On Trump's Restraint and Good Judgment (I Hope)

Yesterday afternoon, I worked up the nerve to say the following to a room full of (mostly) white retirees in my politically middle-of-the-road home town of Riverside, California.

(I said this after giving a slightly trimmed version of my Jan 29 L.A. Times op-ed What Happens to Democracy If the Experts Can't Be Both Factual and Balanced.)

Our democracy requires substantial restraints on the power of the chief executive. The president cannot simply do whatever he wants. That's dictatorship.

Dictatorship has arrived when other branches of government -- the legislature and the judiciary -- are unable to thwart the president. This can happen either because the other branches are populated with stooges or because the other branches reliably fail in their attempts to resist the president.

President Trump appears to have expressed admiration for undemocratic chief executives who seize power away from judiciaries and legislatures.

Here's something that could occur. President Trump might instruct the security apparatus of the United States -- the military, the border patrol, police departments -- to do something, for example to imprison or deport groups of people he describes as a threat. And then a judge or a group of judges might decide that Trump's instructions should not be implemented. And Trump might persist rather than deferring. He might insist that the judge or judges who aim to block him are misinterpreting or misusing the law. He might demand that his orders be implemented despite the judicial outcome.

Here's one reason to think that won't occur: In January, Trump issued an executive order banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries. When judges decided to block the order, Trump backed down. He insulted the judges and derided the decision, saying it left the nation less safe. But he did not demand that the security apparatus of the United States ignore the decision.

So that's good.

Probably Trump will continue to defer to the judiciary in that way. He has not been as aggressive about seizing power as he could have been, if he were set upon maximizing executive power.

But if, improbably, Trump in the future decides to continue with an order that a judge is attempting to halt -- if, for some reason, Trump decides to insist that the executive branch disregard what he sees as an unwise and unjust judicial decision -- then quite suddenly our democracy would be comprised.

Democracy depends on the improbable capacity of a few people who sit in courtrooms and study the law to convince large groups of people with guns to do things that those people with guns might not want to do, including things that the people with guns regard as contrary to the best interest of their country and the safety of their communities. It's quite amazing. A few people in black robes -- perhaps themselves with divided opinions -- versus the righteous desires of an army.

If Trump says do this, and a judge in Hawaii says no, stop, and then Trump says army of mine, ignore that judge, what will the people with the guns do?

It won’t happen. I don’t think it will happen.

We as a country have chosen to wager our democracy on Trump's restraint and good judgment.

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David Livingstone Smith: The Politics of Salvation: Ideology, Propaganda, and Race in Trump's America

David Livingstone Smith's talk at UC Riverside, Jan 19, 2017:

Introduction by Milagros Pena, Dean of UCR's College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Panel discussants are Jennifer Merolla (Political Science, UCR), Armando Navarro (Ethnic Studies, UCR), and me. After the Dean's remarks, David's talk is about 45 minutes, then about 5-10 minutes for each discussant, then open discusson with the audience for the remainder of the three hours, moderated by David Glidden (Philosophy, UCR).

Smith outlines Roger Money-Kyrle's theory of propaganda -- drawn from observing Hitler's speeches. On Money-Kyrle's view propaganda involves three stages: (1) induce depression, (2) induce paranoia, and (3) offer salvation. Smith argues that Trump's speeches follow this same pattern.

Smith also argues for a "teleofunctional" notion of ideological beliefs as beliefs that have the function of promoting oppression in the sense that those beliefs have proliferated because they promote oppression. On this view, beliefs are ideological, or not, depending on their social or cultural lineage. One's own personal reasons for adopting those beliefs are irrelevant to the question of whether they are ideological. In the case of Trump in particular, Smith argues, regardless of why he embraces the beliefs he does, or what his personal motives are, if his beliefs are beliefs with the cultural-historical function of promoting oppression, they are ideological.

What Happens to Democracy When the Experts Can't Be Both Factual and Balanced?

Yesterday Stephen Bannon, one of Trump's closest advisors, called the media "the opposition party". My op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times is my response to that type of thinking.

What Happens to Democracy When the Experts Can't Be Both Factual and Balanced?

Does democracy require journalists and educators to strive for political balance? I’m hardly alone in thinking the answer is "yes." But it also requires them to present the facts as they understand them — and when it is not possible to be factual and balanced at the same time, democratic institutions risk collapse.

Consider the problem abstractly. Democracy X is dominated by two parties, Y and Z. Party Y is committed to the truth of propositions A, B and C, while Party Z is committed to the falsity of A, B and C. Slowly the evidence mounts: A, B and C look very likely to be false. Observers in the media and experts in the education system begin to see this, but the evidence isn’t quite plain enough for non-experts, especially if those non-experts are aligned with Party Y and already committed to A, B and C....

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