Category Archives: Politics

The Donald Trump Movie

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Tom Palmer writes,

A common theme among populists is to empower a leader who can cut through procedures, rules, checks and balances, and protected rights, privileges, and immunities and “just get things done.”

In other words, Donald Trump is Dirty Harry. In the American collective unconscious (I have instantly become a Jungian, after watching a semester’s worth of Jordan Peterson lectures last week), there is a generic movie about a rogue cop. The bureaucrats try to use rules to hem him in, but he breaks the rules in order to stop the bad guy. Of course, there were precursors of Dirty Harry long before 1971, when the movie appeared. The hero who has to break a few dishes because the system is to corrupt to do its job is an ancient story.

Think of the election in 2016 in those terms. Think of Mr. Trump as the rogue cop, and think of the public as the audience. The press and other elites are the soft-headed folks trying to get him to play by the rules. But the more obstacles they put in his way, and the more defiant he is, the more the audience roots for him.

Consider another movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Again, the audience roots for the rogue, Randle McMurphy, against the representative of order, Nurse Ratched. Try that one on.

I seem to be taking in a lot of input these days from very erudite individuals whose outlook I might describe as seeing evil welling up in the collective unconscious–on the left as well as on the right. If you don’t like that phrase, I could say it in more words, as Tom Palmer does (read the whole thing). Or you could look at some data on authoritarianism among millenials (pointer from Tyler Cowen). Or you could look at Peter Turchin’s new book, Ages of Discord.

WaPo Watch, Week 2

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Again, this is sort of a trial run. The idea is to work out the best approach for doing it. I agree with the commenters who say that someone other than me should take on this project. If someone is interested in taking it on, perhaps along with a similar project for the NYT, they should get in touch with me, and we can brainstorm how to fund it.

My current thinking is that there are three types of bias. First, the headlines and lead paragraphs sometimes do a lot of editorializing, as in the first story on the phone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s President.

Second, there are double standards in choice of emphasis, as when the Post tells the “Steve Bannon is controversial” story in a way that makes Bannon seem totally beyond the pale but tells the “Keith Ellison is controversial” story in a way that endorses neither Ellison nor his opponents. I do not have a problem with the Ellison story, but I do have a problem with the disparate treatment given to Bannon.

Third, there is the “world view confirmation” bias of the Metro section, the Style section, and the Sunday Outlook section. That is, each contains essays or stories that make progressives feel good about their world view, with much fewer pieces that might give progressives reason to doubt or reconsider in any way.

Also, I am finding that a binary classification system of “bias or no bias” is not the best scheme. I would feel much better assigning bias points to pieces, which could range, say, from 0 to 5, with 0 for no bias to 5 for extremely high bias. Using this system, the initial story on the China phone call would get the full 5 points for editorializing. For each week, you would have a scorecard giving the number of progressive bias points and the number of anti-progressive bias points.

For now, and probably in general, the actual scoring is less important than explaining my thinking on the various pieces.
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Trumpophobia Wager Update

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I found one taker. He bets $20, I bet $1000, proceeds go to charity of winner’s choice. For me to lose, all of the following have to happen prior to the mid-term elections in 2018. I believe my counterparty thinks that none of these things will happen unless there is major terrorist activity in the U.S. in the next two years. In that sense, my counterparty is not a stereotypical Trumpophobe.

– Trump issues an executive order, or gets legislation passed, in response to a terrorist attack which allows for searches or seizures without warrant, or, makes warrants arbitrarily easy to obtain.

– Hundreds (or more) are arrested as Trump rounds up political opponents (including immigrants) in expanded or new prisons which employ unorthodox methods.

– Trump becomes dictator, in name or in practice, signified by either: 1) use of executive orders that are unconstitutional or program TY$100B without Congressional consent; or 2) Congress grants the executive branch the ability to effectively write legislation that can amend the Constitution.

– A person who has met with a Trump official at the official’s office in Washington DC will organize a boycott of businesses or places of worship occupied by one or more minorities, or that person will claim to be inspired by Trump’s rhetoric.

– The emphasis on outsourcing governmental positions to the private sector will in effect cleanse the bureaucracy of persons who oppose Trump policies or world view.

– A new domestic federal agency will be established that performs searches or seizures without warrant, or, using warrants that are arbitrarily easy to obtain. (Note I believe that illegal immigrants are today protected by the Fourth except from immigration agents, so this could apply to suspected immigrants and terrorists.)

– Trump either: 1) postpones a federal election; or 2) detains or restricts speech on the leadership of a substantial or growing political organization not generally considered radical.

What Signals Should the Left Send to Mr. Trump?

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A famous story about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that at the height of the crisis the Kennedy Administration received two messages from the Kremlin. The first message suggested an interest in resolving the crisis peacefully, but the second message was strictly belligerent. The Kennedy people deliberately chose to ignore the second message and instead reply to the first. This tactic produced a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

In general, when X and Y are in conflict, if each side believes that the other is not interested in a fair resolution, the conflict can only escalate. A necessary condition for the conflict to be resolved is that X must believe that Y is interested in resolution, and conversely. It is each side’s beliefs about the other side’s strategy that matters. If X thinks that Y’s strategy is to prolong or escalate the conflict, then X will tend to adopt a stance that appears intransigent to Y.

A challenge is to send clear signals that you are interested in resolving the conflict. When you send mixed signals, the other side can easily focus on the negative signals and take the view that you are not interested in peaceful resolution.

For example, an often-suggested formula for resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is “land for peace.” The problem is that many Israelis are convinced that the Palestinians do not really want peace, and many Palestinians believe that the Israelis do not really want to give up land.

Each side sends mixed signals to each other. For example, Israeli leaders might talk about a two-state solution but at the same time expand Israeli settlements. Palestinian leaders might talk about peace but at the same time try to de-legitimize Israel internationally. In this context, each side tends to dismiss any positive signals from the other side. Believing that the other side does not want a settlement reduces your incentive to send only positive signals. So the process of sending negative signals becomes self-reinforcing.

Now, apply this to the left and to Donald Trump. A reasonable “settlement” would be for the Left to stop fighting the election results and for Mr. Trump not to infringe on the rights of gays, Muslims, and other minorities. Right now, I don’t think that either side is concentrating on sending positive signals.

Many of my friends on the left insist that we cannot wait until something bad happens–we have to denounce Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon right now. The alternative that I have suggested is that people on the left (and others) should send a positive message of support and solidarity with Muslims and gays anxious to preserve their legal rights. This message would not include any denunciation of the Trump Administration.

Such a message would send a signal that we will not sit idly by while rights are infringed. It would implicitly offer a reasonable settlement of the conflict, and put the onus on Mr. Trump for refusing to settle.

The more aggressive and pre-emptive confrontational approach that many are taking gives Mr. Trump little or no incentive to change his behavior. In effect, people are saying, “We are going to assume that you have no desire to peacefully resolve our conflict, and you can assume the same thing about us.” If your goal is to try to escalate the conflict, then that is exactly the right approach. But if you have more constructive goals in mind, then I suggest thinking carefully about the signals that you choose to send.

Trumpophobia Wager Update

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I received a couple of interesting proposals in response to my post that asked if this is really 1933. One of the authors gave me permission to reprint his proposal.

I’d want to bet on whether, between January 20, 2017 and January 20, 2021, Congress will pass and the President will sign legislation that does one or more of the following.

(a) compels the registration, internment, or deportation of a class of US citizens based on their ethnicity, national origin, or peacefully expressed religious beliefs;

(b) confiscates firearms from members of such a class based on one of the above (this would have to be across-the-board confiscation from all members of the class: the proposed restrictions on people on the “no-fly list” would not, however odious in themselves, qualify);

(c) compels members of such a class to sign loyalty oaths or face criminal penalties;

(d) empowers domestic law enforcement agencies to carry out warrantless searches and seizures of the physical property of US citizens beyond the existing recognized “Fourth Amendment exceptions” like airport security;

(e) allows _indefinitely extensible_ administrative detention of US civilian citizens without right of habeas corpus, whether “terrorist suspects” or otherwise (as I understand it, the PATRIOT Act already allows short-term administrative detention but with clear time limits);

(f) criminalizes “false or malicious writing” opposing US government policies or officials, in the senses previously criminalized by the Sedition Acts of 1798 or 1918.

In order to bet, we would have to negotiate further. I do not think that each of the possibilities in his list rises to the level of the steps that the Nazis took that I listed in my original post. However, this proposal does serve the purpose of expressing reasonable concerns.

What I come away with in the case of both proposals is that a reasonable concern is over-reaction to terrorism. For example, if Mr. Trump had been in office when Monday’s attack at Ohio State occurred, it is conceivable that some broad measures against Somali immigrants would have been adopted. I believe that if terrorist attacks escalate in terms of frequency or casualties, the possibility of a reaction of this sort will increase. It is reasonable to warn against an over-reaction.

However, I would consider such an over-reaction more comparable to FDR’s internment of Japanese than to Hitler’s war on the Jews. Jews did not commit the equivalent of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor against Germany.

Moreover, no one foresees a scenario in which Mr. Trump’s personal paramilitary force rounds up and shoots political opponents. And no one foresees a scenario in which Congress votes to effectively abolish itself and grant all power to Mr. Trump, as the 1933 Enabling Act did in Germany.

In general, I think that the cries of outrage at Mr. Trump’s victory are a risky strategy for his opponents. If he indeed commits some outrage against a group of citizens, then you get to say “I told you so.” Meanwhile, however, I suspect that social media outcries and demonstrations will alienate everyone who is not already inalterably opposed to Trump, particularly those of us who are prepared to give him a chance.

The Fake News Problem

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Typical Washington Post Headline:

D.C. Council to vote on nation’s most generous family leave law: 11 weeks off, up to 90 percent pay

Note the modifier “generous.” Not “intrusive” or “coercive” or “attempting to be generous with other people’s money” or “blithely unaware of unintended consequences.” Just “generous.” Why didn’t every government think of that? Why not have a whole year off, with 150 percent of pay? That would be even more “generous.”

Interestingly, the print edition had a much more neutral headline, but the lead paragraph still refers to the potential for a “generous” paid leave policy.

I see this editorial bias in many stories, particularly the local ones. I have remarked before how the Montgomery County School system is always described as having an “excellent reputation,” when the only thing that is excellent about it is the pay and benefits lavished on the employees, most of whom are not classroom teachers. The outcomes, which the Post never looks at, but which are readily available on the state department of education web site, are mediocre.

Finally, I would note that the Post‘s coverage of Fidel Castro was much less antagonistic than its coverage of Donald Trump. This is a case where I think that the attempt to view a phenomenon along the progressive oppressor-oppressed axis, and accepting Castro’s self-designation as a savior of the oppressed, is pathetically misguided. Instead, conservatives who view Castro as barbaric along the civilization-barbarism axis and libertarians who view him as coercive along the liberty-coercion axis strike me as much more sensible.

One of my fantasy jobs is “conservative curmudgeon” at the Post. I would write a weekly column listing all of the biases I find each week in the paper, most of which are not even in the editorial section. Maybe next year I will start a regular weekly series of blog posts along those lines.

Trumpophobes: Is this really 1933?

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Some of my Facebook friends say that it is. Here are some of the events that took place in Germany in 1933.

The Reichstag Fire Decree is passed in response to the Reichstag fire, nullifying many German civil liberties.

Hundreds are arrested as the Nazis round up their political opponents

Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, is completed (it opens 22 March)

The Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, making Adolf Hitler dictator of Germany

The recently elected Nazis under Julius Streicher organise a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany.

The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service is passed, forcing all “non-Aryans” to retire from the legal profession and civil service

The Gestapo is established in Germany

The Nazis stage massive public book burnings throughout Germany

All non-Nazi parties are forbidden in Germany

My challenge to all Trump-ophobics is this. Look at this list of events, and come up with something comparable that you expect to occur under President Trump. Make your prediction in the form of a $100 bet. I will take the other side and give you 50-1 odds. That is I pay $5000 if, for example, Congress passes something like the Enabling Act.

Note that Bryan Caplan and Scott Alexander have also expressed a willingness to bet against Trumpophobes.

What Now for Conservative Cosmopolitans?

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The LA Times hosts a symposium. Max Boot writes,

I want Trump to succeed as a conservative president for the good of the country. But I remain skeptical about whether this is possible for someone as unmoored and erratic as he is.

In the meantime, I can no longer support a party that doesn’t know what it stands for — and that in fact may stand for positions that I find repugnant. After a lifetime of being a Republican, I have re-registered as an independent.

I am not registered as an independent, because in Montgomery County, Maryland that would mean being disenfranchised. I am registered as a Democrat, so I can vote in the primaries, where votes have a (distant) chance of mattering.

Jonah Goldberg writes,

The Republican Party, which in many ways is at the historic height of its power, really isn’t having a crisis — but the conservative movement is. The differences between a white-nationalist, protectionist populism and the traditional conservative reverence for classical liberalism and limited government are too great to paper over indefinitely.

Suppose that you are cosmopolitan conservative. What are your choices?

a) Suddenly discover the virtues of mercantilism and strict immigration controls, sort of like a liberal economist who suddenly discovers the virtues of raising the minimum wage.

b) Try not to worry about what might become of the Republican brand, and meanwhile enjoy whatever conservative legislation gets signed and whatever sensible deregulation takes place.

c) (Continue to) distance yourself from Mr. Trump, and hope for a more cosmopolitan conservatism to make a comeback.

For me, (a) is too dishonest. Meanwhile, (c) sounds much less plausible after a Trump victory than a Trump defeat. You wind up in the same wilderness as libertarians. That leaves (b) as the only realistic alternative. Although if the cosmopolitans over-play their hand, the anti-cosmopolitans may feel like victims of a bait-and-switch.

Jonathan Haidt on the State of Politics

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Self-recommending. Pointer from Tyler Cowen. An excerpt:

I’m a fan of the political scientist Karen Stenner, who divides the groups on the right into three: The laissez-faire conservatives or libertarians who believe in maximum freedom, including economic freedom and small governance; the Burkean conservatives, who fear chaos, disruption, and disorder — these are many of the conservative intellectuals who have largely opposed Trump.

And then there are the authoritarians, who are people who are not necessarily racist but have a strong sense of moral order, and when they perceive that things are coming apart and that there’s a decrease in moral order, they become racist — hostile to alien groups including blacks, gay people, Mexicans, etc. This is the core audience that Trump has spoken to.

That’s not to say that most people who voted for him are authoritarians, but I think this is the core group that provides the passion that got him through the primaries.

But perhaps the key idea is this:

We haven’t talked about social media, but I really believe it’s one of our biggest problems. So long as we are all immersed in a constant stream of unbelievable outrages perpetrated by the other side, I don’t see how we can ever trust each other and work together again.

It’s not just social media. The mainstream media also deal in a “constant stream of unbelievable outrages.” The double standards are glaring. Elizabeth Warren attacks Wall Street, and she is called a brave progressive. Donald Trump attacks Wall Street, and he is called anti-semitic. If the Pope were to say that capitalism needs to be softened by religious beliefs, then the media would report that he “gets it.” Steve Bannon says pretty much the same thing, and supposedly he is a white nationalist.

Related: Scott Alexander writes,

There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up. It’s a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clinton was a secret Satanist. Yes, calling Romney a racist was crying wolf. But you are still crying wolf.

Tyler Cowen thinks that Alexander is naive. I think not. The fact that real rape happens does not make false accusations of rape helpful. And the fact that real oppression happens does not make false accusations about it helpful.

If minorities come under attack under President Trump, then I will rally to their defense. But the wave of post-election rallies strikes me as more counterproductive and divisive than healing or inclusive. If what you want is a peaceful, inclusive society, then you should model peaceful, inclusive rhetoric and avoid contrived outrage.

The Best Writing on the Presidential Transition

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is by David Halberstam, in The Best and the Brightest. Of course, it is about the Kennedy transition of 1960-1961. As the book opens, President Kennedy is meeting with Robert Lovett to discuss candidates for important offices, such as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.

Note that the first sentence of the book is “A cold day in December.” By today’s standards, Kennedy must have spent the month of November in “disarray.”

Halberstam explains that two party icons who might have offered independent thinking, Adlai Stevenson and Chester Bowles, were passed over for Secretary of State. One important reason is that during the nomination contest, Stevenson and Bowles had failed to live up to Kennedy’s standards of loyalty. Those standards evidently were met by Kennedy’s choice for Attorney General–his brother.

Kennedy selected for his key foreign policy team Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, and McGeorge Bundy, all of whom were wedded to orthodox views. They also had no independent political base to detract from their loyalty to Kennedy. Their legacy is the Vietnam War.

On the Trump transition, I ran across this WaPo piece by Eliot Cohen.

The president-elect is surrounding himself with mediocrities whose chief qualification seems to be unquestioning loyalty…By all accounts, his ignorance, and that of his entourage, about the executive branch is fathomless.

Recall that before the election I wrote

On the Republican side the best and the brightest are NeverTrumpers, and I don’t see Mr. Trump reaching across those burned bridges.

Cohen is certainly not repairing those bridges (he is close to declaring them beyond repair). If his strong words are based on a single interaction he had with someone on the Trump team, then shame on him. On the other hand, if Cohen has accumulated a plural of anecdotes, then he is delivering a fair warning.

[UPDATE: Yuval Levin writes,

I respect Cohen, certainly share his concerns about Trump, and can understand his worries here. But I think his piece is unfair in some important respects, and ultimately unpersuasive

I should add that I also find the piece a bit strange, in this respect: my guess is that Cohen could reach a lot of his friends among conservative foreign policy wonks with a more private medium, such as email. What was the purpose in going public in the Post? As Levin puts it,

if Trump’s team concludes that every frank private conversation they have with anyone outside their circle will end up in the newspapers, they will be even less likely to reach beyond that circle in recruiting talent, and the country will pay for it.

Thanks to a commenter for pointing to Levin’s post, which I had somehow missed.
]

I do not know Eliot Cohen. However, it happens that his daughter was in my class when I taught AP statistics in 2001-2002. That was my first full year of high school teaching, and I was not yet competent at explaining concepts. After several months, I realized that what the students were getting from me was just a general indication of what they were supposed to know. Most of the students who were actually learning the subject were getting their instruction from Eliot Cohen’s daughter.