianism!” he said, “utilitarian ethics.”

     I came to the foot of the stairs. “Do you need help?”

     He waved me away. “Bankrupt,” he said. “What’s the word?”

     “Bankrott?” I said. “What about John Rawls?”

     “Notwithstanding,” Uncle Albert said. “How do you say that?”

     I wasn’t sure, but “trotzdem,” I said.

Why German? who is fluent in English and French. He has taken it up, I believe, as a way to mock how serious he has become about nearly everything because he can’t seem in current circumstances to mock himself. Few of us can. We’re all too serious these days, about nearly everything.

“Seriously, it’s for the greater good
for the greater number, preserving my
body and my head.” - Jeremy Bentham

Maybe the utilitarians among us, most of all. But they’ve always been too serious, especially about themselves. It comes from not believing in God. (Those that don’t believe in God almost always end up believing too much in themselves. Granted, that’s only my opinion though Uncle Albert would likely agree.)

     The bankruptcy currently before him, as I understand it: Some OpEdwin or Edwina in The Times was arguing he or she would vote for Joe Biden regardless. It went like this, according to Uncle A: 1. Joe Biden feels this woman up. 2. I believe her, this woman, Tara Reade: he did “penetrate her digitally” somewhere in the corridors of power. 3. Still, I will vote for him. So should you. For strictly utilitarian reasons.

“Who wrote this?” I said.

     Uncle Albert didn’t know. “Judy of Punch-and,” he said. But he doesn’t know any of the current crop of “opinionates,” as he calls them, anyone younger than David Brooks. “They all act as if you should know who they are; then as if you should trust them because . . . you know who they are. They went to Yale, dammit.”^†

     And given who they are, given the (lonely) aerie on some high rise in New York they look down at the world from, they must know what’s best, the greatest good for the greatest number. They must know because they know.

“Voting for Biden isn’t obviously in the interests of the greater good?” I say.

     “Yeah,” he says, “but . . . .” Then,

     “If you don’t want to have a serious discussion, why don’t you go find something for lunch?”

05.09.20

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 * Diagram the previous sentence, while he does so. Win a John Stuart Mill action figure.

 ^† Uncle Albert also went to Yale, by the by. Bentham did not but might have.