Once to Every Man and Nation

My secondary school maintained the tradition of a Sunday evening “Sing” during which the whole student body gathered to belt out vigorous (if not exactly pious) renditions of Protestant America’s top hymns.   One of my favorites instructed us as follows:

Once to ev'ry man and nation

Comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of truth and falsehood,

For the good or evil side;

Some great cause, some great decision,

Off'ring each the bloom or blight,

And the choice goes by forever

'Twixt that darkness and that light.

I often wondered whether my life would present me, and the nation, with such a “great decision.”  And now here we are, squarely facing “bloom or blight.” 

I refer not to the choice between competing political parties, ideologies, or policies.    As much as their partisans may try to present these as a choice between good and evil, they are not.   And if you think that that the choice I am referring to a simply a choice between people, consider how many of us remember who the losing candidates were in Italy in 1924, Germany in 1932, or Venezuela in 1998.  Does history suggest, with the benefit of hindsight, that the elections that brought populist demagogues to power should be viewed simply as contests between competing policies or candidates?  No.  History teaches that the voters were called on to make a choice between the continuation of some sort of democracy, no matter how creaking, weak, or dysfunctional, and the dangerous illusions offered by a strongman.   From this perspective, Hillary, whatever her weaknesses and strengths, is nearly irrelevant.

As much as you may have doubts and worse about Hillary Clinton, her long time critic, conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, put it plainly: “Mrs. Clinton is not the apotheosis of evil.  She may be a corner-cutter and a liar, and she’ll surely appoint liberals to the Supreme Court.  But at least she’s not a sociopath.”  It may be the strangest endorsement ever given to a candidate for the presidency, but for the millions of Americans with significant doubts about both candidates, it is the answer.

Post script:  Early in this series of posts I warned against complacency. It is a potentially fatal mistake to believe that Mr. Trump cannot win.   Movements in the polls in during the past week show him recovering ground in Nevada and Ohio, and gaining the lead in Florida.   And if the polls are wrong, the Brexit results suggest they are likely to be wrong in Mr. Trump’s favor.   If you are less scared of a Trump victory today than you were a month ago, I respectfully suggest you are not only in error, but actually raising the odds of a Trump victory.  This is because millions of Americans will be moved to vote at all, and to vote for Hillary, only if they feel there is a realistic chance that Mr. Trump could win.

Does Trump's tackiness matter?

I am revealing my age when I disclose that I can remember clearly my first flight on the Trump Shuttle.   Looking at the shiny new chrome seat belt buckles bearing the letter “T,” fake wood veneer paneling, and in the lavatories, faux marble sinks and fake gold fixtures, I remember thinking, “tacky.”   And since that time, the T-word emerges time and time again in appraisals of Mr. Trump.  The National Review has called Trump “tedious, tacky, and trite.”   Trump and his first wife Ivana were called by New York magazine “two of the tackiest people in the history of America.”  The New York Times called Celebrity Apprentice, “alluringly tacky.”  Trump’s Art of the Deal ghostwriter wrote of Trump’s “gaudy, tacky, gigantic obsessions.”  

Given all the seriously disturbing things we have learned about Mr. Trump, to examine his tackiness might seem to be a trivial, irrelevant distraction.   But so often we find that the small and seemingly superficial provide useful clues to things more profound.   So let’s ask the questions, what do people mean when they accuse Mr. Trump of being “tacky” and does it matter?

Having just spent an unsettling hour reviewing tweets and posts accusing other tweeters, brides, and celebrities of tackiness, I observed three distinct but related uses of the word.   Most often it refers to appearance and means that the thing appears flashy, garish, gaudy, loud, showy, and flamboyant.  It means that it lacks “style.”   This usage, often signaling nothing more than deviation from current fashion, strikes me as wholly subjective and thus not particularly relevant.

The second way “tacky” is used layers on an accusation that the thing also lacks quality -- a sense that the thing may appear flashy, but actually is cheap or “trashy.”   This one hits closer to home.  It suggests that one essential feature of tackiness is a misguided or failed attempt to portray quality or “class.”   It can be misguided in the sense that it gets it wrong (no, the people you are trying to impress do not consider it admirable to cover every conceivable object in gold leaf) or that it unwittingly reveals a delusional grandiosity (a Business Insider editorial reported “Donald Trump has the home-decorating taste of a third-world dictator.  This is not a coincidence.”).   And the attempt to promote the trashy as flashy often fails (e.g., the vodka may be in a gold bottle, but after one sip you know it’s garbage).  In this sense, Trump’s tackiness does matter, as it provides additional evidence of his indifference to integrity, propensity for manipulation, gross superficiality, and habitual attempts, in both business and politics, to peddle illusions.

But I think the explosion in the use of the T-word with respect to Mr. Trump is mainly due to its third sense:  “tacky” behavior is crass, impolite, embarrassing, obnoxious, vulgar, or crude.  While this type of behavior by Mr. Trump is authentic (in the sense that it reflects his personality), it also in part may be a deliberate tactic.  Mr. Trump is an avid fan of (and occasional participant and character in) Vince McMahon’s Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment (formerly WWF), which features extreme vulgarity, fake spectacle, and overall outrageousness.   It is an in-your-face explosion of tackiness on steroids.   WWE’s audience shares the demographics of Trump’s most ardent supporters, and some have suggested that Trump has consciously modeled his campaign on the WWE recipe of character names (Lyin’ Ted, Crooked Hillary, etc.), insults, feuds, and conspiratorial fantasy.

In the realm of entertainment, the WWE formula has been a huge success.  Americans sit fascinated week after week as these appalling behaviors play out on their screens.  Similarly, no matter how appalled we may be by what we are seeing, all of us have been drawn into the lurid spectacle of Trump’s campaign, aided by the media’s giddy embrace of politics as entertainment.   But I believe that at some level, most Americans understand that Mr. Trump is as tacky as the most outrageous character on WWE, Jersey Shore, or Bridalplasty.  And most of them have the common sense to know that while extreme tackiness may make for entertaining “reality” TV, it signals a stew of personality defects that belongs nowhere near the oval office.

The narcissist in office

            “Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”

                        Thomas Merton

And indeed, Donald Trump strikes us as strangely artificial, a cartoonish character, a shallow TV sketch of bombastic braggadocio lacking the depth and complexity of a real person.   But we must remind ourselves that if he is elected, the man in the White House will be very real.   In the last post we explored how his narcissism is at the root of who Donald Trump is.  In this post, I argue that his narcissism tells us more than anything else about the sort of president he would be.

The British doctor David Owen, who also served as Foreign Secretary of the UK, has studied narcissism in politicians and coined the term “hubris syndrome.”  Dr. Owen’s research has identified five behaviors we can expect when we elect a narcissist:

·      Disproportionate concern with image, and predisposition to act in a way that enhances their image as opposed to solving problems.  The Art of the Deal ghostwriter, keeping a contemporaneous journal as he interacted with Trump almost daily during the mid-1980s, observed that Trump seems to be driven entirely by a “compulsive” need for public attention.  There is no reason to think this would change.  A Trump presidency would be all about Trump, not the country or even the people who supported him.  Like his new business ventures, the emphasis would be on spectacular announcements with little follow-through or attempt to sustain any particular policy initiative.

·      Tendency to conflate their own interests with those of the country.  The narcissist knows only his own needs, and often redefines the needs of others to fit his purposes.  When he acts to lower his own taxes, increase his own wealth, punish his enemies, stifle his critics, or just generate the adulation on which he thrives, he will be deeply convinced he is acting in the public interest.   

·      Excessive confidence in their own judgment and contempt for the advice and views of others; an incurious nature.  The narcissist can be crippled by his sense of superiority and arrogance, resulting in a gross overestimation of his own abilities (“I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me”).   As he has told us, he plans to take advice from “myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”  Also, he is reported from multiple sources to be supremely incurious about anything other than himself.  Thus as president he would most likely exist in a bubble of sycophants and yes-men, who validate his idiosyncratic and ill-informed decisions.   He would be at near-constant war with the press and all others who challenge his decisions and the misinformation on which they are based.

 ·      Restlessness, recklessness and impulsiveness.  This is where the narcissist in office can cause the greatest damage, and why so many in the foreign policy community and military say they dread Mr. Trump acquiring actual power.   Why such fear?  According to psychology professor Dan McAdams, angry narcissists act impulsively and “take high-stakes risks.”  When a businessman does that, it leads to repeated bankruptcy and a tattered reputation.  But when a U.S. president acts impulsively and takes high-stakes risks, the whole world trembles.  Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis explains the particular link between narcissism and a propensity for violence:  The narcissist is easily threatened when reality thwarts his desires or contradicts his narrative, and in reaction to these threats often lashes out violently.   Haidt points out that when violent emotion is leavened by a belief (usually false) that the violence is a means to a moral end (for the narcissist, that means satisfaction of his desires), you end up with war and atrocity.

·      All of the above leading, at best, to hubristic incompetence(and, at worst, to disaster).   In the case of Trump, it is unlikely that hubristic incompetence would the limit of his damage as president.  Why expect the worst?  When things go badly for the narcissist they are, explains one of the main students of contemporary narcissism, “quick to resort to anger, aggression, despair, or paranoia.”  Anger, aggression, despair, and paranoia are not qualities that we want in the human being with his finger on the nuclear button.

Dr. Owen’s list is only a generic catalog of the types of behaviors you can expect from a narcissistic politician.   I am saying nothing here about the likely consequences of Mr. Trump’s other personality defects or of his strange beliefs and political views, not to mention the effects on the American spirit of four years of vulgar eruptions and braggadocios bloviations.   But there is one additional consequence of his narcissism that we must consider.

As much as Americans love freedom and individual choice, a strong sense of being in it together is a strain that runs throughout our history.   As much as we may identify as Texans or New Yorkers, or conservatives or progressives, our identity as Americans has been stronger.  That sense of togetherness has been fracturing for decades, and a Trump presidency could prove the last straw.   British philosopher Simon Blackburn explains that “as we have seen again and again, narcissism, vanity, and the arrogance that goes with them are the great enemies of togetherness.  The narcissist set apart, the pouting figure on the catwalk, the plutocrat eaten with envy of others yet more plutocratic, are each of them prey to the worms that destroy ‘we’ in favor of ‘I.’” 

Trump’s America would be an America of “I alone.”  Since Christopher Lasch alerted us to the Culture of Narcissism in 1979, our descent into the atomized abyss of the selfie has accelerated, with devastating effect on our political culture.   Were Trump to become president, the resulting divisions between those who fall in line behind the rule of “I” and those who struggle to protect democracy and decency, would make our previous partisan divides and dysfunctions seem trivial. 

So let us hope (or pray, if you are religiously inclined) that the Book of Proverbs (16:18) has made the right call regarding the results on November 8:  “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

Who is Donald Trump?

Following each disturbing incident, Trump’s apologists tell us “that’s not who he is.”  But his long campaign, and a long career in the public spotlight, tell us exactly who is is.   

In 1996, a journalist (for Playboy, not surprisingly) who spent the weekend as Mr. Trump’s houseguest wrote of his impression of Trump the man:  “Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong.  He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression.”  This strikes me as the most concise description of Trump the man that I have read, as perfectly calibrated today as when those words were written in 1996.   Let’s deconstruct the elements:

·      Adolescent.  Arrested development is an essential feature of narcissistic personality disorder.  It is no wonder that so many people watching him in action say he reminds them of the petulant bully in high school.  In last night’s debate, he showed us that his argument style is stuck at grade school recess level (“You’re ugly.”  “No, you’re ugly.”).  When Mrs. Clinton commented that President Putin would “rather have a puppet as president of the United States” he responded:  “No puppet, no puppet.  You’re the puppet.”

·      Hilariously ostentatious.  Have a look online at pictures of Trump’s Fifth Avenue penthouse, with gilded everything and ridiculous thrones for “the King.” 

·      Arbitrary.  The word means “based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.”  This precisely describes his fluid views, incoherent policies, and lack of any grounding ideological conviction.

·      Unkind.  The narcissist lacks empathy.   He is incapable of genuine kindness and lacks respect for others, who he values only as means for satisfying some desire.  This lack of empathy in turn permits . . .

·      Profane.  You’ve seen the video.  His speech is crude and vulgar in public, and now we know it’s worse in private.  The male narcissist, like Trump, typically has contempt for women while at the same time claiming to idealize them.

·      Dishonest.  As I argued in Trump and the truth, he is not so much a conscious liar as someone who regards as true the things that ought to be true in order to facilitate his desires or comply with his narrative of self.  His disregard for reality is a crippling disability arising from his narcissistic disorder.

·      Loudly opinionated.   The narcissist is generally hostile to authority and expertise, regarding his own opinion as superior.   In addition, he rarely is able to retreat from a view once expressed, which makes him . . .

·      Consistently wrong.   When you say whatever pops into your head and can rarely retreat from an opinion once expressed, you are consistently wrong.    Consistently, not occasionally.  PolitiFact rated 72% of Trump’s public remarks about factual circumstances as false.   And it is all rooted in . . .

·      Most vain man I have ever met.  I hope you read the last post in which I let Mr. Trump speak for himself.  It’s hard not to reach the same conclusion regarding vanity.   But how vain, really?  Professor of psychology Dan McAdams describes following: “When, in the summer of 1999, he stood up to offer remarks at his father’s funeral, Trump spoke mainly about himself.  It was the toughest day of his own life, Trump began. He went on to talk about Fred Trump’s greatest achievement: raising a brilliant and renowned son. . . . Where others spoke of their memories of Fred Trump, [Donald] spoke of Fred Trump’s endorsement.”

The people who best understand how personality disorders translate into sociopathic behavior are alarmed.  More than 2200 mental health professionals, both practicing and academic psychiatrists and psychologists have signed an on-line manifesto.  They are united by the conviction that Mr. Trump suffers from an extreme case of narcissistic personality disorder.   Because professional ethics do not allow psychiatrists and psychologists to diagnose metal health disorders in persons not their patients, the manifesto deals with Trump’s “public persona” and what they call “Trumpism.”  These thousands of mental health professionals say that Trump has “fostered a cult of the Strong Man” who, among other things:

◦       Appeals to fear and anger

◦       Promises to solve our problems if we just trust in him

◦       Reinvents history and has little concern for truth

◦       Never apologizes or admits mistakes of consequence

◦       Sees no need for rational persuasion

◦       Subordinates women while claiming to idealize them

◦       Disdains public institutions like the courts when they are not subservient, and

◦       Incites and excuses public violence by supporters.

While Trump is a proto-typical narcissist, this is not his only personality defect.  For example, noting his inability to stop speaking or tweeting, chronic inability to pay attention (people spending time with him report he fidgets “like a kindergartner who cannot sit still”), and shockingly deficient impulse control, others have diagnosed Trump as also having a severe case of ADHD.  Professor McAdams, writing in The Atlantic, concluded, “Trump’s personality is certainly extreme by any standard.” 

If ordinary people, even on casual acquaintance, easily perceive Mr. Trump as vain, immature, pompous, arbitrary, vulgar, dishonest, and uninformed, then how do we explain the dedication and enthusiasm of his core supporters?  Part of it may be explained by the resonance of his nativist populist message.   But this kind of adulation by the mob also is a common response to the narcissist, regardless of his message.   One of the essential features of narcissism is that the narcissist simultaneously attracts and repels us.  Professor Elizabeth Lunbeck framed the puzzle as follows:  “Why is it that we are susceptible to narcissists’ charm even as we suffer their contempt?”  Part of the answer is our attraction to what the Professor called their infectious, intoxicating self-confidence.  And recent research, as reported in Psychology Today and Scientific American, suggests we often find selfish narcissistic jerks to be attractive: “The narcissist may initially ‘be hard to resist’ . . . seduc[ing] his victims into intoxicating submission . . . .” 

But here is something in which we can take comfort.  The same research concludes:  “we can find consolation in the certainty that over time their appeal will fade.”   Professor Lunbeck reminds us that, in the myth, Narcissus dies of what Francis Bacon called “rapturous admiration of himself.”  Sociopathic narcissism is fatal.   It never, ever, ends well for the narcissist. 

Note on last night’s debate:  This morning’s headline is Trump’s repeated refusal at the debate to say he will accept the results of the election.  We’ve known this for a week.  Six days ago, in my post A line crossed, I wrote:  “He has moved from nascent demagogue and proto-fascist, to a full-blown enemy of constitutional democracy.   He now tells his supporters that the ‘system is rigged,’ and if he loses it means the election will have been ‘stolen.’  This is an explicit and unprecedented repudiation of our democracy and its institutions.  . . .  I cannot see how he could possibly take the Presidential oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’   Like all fascist demagogues, he rejects our laws and institutions, and offers in their place ‘I alone.’”

This is one of those moments when principle must prevail over expedience.   History will judge harshly those who accommodate Trump’s repudiation of our electoral system.   If the Republican Party does not contradict Trump within 24 hours, its very legitimacy will be at risk.   They and to some extent the rest of us consistently have accommodated Trump’s repudiation of the norms of our political culture.   We slid with him down a slippery slope, with the inevitable result. 

One more thing.  While there is no excuse for what he has done, there is an explanation.   If you believe as I do that his personality defects are the main drivers of his behavior, then it was predictable, even inevitable.  His core narrative is that he is a winner and his enemies are losers.  Some losses simply can be denied (like his many business failures, where he generally just carries on claiming they were in fact a success).  But when the loss cannot be denied (such as not receiving the Emmy or losing the election), the only possible way to reconcile the fact of loss with the deeper truth of his core “winner” narrative is to claim that the contest was rigged.    So of course he couldn’t say that he would accept the election result as fair and honest.  If he loses on November 8 he will go to his grave believing that the election was unfair, and that a vast conspiracy of powerful forces dishonestly conspired to rob him of the victory that otherwise would have been his.   This is who Donald Trump is.

In his own words

“For to all who swell with proud thoughts there is a noisiness in their speech . . . unsteadiness in their conduct . . . rancor in their reply.  Their mind is ever strong in inflicting, weak in enduring . . .”

St. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job (c. 578-595 AD)

Christian thinkers have long recognized that all the sins are rooted in pride.  I believe that most of Mr. Trump’s defects are rooted in his narcissism. Let’s allow Mr. Trump to speak for himself:

“Nobody’s ever been more successful than me.” (Interview with the Des Moines Register)

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”  (on who his advisers are, March 16, 2016, on MSNBC)

“My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure; it’s not your fault.” (Twitter)

“[T]here’s nobody like me.  Nobody.” (his book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again)

On Islamic terrorism: “I alone can solve.” (Twitter)

On America’s descent from “greatness:”  “I alone can fix it.”  (RNC acceptance speech)

I am “running the biggest real-estate empire in the world.”  (Weekly Standard, 1999)

  “Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.”    (Interview with AP, May 2016)

“I’m the king of Palm Beach.”  (Trump Nation, 2005)

“I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” (November 2015)

“I will be the greatest jobs president God ever created.” (June 2015)

“We’re on the cover of every newspaper, every magazine.  Time magazine many times.  I just learned they’re doing yet another cover on Trump – I love that.  You know, Time magazine’s a good magazine.  You grow up reading Time magazine – who ever thought you’d be on the cover of Time magazine?   Especially so much?”  (The New Yorker, 7/11-18/16)

During an MSNBC interview, Trump responded to questions about bankruptcies by saying he was not involved with these companies.  Michael Isikoff asked Trump what exactly he was paid for if he “had nothing to do with running the company.”  And Trump replied to that: “Excuse me . . . Because of my genius. OK?”

“My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”  (New York Post, 2011)

“Isn’t he handsome?” (holding up a picture of himself, Reform Party meeting, 1999)

“Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.” (yes, this is Trump speaking about himself in the third person, Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door)

“I will be so good at the military your head will spin.” (Hugh Hewitt Show, 2015)

“The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” (Good Morning America, 2011)

“I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.” (NY Times, 1999)

When psychologists write about those afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder, they point to a narrative of self that is remarkably consistent across time, and serves as the main tool used by the narcissist to navigate the world.  You’ve just read Mr. Trump’s narrative, spoken across the years in his own words.   His most distinctive characteristic is a dangerously inflated ego, consistently revealed by extraordinary and arrogant grandiosity.

Please consider again what you’ve just read.  Healthy people do not speak like this. Healthy people do not believe such things about themselves.

Think about the events of the past week, and marvel at the aptness of St. Gregory’s 1400-year-old prediction of the consequences of Mr. Trump’s grossly inflated pride: 

·      noisiness in speech

·      unsteadiness in conduct

·      rancor in their reply

·      strong in inflicting (i.e., insulting others)

·      weak in enduring (i.e., dealing with criticism).

The next couple of posts will deconstruct the narcissistic personality and the dangers it presents when invested with political power.

A line crossed

Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, Donald Trump has crossed another line, and it has nothing to do with misogyny and sexual assault.   He has moved from nascent demagogue and proto-fascist, to a full-blown enemy of constitutional democracy.   He now tells his supporters that the “system is rigged,” and if he loses it means the election will have been “stolen.”  This is an explicit and unprecedented repudiation of our democracy and its institutions.  He now states that his goal is to demolish the entire political establishment (“replacing a failed and corrupt establishment . . . with a new government”).   He admits “our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven’t seen before.”  He threatens, like the worst sort of banana-republic dictator, to jail his opponent upon acquiring power, regardless of her exoneration by established due process.  I cannot see how he could possibly take the Presidential oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."   Like all fascist demagogues, he rejects our laws and institutions, and offers in their place “I alone.”

Up until now, many good people were unable to perceive the real Donald Trump, blinded by their long-time dislike of Hillary and allegiance to the GOP.   But the real Donald Trump has now come into focus.  As he announced three days ago on Twitter:  “It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.”  I take this statement at face value.   The sexual assault video and subsequent allegations finally have freed him from the need to make even a feeble attempt to deal with substantive issues or advance a coherent program.  Mr. Trump is now back in his comfort zone, ranting against imagined enemies, spewing unfiltered vitriol, and wallowing in the adulation of rally crowds.   His declared enemies now include his own party, pollsters, the financial industry, and the entire journalism profession.  Yesterday’s speech was particularly unhinged, with eerie echoes of the 1930s:  “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty.”   He tells us now that without him we are lost:  “This is a struggle for the survival of our nation, believe me.  And this will be our last chance to save it on November 8, remember that.”  The demagogue as the nation’s last best hope.  Classic.

The centerpiece of the Trump campaign is now a “reality” TV story line, where validity is irrelevant, and outrageousness and shock are the only values.  The story line is Trump as a victim under vicious assault by a vast conspiracy:  “They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to destroy your career and your family, they will seek to destroy everything about you, including your reputation. They will lie, lie, lie, and then again they will do worse than that, they will do whatever is necessary.”   And of course, the demagogue as martyr for the people:  “Nevertheless, I take all of these slings and arrows gladly for you.”   At the same time, he remains a winner:  “The new, highly respected Rasmussen poll just came out this morning. Just released. Shows up nationally 2 points ahead, Trump. Beautiful.”  And the climactic argument:  “Vote for Donald Trump. You're going to see something and you'll be so happy. You'll be so thrilled.”  Well, in that case . . .

So, as he says, Mr. Trump is now finally free to pursue politics “the way I want to.”

(If you wish to read the whole speech, you can find the transcript at http://www.npr.org/2016/10/13/497857068/transcript-donald-trumps-speech-responding-to-assault-accusations )

The American Experiment

“A republic, madam, if you can keep it."  

            Benjamin Franklin

The MacArthur Fellow and short-story writer George Saunders, in a recent piece on Trumpism, wrote “I’ve never before imagined America as fragile, as an experiment that could, within my very lifetime, fail. But I imagine it that way now.” I’m a bit older than George Saunders, and so was in the generation that was taught in grade-school civics about “the American experiment.” This was, I suppose, designed to motivate us children to take on the burdens of citizenship. The outcome of the “experiment,” we were taught, was very much up in the air, and largely depended on us.

As a result, I still regard the promise of America as a hypothesis.  It was tested by slavery, fascism, and communism, and I believe that further tests will follow. Trumpism is one of them. And there is nothing written in the stars that says we must pass. 

Our founding fathers had a great fear of democracy, which all too often had resulted in one tyranny being replaced with another. So they tried an experiment. Foreseeing the dangers of demagogic populism, they established a more limited type of democracy, a constitutional democracy, where the passions of the people were, at every turn, tested, tempered and slowed by a multi-polar government and a framework of fundamental rights that could not be denied, even at the behest of the majority of the citizenry.  

Some people who plan to hold their noses and vote for Mr. Trump acknowledge that much of his core program (such as a religious test for admittance to the country) is both morally repugnant and illegal. But they argue, it’s really OK, because Trump will be stopped from implementing his worst ideas by our system of constitutional checks and balances. For example, the New York Times quoted Senator John McCain (before he withdrew his support for Mr. Trump) as saying that he did not believe that the nation would be in danger under a Trump presidency: “I still believe we have the institutions of government that would restrain someone who seeks to exceed their constitutional obligations,” Mr. McCain said. “We have a Congress. We have the Supreme Court. We’re not Romania.”  

I respectfully disagree with this line of thinking. In my novel Christian Nation, I used the counterfactual of a Sarah Palin presidency to probe the strength of our democracy in the face of severe economic distress, a second major terrorist attack, and the simultaneous rise of a populist demagogue. My careful analysis of constitutional law and political strategy convinced me that the nation could fail that test.  

One reason is that the effectiveness of our constitutional architecture is predicated on certain social and cultural conditions:

• belief in and respect for human dignity
• trust in the integrity of the system and its institutions
• acceptance of the rule of law, and
• maintenance of a minimum educational standard.

To judge the risk to our democracy posed by Trumpism, we need to assess the strength of these foundations.  It is a mixed picture.  The advances we have made in civil rights for women, African-Americans, LGBT people, and disabled citizens demonstrate a common and growing commitment to human dignity.  (I believe this to be true notwithstanding the racism and misogyny of some of Trumps’ most ardent supporters because, despite the voice given them by Mr. Trump, they are a shrinking minority.)   More troubling, however, is the fact that Americans saying they trust the institutions of government fell from almost 80% in 1965 to only 19% this year.   And international rankings of America’s educational performance (24th in reading, 36th in math) would throw Thomas Jefferson ("An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.") into despair.   It is undeniable that the foundation necessary for our constitutional democracy to endure a challenge like Trumpism is, like the country itself, deeply fractured.

Commentators on both the left and the right have reached the same conclusion.  Adam Gopnik argues “Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against [fascism] fail to understand history.  In every historical situation where a leader of Trump’s kind come to power, normal safeguards collapse.”  David Brooks agrees:  “As the founders would have understood, he is a threat to the long and glorious experiment of American self-government.  He is precisely the kind of scapegoating, promise-making, fear-driving demagogue they feared.”  Just when our constitutional democracy may be put to a great test, we find that democracy greatly weakened by a popular loss of trust in its institutions, a debased popular culture, and the chronic failures of our system of education.

No matter how deep your antipathy toward Secretary Clinton, refocusing on the idea of “the American experiment” and the fragility of our republic offers an instructive perspective on your choice.   Adam Gopnik put it best: “No reasonable person, no matter how opposed to her politics, can believe for a second that Clinton’s accession to power would be a threat to the Constitution or the continuation of American democracy.  No reasonable person can believe that Trump’s accession to power would not be.”

A note on recent developments:  So the Billy Bush video showed Trump to be a vulgar misogynist.   This is hardly a surprise.  Nor does it rank in the top group of reasons that Trump must not become president.   It is deeply unsettling that it took an accidental video, and one dealing with sex, to push responsible Republican leaders over the line.   The real scandal is that they were willing to overlook his crippling and delusional narcissism, ignorance, lack of skill or temperament to do the job, proto-fascist demonization of immigrants and Muslims, racism, disrespect for the constitution and rule of law, not to mention fantastical and bizarre ideas about policy (build The Wall, take the oil, get the jobs back from China, etc., etc.).   And it is doubly unsettling that this all resulted in the second “debate” sinking to new lows of ugly meaninglessness.   Trump has dragged us all into the sewer where he reigns as self-professed King, and I for one awoke this morning feeling dirty and in deep despair for my beloved country.    

It's personal

A few weeks ago I had lunch with a friend who immigrated (legally) with his family from a mainly Muslim nation many years ago. To protect his privacy I will say only this: He is a learned man, a global leader in his field who has risen to the top of his profession, where he makes huge contributions to his adopted country. He has a wide circle of admiring acquaintances in both the public and private sectors. 

I was astonished therefore when he shared with me his concern that bringing his family to the United States decades ago may have been the biggest mistake of his life. I was astonished to learn that this prominent man was scared: scared for the physical safety of his family, scared that he might not be able to freely practice the religion of his birth, scared that because of his religion he might have to leave America, and -- even worse -- scared that he might wait too long before leaving. I could not believe that I was hearing these things in a restaurant in lower Manhattan in the second decade of the 21st century. It shocked me profoundly.

In the days following that lunch, I realized that I had made a fundamental omission in my consideration of Trumpism. I was writing about it in terms of history, law, politics, and morality.   But I had failed to understand that it also has a profoundly personal dimension. I had failed to consider Trump from the perspective of millions of Muslim citizens, and from the perspective of hard-working immigrants of all national origins. For them, the fact that a bigoted nativist had received the nomination of a major party already has betrayed their belief in the promise of America. Many moved their families to America to escape fear, and now they find themselves in fear’s acidic grip. All the things that we observe as merely political, they experience as personal. 

These people are our neighbors and friends. They are the people who mow your lawn, clean your house and look after your children. They are the people who are researching the medical breakthrough that might save your life. Let’s remember on November 8 that for these people, it’s personal. Defeating Mr. Trump is only the first thing we need to do to restore faith with those who came here seeking to redeem the great promise of America.