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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!
The problem with claims of “authoritarianism” about Trump or anyone else is that the entire thing is so unempirical that it’s basically “boo outgroup” name calling.
Trump is going around Congress? What about Obama threatening to simply mint money to pay for things? Trump is using the National Guard, but in the 1960s the National Guard enforced desegregation including removing the Arkansas governor from the school house door. It’s not what laws are bent or broken, it’s scored differently depending on whether or not you agree with the goal and like the guy doing it.
Right back at you, no?
We can trade lazy whataboutisms all week and never get any closer to a conclusion. Instead, I’ll ask you: what’s something that would actually change your mind about authoritarian tendencies? I’m not asking you to abandon Trump. Just…what would cause you to say “yeah, the Democrats are correct in calling that an unconstitutional power grab?”
My point has nothing to do with Trump. I don’t like him anyway. My point is that pretty much any supposed “warning of authoritarianism” is so overbroad that literally any political figure doing something that the accuser disagrees with can fit into the usual definitions of fascism Or authoritarianism.
So in answer to the question, the first step would be to come up with an empirical definition of the points of fascism Or authoritarianism that even someone who agrees with the policies would say “sure I think we can agree on this point being fascist and not just using power in a way you don’t happen to like.” As it sits, this isn’t true. Eco’s 14 points are nearly as bad as Lichmann’s election keys: undefined terms, vague rules for deciding what counts, and lots of vibes-based handwringing. So I’ll answer by saying that I’ll take the cries of fascism by Trump seriously when you can explain why for example Obama’s trillion dollar bill to go around congress isn’t a fascist power grab, but Trump using Tariff funds is. Or why Eisenhower using the National Guard to arrest the governor of Arkansas for standing in the school door isn’t fascist, but tge National Guard protecting ICE agents is. I don’t like how Trump is doing things, but that doesn’t make it fascist, it means I disagree.
I have major qualms about throwing around these kinds of accusations without a lot of proof for a couple of reasons. First and most obvious is that they essentially declare the sitting government to be “outlaws” in the sense that the Western moral ethos has decided that any government that is authoritarian or fascist is to be opposed by any means necessary. It’s a declaration of war, it says that the government and anyone who supports them for any reason is evil and to be condemned. This is how you get assassination— and we’ve already had one. Second, Theres a danger that I think has already happened that so many false alarms have been issued that nobody takes such claims as literal anymore. You simply cannot because pretty much every conservative government that tries to govern like a conservative government is decried as Fascism. Reagan is fascist. Bush is fascist. Thatcher. If that’s also fascism, how do you actually raise the alarm if you get a genocidal regime who wants to actually rule with an iron fist?
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