Irrationality of the Tsai regime

Irrationality of the Tsai regime

A Taiwanese commentator published a very lengthy commentary on July 29, 2017, about the utter failures and dysfunction of President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration and the government of her Democratic Progressive Party since their inauguration on May 20, 2016.  It has been one year and two months since they assumed office.

During this time, many have tried to analyse and explain the dysfunction and the policy failures of President Tsai Ing-wen and the government of her Democratic Progressive Party from various points of view, including sociological, psychological and political ones.

The most recent one published on July 29, 2017, extensively referenced Jon Elster’s book: Ulysses and the Sirens, Studies in Rationality and Irrationality.  The commentator made slight mention of Jon Elster’s Sour Grapes but failed to mention Jon Elster’s  Solomonic Judgments.  The commentary is an attempt to explain the irrationality of President Tsai Ing-wen and the government of her Democratic Progressive Party from John Elster’s viewpoint.

Our two fictional tellers of misfortune and futurists Art and Sage and our two fictional heroines Kate and Pat are taking advantage of their “typhoon holidays” to go on an outing while the weather was still clear.  However, Taiwan was hit by two consecutive typhoons July 27-30, 2017, that brought island-wide flooding, and our heroines and tellers of misfortune are stranded in their hotel.  So they meet in the lounge and strike up a conversation.

Art:  That lengthy article published on July 29, 2017, referencing Jon Elster’s book Ulysses and the Sirens is interesting to me.

Sage:  What do you think?  Did it analyse the dysfunction and the failures of President Tsai Ing-wen and the government of her Democratic Progressive Party rationally?

As you know, Jon Elster talks about perfect rationality, imperfect and problematical rationality, and irrationality in his Ulysses and the Sirens, and he talks about the subversion of rationality in his book Sour Grapes, and the limitation of rationality in his book Solomonic Judgments.

Art:  Yes.  I feel that the article provided a rather rational analysis.

Kate:  To me, the “sour grapes” mentality of the Democratic Progressive Party made up of fanatic Taiwanese who exhibit their persistent hateful xenophobic attitude towards the Mandarin speaking Chinese mainland people who arrived in Taiwan in 1949-1953 and the Kuomintang administrations led by Mandarin elites has subverted the rationality of the Democratic Progressive Party and Tsai Ing-wen.

Pat:  Yes.  The capacity for rationality of the Democratic Progressive Party and Tsai Ing-wen is severely limited by their politics, their agendas, and their political goal.

Art:  How so?

Sage:  The Democratic Progressive Party started out in 1986 as a native political organization based on xenophobia.

Kate:  Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party started out with extremely problematic rationality that has developed into extreme irrationality that she and her government now shamefully exhibit.

Pat:  Yes.  The “sour grapes” response to Foxconn’s US$10 billion investment to build an LCD plant in Wisconsin is typical of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its government.

Art:  Jon Elster says that specifically, human rationality is man’s capacity to relate strategically to the future.  There is obviously a tremendous lack of this capacity for “human rationality” on the part of Tsai Ing-wen and her DPP government.

Kate:  Tsai Ing-wen and her DPP government just do not have any capacity for “human rationality”.  This is why they exhibit such irrationality in rhetoric, in administering policy and in the way they treat businesses, retired veterans, retired teachers and retired government workers, and laborers.

Pat:  Tsai Ing-wen and her DPP government are obstinate, stubborn, inflexible, intransigent, intractable, obdurate, mulish, pigheaded, irrationally willful, irrationally contrary, recalcitrant, implacable, uncooperative, and downright perverse!

Art:  Simply put, Tsai Ing-wen and her DPP government do not have any capacity for human rationality.

Sage:  Their irrational politics has kept them from becoming rational.  Their irrational politics has prevented them from progressing towards human rationality, in other words, the capacity to relate strategically to the future.  They have remained in a primitive state of myopic politics.