Richard M. Rorty and the Trump Years: On the 20th Anniversary of “Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America”

David E. McClean, PhD
Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University (Newark)

Just days after the 2016 presidential election a good deal of attention was given to passages from Richard M. Rorty’s book, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, published in 1998, for those passages seemed to predict the rise of Donald J. Trump and his stunning election to the presidency. Those passages, though sketchy, seem to provide a tenable explanation for such an unlikely series of events in American politics. While some have criticized this “Rorty, American Prophet” conclusion, the insights and worries that Rorty articulated in Achieving Our Country (and elsewhere) should not be brushed aside. Rorty wrote, “Nobody is setting up a program in unemployed studies, homeless studies, or trailer-park studies because the unemployed, the homeless, and the residents of trailer parks are not ‘other’ in the relevant sense.” What was Rorty trying to get us to see? Had we seen it, could the 2016 election, as well as the Republican primaries preceding it, have turned out differently? Is the current political tribalism rooted in dualisms and binaries with which we must come to terms and dissolve if we are to prevent a continued descent into balkanization and incommunicability?

Bio:

David E. McClean founded the DMA Consulting Group, a boutique regulatory and enterprise risk consultancy to the financial services industry, in 1992 and currently serves as principal of the firm. DMA’s clients include investment managers, mutual funds, hedge funds, private equity funds, and securities and commodities firms. Prior to working at DMA, Dr. McClean served as a legal compliance officer at Van Eck Global, BV Capital Management (a subsidiary of Bayerische Vereinsbank AG), and National Securities and Research Corporation. He has served on several industry panels over the years, addressing risk and regulation; published articles on securities regulation; and conducted continuing professional education in mutual funds for the NASD Institute and elsewhere.

Dr. McClean received a PhD (2009) and an MA (2003) in Philosophy from The New School for Social Research. His dissertation concerned the work of the influential American philosopher Richard M. Rorty. He also received an MA in Liberal Studies from New York University (1996) and a BA (summa cum laude) from Hunter College-CUNY (1986), where he majored in comparative religion. For a time in the late 1980s, he was matriculated in the MPA program at NYU’s Wagner School for Public Service, focusing on financial management and public finance.

Dr. McClean is a lecturer in philosophy at Rutgers University (Newark), where he conceived and designed courses for a first-of-its-kind program in advanced business ethics and where he teaches undergraduate courses on philosophical and business ethics. In 2017, he will begin teaching comparative religion and philosophy at Norwalk Community College. For many years, until recently, he taught at Molloy College, in Long Island. He has lectured and delivered papers on political philosophy, race theory, and public policy at universities across the country and in Europe.

Dr. McClean’s published writings include peer-reviewed journal articles, book reviews, and two books: Richard Rorty, Liberalism and Cosmopolitanism (2014) and Wall Street, Reforming the Unreformable: An Ethical Perspective (2015). He has contracted for and is currently writing a book on the morality and politics of climate change, expected to be published in 2018.