Can a liberal state thrive without democracy? Yes, indeed. Look at the US and the UK in the nineteenth century; both were prosperous liberal states without universal adult suffrage.
Can democracy thrive without the checks of liberalism? In Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, we’re apparently going to find out. The first indications aren’t very encouraging. The line between illiberal democracy and fascism is very thin.
Trump is often referred to as a “reality show president,” and with good reason. The constant drama, the deliberate use of cliffhangers, and the constant churn of characters are all characteristics of reality shows.
There are other TV influences in his presidency, however. His use of his Twitter feed to trigger the libs and reinforce the bond with his base sounds a lot like regular Fox News programming. Call it “Trump & Friends.”
Donald Trump absolutely loves tariffs, and you can see why. Part of it, obviously, is mercantilism, but mostly it is because they give him arbitrary power over the entire world. Simply by saying the magic words “national security,” he can force domestic businessmen and foreign leaders alike to come to him and beg for favorable treatment, which he can bestow or not, depending on his whim. What better way exists to make himself the center of attention and to boost his ego, short of a successful nuclear war?
None of that is surprising. What is surprising is the reaction of the markets, which have reacted to the violation of every traditional red line by doing . . . nothing. One has to assume that they have no idea to price Trump’s threats to the international system, so they have just decided to ignore them and focus on the joys of tax cuts and deregulation. How long will that last? Until there is a genuine geopolitical or financial crisis, and then, watch out–his credibility with the investing public, for a variety of reasons, will be zero.
One sees the argument that liberal democracy has failed fairly frequently these days. The basis for the argument is that virtually all LDs have experienced slow growth and higher levels of inequality over the last few decades.
But is it true? I would say no, for the following reasons:
By most definitions, I’m a baby boomer, but I never felt like one. To me, a proper boomer is someone whose formative years included the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Summer of Love, Chicago in 1968, and Woodstock. I was way too young for any of that; my formative years featured Watergate, inflation, Jimmy Carter, and the Iran hostage crisis. It’s not the same thing at all; real boomers thought they had the divine right to change the world, but my cohort just wanted to survive it.
Donald Trump was born in 1946; he is, therefore, unquestionably a boomer. To what extent does he reflect values and personality traits typically associated with boomers, and how, if at all, does he deviate from them?
His self-absorption and rejection of conventional sexual morality are boomer traits. His complete lack of idealism, on the other hand, sets him far apart from the rest of his generation. Did he ever even see “The Graduate?” He would have been the guy saying “Plastics,” not the innocent protagonist.
The end of history is not nigh; there are plenty of critiques of liberal democracy, including the following:
1. God has revealed his truth to the world, including how to organize and run government. The purpose of government is to please God, not mankind. This is the theocratic model. Nothing in the syllogism is self-evident or acceptable to liberals.
2. The vast majority of the people are way too stupid to run their own affairs. They will plunder the rich, run the country into the ground, or both. Only the educated and refined people should have a real say in the operation of the government. The oligarchical model made more sense before education became universal and information became so easily available. Today, if you were trying to define a proper oligarchy, you would have a tough time laying out the boundaries.
3. Liberal democracy never results in complete and perfect equality. Guilty as charged! History teaches us that the cost of creating a perfectly equal society far exceeds its benefits. And, for what it’s worth, even communist countries never came close to the ideal. A large welfare state is, however, perfectly consistent with LD.
4. Liberal democracy overemphasizes the rational parts of people and puts inadequate emphasis on their emotional needs. Patriotism, solidarity, security, the need for drama, spectacle, and glory, and the desire to identify with a strong leader are fatally neglected. This is the fascist model. A liberal democrat would point out in response that the LD model leaves people free to find emotional satisfaction almost anywhere they want, so the charge is not completely correct. And anyway, when has fascism worked well for anyone except the leadership?
5. Liberal democracy in the 21st century leaves the country open to subversion and defeat by other, more closed societies. Call this the Chinese model. It is true that liberal democracies, with a great deal of assistance from the Soviet Union, managed to transform their political and economic systems sufficiently to win World War II, and then revert back to something like normal thereafter. It can be argued, however, that 21st century technology doesn’t give us the same kind of breathing space that we had in the 1940s; the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, for example, do not protect us from cyberwarfare. How does this critique turn out? Let’s hope we don’t find out.
For decades, the frustrating and tiresome ritual with a Supreme Court nominee has gone as follows:
The allegations of sexual assault here are serious enough to be disqualifying, assuming they were proven, if they had occurred while Kavanaugh was working for Ken Starr, or at the White House, or as a judge. But . . . high school? Seriously?
At some point, this needs to stop. Nominees should be willing to answer the real questions, and the personal destruction should come to an end.
As I see it, here are the fundamental premises of liberal democracy:
As a result, all working liberal democracies have the following features:
These features leave open a lot of discretion relative to policy and the precise nature of any particular government’s machinery. A liberal democracy can have a presidential or a parliamentary system; it may be largely capitalist or socialist; it may result in great or minimal inequality; it may have important anti-democratic elements, or not; and it may provide for some public media, or not. Theocracy, communism, and fascism, however, cannot be logically reconciled with it.
The merits of liberal democracy are currently being debated to an extent not seen in the recent past. Its perceived weaknesses will be the topic of tomorrow’s post.
Violent crime is way down in this country from the levels seen in, say, the 1980s. And yet, the GOP can’t stop talking about it; campaign commercials all over the country are full of it. Why?
Part of it, of course, is to emphasize the GOP’s status as the swaggering daddy party that kicks the butts of the evil outsiders. In the absence of a conspicuously successful war against a foreign enemy, that will have to suffice. But part of it is a reflection of what is on TV. The local news everywhere I go is dominated by stories about crime, and, of course, so is the entertainment programming. No wonder people have the inaccurate impression that criminals are running wild in the streets; in the virtual world, they are.
In the end, the Great Recession was attributable to greed and negligence. Greed, of course, is always with us, and is the engine that drives the capitalist train. The negligence was on the part of risk managers, ratings agencies, and to some extent, the government and its regulatory agencies. That part was not inevitable.
The responses by the American and European governments were fundamentally different. In the US, the response of the Obama administration was based on Keynesian principles, and while you could certainly argue that it was too weak, and that Obama had his FDR in 1937 moment in 2010, the economy recovered fairly quickly, unemployment fell, and the Democrats won in 2012. The Trump victory in 2016 was accomplished with three million less votes than Clinton, and was due more to the perceived weaknesses of the Democratic candidate and the normal bored dissatisfaction with eight years of Democratic rule than the desire for a counterrevolution. In Europe, on the other hand, austerity was the order of the day, recovery was halting, and the governments paid the price for it. Even there, however, the growth of illiberal democracy was more attributable to issues with immigration from the Middle East and Africa than to slow growth.
To put it another way, unemployment was at four percent in the US at the time of the 2016 election. Do you believe the result of that election would have been different if a few bankers had gone to jail in 2010, or if a faster recovery (with more stimulus) had caused the unemployment rate in 2011 to be a point or two lower? I don’t think so; people vote based on where they are now, not five years ago.
And so, in response to my question, the bad guys don’t always have to win after a financial crisis; after all, FDR won in 1936, 1940, and 1944. The success of right-wing populists over the last few years wasn’t primarily due to the Great Recession. That said, the following things annoyed me then, and still do:
Like many other Republicans before him, Donald Trump promised to “run government like a business” when he was elected. Has he kept his promise?
Not all businesses are created equal. The Trump Organization is not exactly GM. As a businessman, Trump shamelessly sought publicity, screwed over his contractors and investors, took extreme positions in negotiations, took pride in his unpredictability and his ability to change positions on a dime, was accountable to no one but himself, and sucked up to Russians with money.
In other words, yes, he is running the government in the same way that he ran his business. Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.
Conservatives have complained for decades that the liberal vision of the GOP as a white nationalist party was just a caricature, and that the party was actually run by small government idealists. A few of them probably actually believed it. Trump destroyed that comfortable illusion in 2016, and nothing has changed since he took office. As Dennis Green would say, “They were who we thought they were.”
Can the racist genie be put back in the bottle after Trump leaves the scene? There are three scenarios for the GOP after he’s gone:
#2 is electoral suicide, as the Reactionaries are the largest faction, by far, within the GOP. It won’t happen. #1 probably won’t wear well with time. The best bet is #3. Hey, it worked for years before Trump–why wouldn’t it work again?
California Bashing
All my friends are red
And the state is blue.
Mueller’s coming for me.
Don’t know what to do.
Poll numbers are dropping.
Lots of votes are gone.
California bashing.
It’s time to get it on.
Went to Mar-a-Lago
Preparing for a fight.
I won’t get down on my knees
‘Cause I know I’m right.
Jerry Brown’s a dickhead
And Hollywood just sucks.
California bashing.
It’s time to change my luck.
Parody of “California Dreamin'” by John and Michelle Phillips
If you’re like me, you’ve probably watched film clips of Hitler giving speeches and wondered why the German people responded so strongly to what appears to be an unattractive little man ranting and raving. Based on a little research and some recent experience, I think I know the answer.
From what I’ve read, Hitler typically started slowly, but then built up to a powerful climax. There was little that was positive or inspiring about his speeches; they were dark and sarcastic, and they focused on the dangers created by the country’s many enemies and how they had to be overcome. His audience had, in the recent past, experienced military defeat, a spell of hyperinflation, and a depression; he consequently tapped into a reservoir of anger and fear, and he exploited it to the hilt.
If this isn’t ringing any bells in your head, you have to be deaf.
Donald Trump lives in a universe that is completely dominated by himself. There is nothing else in his bubble that inspires awe, reverence, love, or even fear. As far as he’s concerned, he might as well be God.
As a result, he lacks any sense of tragedy. The ancient Greeks had a word for this–hubris. Nemesis is the inevitable outcome.
Let’s just hope it only comes for him, and not for us.