Staying True

The Oval Office emptied for cleaning

Donald Trump is not President of the United States.  Legally and technically he is, of course.  And O. J. Simpson is legally and technically innocent of murder.  What’s legal and what’s true are not always the same thing.  And it’s not just because Trump failed to win the popular vote.  As ridiculous as the Electoral College is, it is our accepted mechanism for choosing the president, and it did so in keeping with law and tradition. But even though he lacks the democratic legitimacy we demand of every other elected official – even dog-catcher and county judge – that’s only the beginning of what’s missing in our present presidential vacancy.  Things have felt very strange since Inauguration Day, and it’s a feeling of something disordered, something uneasy, and – most strikingly – something lost.  America no longer has a leader. 

American presidents nurture and protect the institutions of American democracy. This one attacks anyone or anything who dares hold him accountable or constrain his power. He calls the media the “enemy of the American people”; he pressures CNN to remove some of its anti-Trump commentators; he accuses the intelligence agencies of acting like those in “Nazi Germany”; he attempts to delegitimize a federal judge (appointed by George W. Bush) by calling him a “so-called judge”, and blames in advance the entire federal judiciary for any terrorist attacks yet to come.  When Congressman John Lewis, who marched with Martin Luther King and was brutalized by racist policemen, criticized Trump, Trump characterized him as “all talk”.   There seems to be no democratic or moral authority he respects.

American presidents make informed decisions, consult with experts and vet policies through appropriate agencies. This one signs amateurish executive orders composed without legal expertise, with no outside consultation of Congress or federal departments, and implements them carelessly, with predictably confusing and chaotic results. He rarely attends national security intelligence briefings, and may not be paying attention even when he does!  He doesn’t read and requires information be brought to him in small, easily digestible bits, with lots of charts and maps.  He believes everything he sees on pro-Trump conservative media like Fox News, or right-wing propaganda sites like Breitbart; and he irresponsibly passes on their stories, including those unsupported by evidence or reason.

American presidents take clear policy positions and stand behind them.  This one changes his positions weekly, daily, hourly. He’s even been all over the map on his signature issue: controlling immigration.  On healthcare, he ran on the promise of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with “something terrific” that would cover more people and cost less. But at one point during the campaign he expressed support for the Obamacare individual mandate, as well as other provisions of the law, such as coverage for those with existing conditions. But once elected he called for abolishing the individual mandate, while inconsistently promising “insurance for everybody”.  And now he has finally spelled out principles constituting the vague outlines of an alternative plan, though hardly a terrific one, since it would cover fewer people at higher cost.  At the same time the White House is failing to endorse a Congressional Republican replacement plan based upon exactly those principles!  And only now, nearing the end of this very long process, has he suddenly discovered what every remotely informed person has known for years: that health care policy is “very complicated”. Was he aware of any aspect of healthcare policy before this earth-shattering insight?  Is he aware now?

American presidents are confident and articulate, able to communicate and persuade. This one spews word salad, and whines about negative coverage.  He exposes his staggering, pathetic need for approval in front of the Washington press corps and the entire world, as in his embarrassing meltdown of a press conference on February 16, humiliating himself in what one commentator called a “seventy-seven-minute emotional striptease”.

American presidents disclose their business dealings by, for instance, publicly releasing their tax returns. This one, during the campaign, claimed his taxes were being audited by the IRS and he could not release them until the audit concluded, though the IRS denied there was any legal constraint on releasing them. He promised that he would make his taxes public after the audit finished, but after the election he (through an aide) simply denied he had any obligation to do so, and, of course, he hasn’t.  He’s denied he has any business connections in Russia, for instance, but such connections are well documented. It’s reasonable to wonder if he doesn’t release his taxes because either they would reveal the depth of his financial entanglements with the corrupt Russian oligarchy, or they would reveal he pays little or no taxes.

Receiving delicate national security information in public

American presidents don’t use their power and connections to profit themselves financially. This one uses the presidency to expand his hotel empire in the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Argentina, Saudi Arabia.  He pressures department stores to stock his daughter’s clothing merchandise.  He frequently stays at Mar-a-Lago, his own private club in Florida, which is now charging higher prices for customers hoping to buy access.  American presidents put their business interests in a blind trust, so their positions and policies won’t be influenced by the desire for profit. This one put has put his interests in a trust administered by his own immediate family, doing nothing to eliminate conflict of interest, and probably violating the Constitution’s Emoluments clause.

American presidents protect the democratic process from interference by hostile foreign governments.  This one has done nothing in response to Russian disruption of last year’s election.  His campaign was awash in connections to Russia and its unscrupulous leader Vladimir Putin, and his administration is as well. But multiple American intelligence agencies have concluded that during last year’s election technical experts with Russian intelligence hacked Democratic Party computers, found information there embarrassing to the Democrats, and released it through willing accomplices in Wikileaks, and certain sections of the FBI, with the intent of helping Trump win.  And all that occurred while his advisors kept ongoing communications with Russian intelligence, and while the candidate himself publicly called on the Putin government to release additional damning information they had on his political opponent. He has eased some of the punitive sanctions his predecessor recently applied to Russia in response to their election interference, and may ease other sanctions against them.  Reasonable people can be forgiven for wondering if there was any direct collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, though such collusion would be tantamount to treason.  But these worries aren’t exactly allayed by Trump’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Russia hacked the election, or to voice even the slightest criticism of Putin or his government (though that may be changing), or to call for an investigation of this mess.

American presidents have a mature understanding of how the world works. This one indulges in the most baseless and laughable conspiracy theories. For years he indulged fever dreams about Obama’s place of birth.  In office, he has claimed that Obama is behind his administration’s constant leaking; that as president Obama personally ordered wiretapping of Trump Tower; that he only lost the popular vote because millions of illegal immigrants voted against him; that anti-Trump protestors are paid Democratic operatives.

American presidents sometimes lie; sadly, it’s a job requirement. But this one lies all the time!  He lies about pathetic things, like the size of the crowds at his inauguration, the size of his Electoral College victory, or how many times he’s been on the cover of Time magazine. And he lies about important things, like how many non-citizens were detained under his travel ban, whether rescinding the ban would allow refugees easy access into the country, whether he offered to send American troops into Mexico or yelled at the Australian Prime Minister.  He’s lied about crime statistics, New York Times subscription rates, cutting spending on military aircraft, Obamacare coverage numbers, etc., etc., etc. Et freakin cetera!

The dishonesty deserves particular consideration, because the dishonesty is at the heart of the Trumpian madness. It’s not just that Trump and his underlings lie promiscuously and indiscriminately. It’s not even that they lie without the slightest compunction or accountability, though that is deplorable.  It’s they have no respect for even the notion of truth; to them, the truth is whatever they want it to be. They just say whatever will help them win. And ultimately it isn’t even winning that matters to them, it’s appearing to win. All the other pathologies flow from this essential dismissal of reality for the sake of appearances.  The disregard for democracy, competence, dependability, consistency, transparency, public-mindedness, patriotism, maturity, the truth – it all comes from one simple position: that no principle can distract from the overwhelming, unquenchable need to appear to be always winning.

But the American president should care about democracy, competence, dependability, consistency, transparency, public-mindedness, patriotism, maturity, and the truth.  Obviously many presidents have failed to sufficiently defend these principles. But most cared deeply about them.  And the ones who didn’t still made great pains to pretend they did. That is, they understood that we, the American people, care deeply about them.  It’s the widespread popular commitment to those principles that has made American democracy work for so long.  And we shouldn’t accept as president a strutting ego-on-stilts who flagrantly flouts and mocks them, who clearly doesn’t give a damn about them.  It’s not clear if he even understands them!  In its open contempt of those values, the Trump presidency represents a clean break from our past. And even if we never have another president like him, he very well may do them permanent damage. 

And that’s why it matters that Trump is incapable of “being presidential”.  When he steps up to the microphone and lies, and whines, and accuses, and equivocates, and rants, and brays like a jackass, he’s betraying what’s best in America. It may seem that his demeanor isn’t important, but it reveals who he is and what’s missing in him. Being presidential doesn’t just mean conforming to outdated notions of propriety or formality. Approaching the job with sobriety and circumspection shows that the president takes seriously the grave responsibility of leading America, of protecting and shepherding our republic through our very real troubles. The president has the power to build and the power to destroy, and the nation and the world are right to expect that power to be in the hands of someone of maturity and responsibility.  That this needs to be said at all reveals the depth of our crisis. 

It has fallen to us, the honest citizenry, to hold our democratic values tight. We take our lives and our children’s lives and our country’s future very seriously, even if Trump’s every utterance proves he does not.  We need to keep our standards high, we need to keep loudly criticizing Trump when he violates those standards, and we need to keep reminding those of our fellow citizens who have momentarily forgotten, just how vital those standards are. That’s how we stay who we are.  A rather strange set of circumstances has landed Trump in his current job, but he is simply not worthy of it, nor worthy of us, and all the Electoral Votes in the world cannot make him so.  And our duty as honest Americans for the next four years is to keep that firmly in mind.

Breaking America Down

Donald Trump must not become President of the United States.  That must be glaringly obvious to anyone whose reason has not been overcome by partisanship or bitterness or rancor.  He’s a bigot who elicits and encourages the worst impulses of his followers; he’s an authoritarian with little respect for individual rights or democratic institutions; he’s a foolish extremist, advocating, for example, abandoning NATO, and deporting millions of illegal immigrants; he’s utterly and willfully ignorant of government, policy, or the Constitution; he’s rankly dishonest and corrupt; and – most damning – he’s a huge, smelly pile of crazy.  A President Trump would be an unimaginable disaster, for the country and the world. 

He represents what’s worst in ourselves, particularly the worst of our popular culture.  He’s vulgar, boorish, thoughtless, shallow, materialistic, self-absorbed.  And he represents the worst instincts of the conservative base.  He traffics in putrid racial and religious hatreds dredged up from the far-right fever swamps.  He indulges the most brainless conspiracy theories.  He yearns for the days when white Christian men received the deference that was their due as the only real Americans, and he encourages those same yearnings among his followers. He scorns all the correct pseudo-Americans: liberals, blacks, feminists, Muslims.  If Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh could make a baby they’d make Donald Trump.

But, he also represents the legitimate grievances of white working people.  They’ve been derided by cultural elites, exploited by economic elites, impoverished by mass immigration, off-shoring, de-industrialization, downsizing.  They are genuine victims, disdained, disowned, disheartened.  They feel betrayed because they’ve been betrayed, by an American elite that feels little obligation to them.  And Trump represents their darker impulses in response, the impulse to lash out, to destroy, to burn to the ground.  He is their revenge.  But, also, in a strange and inarticulate way, he is their hope, the hope that America can be made to work again, to sustain and nurture them rather than exploit and discard them.  At this moment there is a great struggle going on within them, but by voting for Trump they’re choosing their lesser collective self.  No matter who wins today we must not forget about these people, their alienation, their disenfranchisement, their despondency, their self-destructiveness, their fears, their hopes.  They are fighting desperately to be acknowledged, and we owe them that. They are, after all, us.

Meanwhile, Hillary represents all that’s wrong with our elites.  She’s an epitome of the new aristocracy; an aristocracy of education and profession, delineated by manners, condescension, technocracy, urbanity, even eating habits.  It’s an aristocracy possessed by the sanctimonious, globalist, multicultural, cosmopolitan distaste for anything tainted by American patriotism or the retrograde notion that American policy should particularly benefit Americans.  But a nation without leaders working in its interests is a nation without leaders.  Soon, it won’t even be that.  Trump almost gets this one right, but he’s too crude to understand that blacks, Muslims, liberals are part of the nation too.  And this is the heart of the Trumpian catastrophe: whites went looking for a leader for America, but they settled for a leader for White America.

The paradox of Hillary is that despite her vague post-American-ness she nicely embodies what’s so good about America.  Like most ordinary Americans, and unlike Trump, she’s hard-working, inclusive, and hopeful in the best way.  She really thinks America can be made to work for everyone, and she’s eager to put in the effort to make incremental changes in that direction.  She is, more than anything else, pragmatic, and that’s something very much needed in our current situation.  Indeed, the pragmatic willingness to tone down ideology and to compromise with reality is a cardinal American virtue.  It’s too bad that her post-patriotic sensibilities diffuse her abundant energies; properly focused they might have greatly helped her own people.

And it’s too bad she’s so corrupt.  Hillary’s sins are those of political connection: using high office for her own enrichment, evading professional responsibilities, nepotism.  But Trump’s moneyed birth has allowed him to systematically evade responsibility too: regularly stiffing contractors and employees, claiming bankruptcy.  His celebrity and extreme clinical narcissism have even enabled his outright sexual predation.  Both candidates have taken advantage of unearned privilege, but he’s been dishonest and corrupt in ways Hillary can only dream of: he’s tied to the mob, he’s been involved in all sorts of fraudulent schemes, he’s connected to Russian oligarchs.  And did I mention he’s a big stinking slagheap of whack-job?  She is a deeply flawed politician, but he is a nightmare.

Happily for the safety and sanity of us all, Trump probably won’t be elected President.  And once he’s lost, and goes creeping back to his gaudy, gilded towers and his cringe-worthy TV appearances and his rancid tweets, it will be tempting to dismiss his followers and their concerns.  But consider right now the very real and terrifying possibility that he might actually win!  Let yourself feel the full weight of the disaster that may be about to engulf us.  A frightening demagogue, an ignorant and irresponsible buffoon, a colossally absurd joke of a person is actually within a few percentage points of being handed the nuclear codes.  And now take very seriously how profoundly dysfunctional our politics must be to have delivered us to this moment.  The system is broken, and we can’t ignore it any more.  Once Trump has lost – if there is a God in heaven! – think back to today and remember how stark and undeniable that brokenness was made by the near-election of this one-man wrecking crew.

At that point all our energies must be directed toward healing our country.  That may require more generosity and forgiveness than we’re capable of.  In all candor, it’s probably not possible.  The system is so broken, and the rancor and mistrust and alienation it so plentifully dispenses just break it more.  America may really be on the path to irrevocable decline.  We’re all obligated to fight the brokenness, to not give in to it.  Trump’s gift to us is to make us appreciate the depth of the brokenness.  He’s here to tell us we may not have much time left.

And that must be the starting point for any serious post-election reconciliation and healing.  All those people out there are mad as hell, so mad they’re blindly rushing themselves over the edge in a blind fury.  But despite their staggering irresponsibility, we have to remind ourselves that they’re mostly good people, and we must acknowledge that if they’re so willing to put America through this torture then things must be much worse than we had previously thought.  We know why they’re angry: they’ve been dismissed and exploited and propagandized and disappointed and discouraged.  The system isn’t just broken, it’s breaking them too.  It’s breaking their hope, and their generosity, and their common sense.  And Trump, whether he wins or loses, is breaking them – and us – even more. 

Democracy for Grown-Ups

The third presidential debate

Donald Trump has been roundly condemned for apparently disrespecting the very notion of democracy, because of an exchange with Hillary Clinton and moderator Chris Wallace in last Wednesday night’s debate.  Wallace brought up an accusation repeated by Trump on Twitter and at public rallies that the election has been “rigged” to ensure Hillary’s victory; Wallace asked Trump if he will “absolutely accept the result of this election?”  And Trump evaded:

I will look at it at the time. I'm not looking at anything now. I'll look at it at the time.

Which seems to mean that come Election Day he’ll be looking for evidence of voter fraud, and deliver a judgment on the election results based upon his perception of how honest the voting process has been.  He also accused the news media of being in on the fix, calling them “so dishonest and so corrupt”, and he claimed authoritative evidence of widespread voter registration irregularities.  And he even tried to de-legitimize Hillary’s candidacy itself: “She’s guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run.”  Behold Trump’s indictment of the vote and the electoral process more broadly.

It’s not terribly convincing.  Sure, lately the media have become quite transparent in their conviction that Trump is a demented egomaniac who would do the country great damage.  To be fair, that’s only because he is, and he would.  Most members of the press, being at least as bright as typical 5-year-olds, are perceptive enough to see it, if not clever enough to pretend not to.  And it’s hard to understand why it’s dishonest or corrupt for the media to provide a platform to the small army of women who are accusing Trump of just the sort of sexual predation that he himself has so brazenly bragged about.  And it’s not clear if Hillary broke the law (presumably he’s referring to her email scandal), though she’s legally in the clear.  And it’s even less clear what process Trump believes should have prevented her from running, considering that she is the nominee of one of our two major parties and the democratic processes that promoted her to nominee endow her with all the legitimacy she needs.

But here’s the real point: there is no evidence of significant voter fraud.  For one thing, it would be extraordinarily hard to pull off, considering how many election precincts there are, and how locally organized and controlled they are.  To really affect the outcome such conspirators would have to fake thousands of votes in thousands of precincts across the country, all without accidentally revealing their nefarious plot.  For another thing, it just ain’t happening.

But Wallace wouldn’t let Trump off the hook:

But, sir, there is a tradition in this country – in fact, one of the prides of this country – is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard-fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign that the loser concedes to the winner. Not saying that you're necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and that the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle?

Trump deferred:

What I'm saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense. OK?

And Clinton, clearly the superior debater, pounced:

Well, Chris, let me respond to that, because that's horrifying.

A minute later she delivered the knock-out blow:

So that is not the way our democracy works. We've been around for 240 years. We've had free and fair elections. We've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.

And major news outlets have expressed the same horror: Donald Trump will not abide by the election results because he doesn’t in principle accept majority rule.

But that’s not what he meant.  Wallace asked him if he thought the election was rigged, he explained (unconvincingly) why he thought it was, and then Wallace, though clearly intending to get to the heart of the matter, changed the subject by asking a different question: Do you support the principle of democratic transfer of power?  That is, he first asked Trump if he believed the present election process is honest, and then a minute later asked him if he was willing to submit to elections in general.  But Trump, who – how shall we say this? – misses a lot of subtleties, was still answering the first question.  Neither he nor Wallace seems to have noticed the question had changed, so Trump just repeated his answer to the first question, making it seem he was answering “No” to the second one, that he was explicitly rejecting the principle of popular sovereignty.  Trump seems to have a knack for sounding more offensive than he means to, and that’s quite impressive when you consider that he usually means something quite offensive!  But if we’re going to condemn him, let’s condemn him for what he actually meant.

If, as seems to be the case, he was questioning the procedural fairness of this election, and not the authority of elections in general, then he actually was defending democratic rule, not attacking it.  From this point of view Hillary and her surrogates in the press are trying to steal the election and he’s fighting to protect it.  As Trump advisor Newt Gingrich claims:

We are in the worst cycle of corruption in American history, and in many ways, we resemble Venezuela and Argentina more than we resemble traditional America.

Hillary is undermining democracy, turning America into Argentina (is Gingrich making an Evita reference?) and Trump is bravely standing up to her.

It’s ridiculous, of course, since there is no reason to think the voting process is being interfered with.  Wallace was actually stumbling toward a third question: Isn’t questioning the system without any real evidence as destructive as questioning the principle of popular sovereignty itself?  The answer, of course, is “Yes!”  The two have the same effect: the erosion of public trust in our political system.  Elections are the accepted mechanisms for peacefully resolving social conflict, and it’s frightening to imagine what would happen if that acceptance lapsed.  Put another way: making a charge of electoral fraud is so dangerous, so potentially destructive of social cohesion, that one should only do so very carefully, with extreme caution, and only with convincing evidence.  To do so recklessly, flippantly, thoughtlessly, does almost as much damage to democracy as actually stealing elections.

And Trump, to wildly understate the matter, is not known for speaking with responsibility or circumspection.  Indeed, he constantly casts mistrust upon our public institutions and the people who run them.  In his view, the leaders of our society are all crooks or fools.  Business sends your jobs overseas.  The government deliberately refuses to secure the borders, and steals your tax money to make life soft for the illegal immigrants of questionable ethnicity who then so easily enter.  Finance enriches itself while gambling with our economic well-being, and collects bailouts while you have to keep paying your underwater mortgage.  Academia indoctrinates your children with snobbish intolerance disguised as moral sophistication.  And so on.  The only ones left that are still genuinely noble and good are the American people themselves, especially the white working class.  But America is a sham.

Meanwhile Hillary represents just the opposite view, that the system is working well, or at least good enough.  The basic trajectory of post-Cold-War life – increasing globalization, identity politics at home, professional-class meritocracy, free markets – is positive and promising, and the more of it the better.  She parrots all the same old clichés about how we’re stronger together, and diversity is our strength, and we must open ourselves to the world, blah, blah, blah.  She doesn’t mean it and no one believes it, but it’s part of the charade that our politics have degraded into, a charade that Hillary’s donors so desperately want us all to keep playing.

What Trump and his supporters get right is that they want to end the charade.  They see clearly the central truth of our current situation: American elites don’t really care about America, only their stunted, self-serving ideologies.  What we are really living through, what Trump really represents, is a crisis of faith.  That’s why Trump’s supporters are so ready to believe in stolen elections and why they’re not alarmed at Trump’s appalling flouting of democratic outcomes and norms.  They support Trump because they’ve lost faith in the system. 

What the Trumpians miss is their own culpability.  Large sections of the grassroots gladly went along with all the foolish mistakes of the last decades, mistakes our elites sold us like so much snake oil: financial deregulation, free trade, the Iraq War.  And now that all of those are seen for the disasters they really are, those same grassroots righteously rise up in rebellion against their foolish masters.  The main ingredient in Trump’s snake oil is irresponsibility.

And if the whole system is corrupt, and none of us regular people is at fault, then anything that cleanses that corruption is justified. Cynicism plus irresponsibility equals rage.  This is the real danger, and the real fear lurking behind Wallace’s questions and the media’s horror: that mistrust of the system leads to civil disorder, to violence.  This is the dark beast skulking in the heart of our current political chaos, the beast that Trump so carelessly summons.

The strange thing about this Trump-disses-democracy controversy is that by questioning the voting process Trump is picking on one aspect of the system that actually works the way it should.  That is, the mechanics of our voting system are quite clean.  Our democracy is being stolen, not by treacherous conspirators shuffling around buses of illegal immigrants to multiple polling stations, but by a campaign finance system that allows donors to weed out real challengers, and by two ossified and brain-dead parties with a stranglehold on the process, and by a media more addicted to horse-race and spectacle than to political substance, and by propagandists encouraging anger and fear rather than generosity and sobriety, and by social justice warriors undermining freedom of expression by sniffing out the tiniest whiffs of dissent, and by elites who feel more allegiance to their hypertrophied cosmopolitan vanity than to their fellow countrymen.  And now by a public too cynical and too irresponsible to want more than to throw bricks through the windows.

But Hillary’s windows don’t need to be broken.  They need to be rattled by crowds of citizens loudly demanding an economy that works for Americans workers, and an elite culture that doesn’t disdain popular sensibilities, and a political system that responds to people’s real needs.  But those crowds need to accept their obligation to constructively engage with our problems, rather than just vent their frustrations.  The Trumpian diagnosis is largely correct, though quite overstated, and contaminated by white nationalism, and led by a deranged and dangerous clown.  Hillary is at least an adult, and as such proposes some marginally beneficial policies, but the status quo she represents is not sustainable.  Don’t buy the Trumpian line that America is dying, and don’t let Hillary lull you with happy talk while proposing to tinker around the edges.  In effect, they’re both cynical; they’re both saying that fundamental constructive change isn’t possible.  But that’s a copout, and a recipe for national decline.  Don’t give in to it.  It’s not easy striking a balance that’s realistic without being cynical, and idealistic without being utopian.  But that’s what maturity demands of us. And that’s how we positively address our very real problems.  And that’s how we fight for democracy.