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Notes -
On the sqs thread, @Capital_Room had an interesting query, about whether Trump is actually being authoritarian:
Is there anything to this: "The Coup We've Feared Has Already Happened"?
Is this what it seems like to me — just more lefty pearl-clutching and crying wolf — or is there something to the arguments James Bruno and Tonoccus McClain are making?
Some of the commenters like @MadMonzer offer an interesting response:
That substack is a bad take on it - the best version of the theory I have seen is spread across multiple posts on lawfaremedia.org. But the underlying story is absolutely serious, and as far as I can see it is true. The three-bullet version of the story is
The slightly longer version is:
The claim that Trump and Johnson are trying to change the US budget process to one where (at least as regards discretionary spending - the only changes to entitlement spending have been done in regular order through the OBBBA) Congress does not meaningfully exercise the power of the purse seems to me to be straightforwardly true.
Overall I tend to agree that Trump's admin is acting in authoritarian ways, and even moreso than past administrations. However, it seems to me that the Congressional structure is so broken that, it kind of makes sense?
The way I see it, and the way Trump et al probably sees it, is that the Three Branches as they exist are extremely dysfunctional, and cannot do the actual job of governing the country pretty much at all. This has allowed NGOs and other non-state actors to come in and basically take over by deploying social and cultural capital in key areas, craftily created a sort of secret network of influence, etc.
The only way for us to get out of this morass, the theory goes, is to have a strong executive who basically burns this gridlock down. Though I don't know if Trump's team would want to restore a functioning American government after or just keep an extremely strong executive.
Anyway, I can't say I fully agree with Trump's seeming plan to just destroy jurisprudence for the executive and do whatever he wants, but I admire the sheer boldness. OTOH, I'm also not convinced that the U.S. has more than a 2% chance of meaningfully falling into an authoritarian dictatorship under Trump, or even in the next 10-20 years. Hopefully I don't eat my words!
Trump is making the government increasingly "authoritarian" (here, meaning increasing the scope of the executive and disposing of useful norms--cultural, institutional, and legal). But it's wrong to view this as something unique to Trump. With increasing polarization, Democrats and Republicans have both been pursuing a tit for that strategy. Neither sees a reliable negotiating partner on the other side of the aisle--and they're both rational not to--so ever since at least Clinton politicians have pursued partisan and increasingly narrow strategies that undermine norms to achieve their short term goals. Trump has taken us furthest down this road, but he's just driving down the same road everyone else has and is.
Do I like it? Not at all. One might hope that, by driving us closer to the abyss, Trump will at least accelerate the reaching of some redemption at the end. That seems wildly optimistic to me. And it's not fascism or neo-Hitler we'll reach, but a level of stagnation and dysfunction that will make the past ten years seem Singaporean in comparison.
US government has become more centralized and thus more prone to authoritarianism since George Washington himself during Whiskey Rebellion, through Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lochner era of utilizing Commerce Clause to gain more power and virtually every single president ever. The Cthulu always swam toward more centralized power in hands of a few. We may talk abut lawful breaches of decorum or this or that norm being ignored, but this is an old story and nowhere near what happened in the past like Habeas Corpus Suspension Act or dozens more examples throughout the history and for sure in the future.
Although there is clearly a drift to centralisation, it isn't a ratchet. Clear reversals in US history include:
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