Democracy

Wake Up People

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I’m writing today about three unrelated items that come together as commentary on our time.

The first is a video of J D Vance answering questions on Meet the Press. Without any hedging or apologies he is arguing for a full political takeover of universities.  We need Viktor Orban’s state censorship here? How have we reached the stage where a mainstream party is proposing totalitarian behavior as a model?

Second, I just finished one of the most disturbing novels I’ve ever read.   On the face of it, it’s a story about high school, where there reader only gradually learns what has happened as told by ten different speakers.  What’s horrifying is that something terrible happens without anyone owning up–even to themselves—about what was really going on.  The horror didn’t just happen; it was allowed to happen.  I don’t know if the author thought of it as a metaphor, but it sure feels like where we are.

Finally, like everyone else I’m confronted by the Gaza mess everyday.  It’s only pushing things a little to say that Netanyahu seems to have decided that if he’s going down, he’s going to take Israel with him.  Israel gave dictatorial power to a narcissist who promised security—and he ran Israel for HIMSELF.  If there was ever a cautionary tale this is it. 

Can’t we wake up?

Trump Back in Office—So What? Why Not?

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This piece grows out of a reaction to a Washington Post article about the threat to democracy posed by Trump.  The piece does a good job about the loss of the Founding Father’s vision and the human progress it represents.  The problem is that’s only part of the story,  A Trump election would hurt the United States in so many ways that it’s hard to do justice to what’s at stake. 

This is an attempt to think about some of the rest.  An authoritarian Trump takeover would be terrible for people, terrible for business, and terrible for the world as a whole.

The Dobbs decision is just a foretaste of the way Trump’s Christian society would impinge on people’s daily lives. Trump’s last-term tax cut is a foretaste of the way he will undermine fundamental part’s of the way people are accustomed to living: in education, healthcare, social security, opportunity for social advancement generally. No regulation of business practices at all–not for health, not for working conditions, not for pollution.

His regime, like all other authoritarian regimes, would be fundamentally corrupt, because there would be no means to challenge it. Businesses would be subject to arbitrary shakedowns.  The announced tax cuts—however attractive they may seem—would be small consolation in the new reality.

Then there is governance itself. Arbitrary decision-making that cannot be challenged and mistakes that can never be acknowledge. Denying climate change in particular will be a disastrous and unchallengeable mistake. We would lose our technical edge by supporting existing business over innovation and denying government’s role in research, since the private sector does everything better.

As a nation we’ve had stability for so long that people far too easily assume basic continuity—with no notion of how fragile it really is. As a nation it’s easy to lose what you have: Brexit made Britain poorer overnight. Israel accepted Netanyahu as proto-dictator, and is caught an ill-conceived and unsuccessful war fought for his personal benefit.  Electing Trump would be on that order but worse.

For the world as a whole, we’re talking about a US unwilling to challenge Putin’s Russia or China on Taiwan.  A world in which we have essentially ceded both political and economic supremacy to China.  The Chinese and the Russians understand this perfectly and are backing Trump’s campaign, because they understand that whatever near-term issues there might be with his tariffs, Trump is their ticket to power.

In his first campaign Trump asked a question: “What have you got to lose?” That’s still in the air. We’ll throw out everything that has made us great—so what? why not? Because we’re talking about a disaster for the vast part of the US population and the world overall.

Message for Business

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We’ve spoken here before about how the evangelical community needs to understand that Trump is not their guy.

However the issue is more general.  It’s too easy to dismiss evangelicals as disconnected from reality and perhaps swayed by self-interested leaders. In fact all of us have spent lifetimes insulated from the reality of authoritarian government.  The US elections and democratic system are certainly not perfect, but we the people still do have power.  It’s hard to recognize that once that goes, the world is different.

Even the well-heeled and well-educated business community has that problem.  Much was made of Jamie Dimon’s comment at Davos that Europeans in particular should stop worrying about Trump, because ultimately nothing serious was going to happen.  A recent Edsall piece pointed out that many other business leaders believe the same thing.  Like the Evangelical’s focus on abortion, the business focus on the Trump tax cuts has convinced business people that he’s their guy.

As Edsall’s article points out, the history of authoritarian takeovers tells another story.  Once government is unaccountable, what follows is massive corruption and shakedowns of all players.  That’s in addition to the whims and the uncorrectable mistakes of the leader.  Businesses–and in particular their leaders–have much to lose, as their counterparts elsewhere have found out to their shock and surprise.

For now Trump’s threats–combined with the taxcut carrot–seem to hold sway with much of the business community.   But the Trump people have made no secret of their plan to end democracy in favor of an  Viktor Orban-like regime.  As a threat, there is nothing in Biden’s program that comes close to matching that one.