A Worrisome Parallel

[ndrosen]

Last week, I was talking with a friend of mine at the Patent Office, quite an educated man, and he said that the situation in the United States these days reminded him of that in Spain in the 1930s, not in every detail - no army in Morocco — but in the sense that there was a sorting out, a separation into two camps of people who hated each other and did not see their country’s situation at all in the same terms. On the one hand, there were the cities with their republicans, their labor movements, their socialists, Communists, and anarchists; on the other hand, the rural conservatives, the gentry, the Catholics, the officer corps. I mentioned that I had read a book about the Spanish Civil War, I think by Hugh Thomas, as a child.

The situation is not identical, but there do seem to be worrisome parallels.

Comments

[litalex]

Well, you've got one side that still believes in the rule of law and the constitution (i.e., check and balances, freedom of the press, etc), and one side that...doesn't. So I wouldn't place the blame on both sides equally...

[ndrosen]

I share your contempt for the Trumpublicans, but I do not think all that highly of the Democrats. President “I have a phone and a pen” Obama had smoother manners than Dishonest Donald, but did not always display much respect for the Constitution. Hillary Clinton wanted to undo the Citizens United decision. Kamala Harris is promising, if elected, to take unilateral action to impose various gun control proposals if Congress fails to act. Where would she get that authority? And there are Democrats as well as Republicans announcing their intention to regulate the Internet to prevent the wrong things from being said.

[litalex]

Obama said that in 2014, after years of being frustrated in office; Trump, on the other hand, never planned to respect Congress in the first place -- and telling the IRS to simply ignore Congress's subpoenas (to get his tax returns, etc) is many degrees worse.

The Supreme Court can be wrong, and trying to get it to overturn a decision has precedent, eg, separate but equal was overturned. And who can forget Mitch McConnell not even allowing Merrick Garland's nomination to even be voted on, for pretty much a year. And Republicans, of course, want to overturn Roe v. Wade.

As to Kamala Harris, I guess the American public? 60% of Americans say they want stricter gun control.

Freedom of the press isn't just about the Internet. Nixon is the only other modern president to call the free press the "enemy", and certainly not "of the people".

Trump has also been encouraging violence for a while (https://www.vox.com/2019/2/22/18236512/christopher-hasson-sarah-sanders-trump-encouraging-violence), and Democrat candidates haven't done that.

[ndrosen]

I am not remotely an admirer of Dishonest Donald, but I do have more problems than you do with the Democrats. For one thing, the government’s position in the Citizens United case, which the Supreme Court rightly (in my view) rejected, was that the campaign finance law would let the government ban a book published by a corporation, if that book could affect an election (e.g., a biography, whether favorable or unfavorable, of one of the candidates). This is not compatible with the First Amendment.

No doubt Obama was frustrated in office, as many presidents have been, but that is in accordance with the Constitution, which does not require Congress to pass whatever bills the President thinks should be passed. Also, keep in mind that Obama was dealing with a Republican Congress because the voters had not been delighted with Obamacare and other policies of his administration.

Large numbers of Americans want various things to which the Constitution poses obstacles. I wonder how many of those 60% could give a coherent account of what gun control laws there are now, and what stricter laws they would support? Even if some proposals for stricter gun control would genuinely make us safer, and not violate the Second Amendment, it would require Congress to enact them into law. The Constitution does not authorize the President to rule by decree, even if 60% of the American people approve. That way lies Caesarism.

[litalex]

The law should be tweaked until it doesn't ban books and similar, but the current system in which you can pour as much money as possible into it is deeply unfair to the poor.

Obamacare is basically what the GOP wanted until the Dems took it up. And now people have swung the other way around and support it.

All right, perhaps so with the gun control bit.

But I maintain that Trump is categorically worse than all the Dems combined. All politicians are liars, but Trump lies as much as he breathes. He encourages violence to the point of incitement; none of the Dems does. Trump is racist; none of the Dems is. Trump is a self-professed sexual assaulter; none of the Dems is (even Biden, who needs to learn about boundaries, is not assaulting anyone). The Trump administration lock children in cages, without ways to reunite them with their families, and none of the Dem prez candidates would do that. To quote the Republicans back during the Clinton era, character matters. And oh, Dems aren't raging hypocrites in terms of sexual matters, too -- Mike Pence and his ilk would support someone who cheated on his pregnant wife with a porn star (Clinton never did that), but condemn LGBTQ people.

[ndrosen]

I still believe that trying to regulate how much can be spent on what kind of speech that might possibly influence political outcomes is deeply unfair to many people, some of them rather poor, or even very poor. They don’t have top lawyers to help them navigate the complicated regulations, you see, and defend them if some politician wants them prosecuted for allegedly speaking about him the wrong way.

However, I definitely agree with you about Dishonest Donald and his myrmidons.

[litalex]

We could go the British route and have all campaign funds drawn from public money.

So my point is, given how bad Trump is, why are you saying the Dems are just as bad? I just pointed out a bunch of stuff where Trump is worse and all you say is, "Yes, Trump is very bad, but the Dems are the same" when the Dems are demonstrably not as bad. It's a low bar, admittedly, but a true statement nonetheless.

[ndrosen]

Leaving aside some other concerns, Citizens United was not about campaign funds, and corporations (whether General Motors, or the corporation owning the New York Times, or nonprofits like the NRA or the Sierra Club) are not allowed to make unlimited donations to political campaigns; they are allowed to make movies, publish books, and report the news, even if doing so may affect elections.

My original post did not say that Trump and the Democrats are equally bad, but that the way the country is becoming so divided is worrisome. I believe, so far as I can judge, that Donald Trump is a worse human being than Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or various people serving time at the nearest state penitentiary.

However, I still do not agree with the political agenda of the Democratic left, and I do not like the rhetoric heard from Kamala Harris and others about ruling by decree if elected. Moreover, a slightly different point, I fear the consequences of the leftists enacting their agenda, even if many of them are well-intentioned and less sociopathic than DJT. I recommend reading Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom if you have not done so, and, as it happens, I speak as an ex-leftist.

[litalex]

But larger organizations and rich people are almost guaranteed to make more movies that are more effective, etc, to help or hurt a candidate. I don't see how making money equal to speech would help the poor.

Well, Trump is horrible and I don't understand why decent people would support him. Also, Trump encouraged those divisions, and the Russians are partly to blame as well. So to me, Dems share less of the blame.

And...hasn't the Nordic countries proved that democratic socialism can work?

[ndrosen]

Larger and richer organizations can certainly lay try to use their greater resources to influence people more, but they don’t always succeed. People are not guaranteed to watch the movie or read the book produced by the richer organization, or to agree with it if they do. Sometimes, for good or ill, people accept the views pushed by dissidents, or groups with shoestring budgets. Remember that Jeb Bush had a lot of campaign money in 2015/early 2016, and went nowhere; I think he ended up with something like one primary vote per $10,000 spent. Trump came from behind to win the GOP nomination, while Bernie Sanders, no favorite of most of the rich donors, almost won the Democratic nomination.

To the extent that there are real problems, giving the government the power to suppress “too much” speech by the wrong people is likely to be a cure far worse than the disease. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will end up controlling the government and deciding who is allowed to spend how much on spreading what ideas?

[litalex]

One would assume the government will let each person give out the same amount. But money shouldn't equal speech, or rich people/organizations would just have more "speech" when everyone should have the same amount.

There are things that can be bipartisan, or even apolitical. Set up a committee with equal number of Democrats and Republicans, etc. Or ask the Supreme Court to do it. Though recently, all the power grabs seem to be from the Republicans, with Merrick Garland and voter suppression and whatnot.

[ndrosen]

People should have equal right to speak; I do not agree that they should have equal amounts of speech. What if Joe doesn’t have much to say, while Washington Post reporter Pete, at considerable expense, has conducted an extensive investigation into Donald Trump’s record of stiffing contractors and other sleazy behavior, and now the Post wants to print a front page story about the matter? If the government has the power to equalize people’s amount of speech, or of money spent on speaking, can’t you see the Trump administration deciding that Pete, and newspaper owner Jeff Bezos, shouldn’t have more speech than anyone else, and suppressing the article?

I favor liberty, which means that some people will inevitably not be completely equal to others in every way. You favor what I see as enforced egalitarianism, which means that some people, the enforcers of supposed equality, will inevitably be more equal than others.

[litalex]

Which is why I said the law should be tweaked, instead of accepted wholesale. And freedom of the press is already guaranteed.

I think most people want a mix of liberty and equality; it's just differing levels. Also, it's not like the "enforcers" would forever be the same people, as term limits, etc, can always be added. So, no, I don't think they'd become more "equal".

But my original point in response to your post was that I think the Democrats deserves a lower share of the blame in terms of division in the US because Trump actively fanned those flames and Russia helped sowed the seeds, too.

[ndrosen]

Freedom of the press is guaranteed in the First Amendment, but constitutional guarantees have sometimes been ignored. Even if the “enforcers” would not always be the same people ,
I would still not want their kind of enforcement; you might also consider the danger that with current office holders writing the laws, and their appointees enforcing them, it might become harder to displace those current politicians.

Even if Team Blue and Team Red still took turns in power, their appointees might tend to agree on suppressing dissident views by Team Green or Team Mauve. Think about it.

[litalex]

In the end, you just really distrust the government and I think they can be a force for good. I think it's odd that you think what you think despite living in a democracy and I think the opposite way living under an increasingly authoritarian place (Hong Kong).

I don't trust the Central government in mainland China and their cronies in HK, and the US government is so far from that that I think your scenarios are a bit over the top.

P.S. You still hasn't answered whether the Dems should have a lesser share of the blame.

[ndrosen]

I think that the government can be a force good, but can be a force for harm as well, especially when politicians undertake to do too much, or things that are not their proper business. I do prefer the American government to China’s, but I do not believe that American politicians or officials are necessarily made of better stuff than their Chinese counterparts. Instead, the reason why, for example, twentieth century America, with all its faults, do not perpetrate something like the Great Leap Forward, with its millions of deaths, is because of constitutional guarantees of a free press, checks and balances in government, and independent judiciary, etc.

I therefore find it worrisome when the jackass in the Oval Office admires dictators while despising his own country’s institutions, and his Democratic opponents also fail to express respect for constitutional government, preferring to boast of what the6 personally will d9 if elected.

As to your postscript, I’ve made my contempt for Trump plain. I have not said whether the Dems should have a lesser share of the blame, because you do not specify blame for what. Also, which Dems?

[litalex]

Blame for divisions in the country because Trump definitely fanned the flames. And Russia helped with that, too. Pretty much most of the Dems in elected office, afaik.

[ndrosen]

OK, I agree that Trump has fanned the flames of division to a greater degree than normal politicians, including most Democrats.

That doesn’t make the Dems blameless, though. Some of them are pushing an extreme (by American standards) leftist agenda, and promising, if elected to the presidency, to rule by decree if Congress won’t act as they wish. This is divisive, and may make some people who dislike Trump hold their noses and vote for him, or at least vote for a Republican Congressman who has fallen in line behind Dishonest Donald.

[ndrosen]

The Nordic countries are welfare-statist, but not exactly socialist. Reason published an article a few years ago by a Swede named Johan Norberg, setting forth how Swedish practice differs from what Bernie Sanders wants for the U.S.A. In many ways, Sweden is to the right of Bernie’s platform. On the other hand, Norberg criticized his homeland for the way it raises revenue to pay for at least a large part of its government budget, namely value added taxes that burden the poor, and I agree with him about that as well.

On the other hand, Norway is semi-Georgist, in that its government is financed in large part out of oil royalties, a form of land value taxation.

[ndrosen]

By the way, Obamacare is not at all what most of the GOP wanted. It may have resembled Romneycare in Massachusetts, but much of the GOP criticized Romneycare.

[litalex]

Not just Romney; it was quite similar to a Republican plan back in the 1990s, though you're right that many Republicans did not like it.

Obama started off with a plan that was a lot more right-wing than many Democrats wanted because he was extending an olive branch to the Republicans. But the Republicans didn't care and in the end, the plan did not please either side.

It's still better than not doing anything in the first place, which is apparently what the Republicans want (else they would have come up with a new plan in the past two years when the Republicans had both the presidency and Congress).

[selenite0]

Yeah, this has been worrying me since 2000 and it keeps getting worse. Camps defining themselves as against the other camp, rather than being for something, and both righteously assured that it's the other side's fault for starting it.