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<h1 id="reader-title" class="">Trump Exceptionalism Will Kill Every Last One Of Your Brain Cells</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by
Nathan J. Robinson</div>
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<div id="reader-estimated-time" class="">14-17 minutes</div>
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<div id="moz-reader-content" class="line-height4"><div id="readability-page-1" class="page"><p class="">Before concluding that Trump’s actions are unprecedented, better check whether that’s actually true… </p><div class="post-content"><p class="">“I
can’t believe in the history of the White House any president has ever
spoken the words that I heard our president speak yesterday.” That was
Senator Dick Durbin’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/us/politics/trump-immigration-congress.html" class="">reaction</a> to Donald Trump’s instantly infamous “shithole countries” remark. But what <i class="">I </i>can’t
believe is that a United States Senator (and grown man) could think
Donald Trump was the first foul-mouthed racist to inhabit the Oval
Office. We <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1rIDmDWSms" class="">have LBJ</a> <i class="">on tape </i>saying the n-word, after all, and there
was almost no ethnic group that Richard Nixon didn’t make a bigoted
comment about at one point or another. (His White House tapes <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html" class="">contain remarks</a> about “Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans.”)</p><p class="">We can dismiss Durbin’s remark as a bit of rhetoric, of course.
He didn’t mean it literally, but was expressing the degree to which
Trump’s disgusting prejudices depart from the expected standard of
“presidential” conduct. (Even if the <i class="">actual </i>standard
of presidential conduct has often been roughly on this level.) But many
Democrats do actually believe, implicitly or explicitly, in a form of
“Trump Exceptionalism,” which holds that Donald Trump is an entirely
aberrant departure from previous presidents, whose conduct is of an
unprecedented level of awfulness. </p><p class="">In narrating Trump’s presidency as totally different from what
came before, though, they often end up exaggerating the extent to which
Trump’s actions are actually unprecedented (or “unpresidented”). That’s a
concerning tendency because it lead to the forgetting of history, but
also because it ends up exonerating prior presidents for inexcusable
acts. Exhibit A here is the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/145456/liberals-stop-applauding-george-w-bush" class="">rehabilitation of George W. Bush</a>,
who is responsible for an inconceivable amount of death and carnage,
but who is increasingly seen as dignified and statesmanlike when
compared to Donald Trump. Bush himself encourages that view by
occasionally issuing denunciations of Trump’s less defensible outbursts.
The more Trump is depicted as an aberrant departure from a sound and
principled norm, <a href="https://psmag.com/news/dubya-they-love-ya" class="">the better Bush seems</a>. The irony here is that so far, measured on <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/04/i-dont-care-how-good-his-paintings-are-he-still-belongs-in-prison" class="">Number Of Illegal Wars That Killed Half A Million Innocent People</a>, Bush is far <i class="">worse </i>than
Trump. And though Trump’s immigration policies are uniquely cruel, much
of the rest of Trump’s agenda is simply orthodox Republican politics.
Massive tax cuts for corporations, gutting consumer protection,
eliminating ObamaCare: I struggle to think of any of Trump’s policies
that put him outside the mainstream of the Republican Party.</p><p class="">In saying this, I’m not downplaying how bad Trump is, but
emphasizing how bad the rest of the American right is. My major worry,
which many other leftists have given voice to, is that because so much
rage is focused on Trump specifically, who is seen as personally unique
and unlike everyone else, a far-right politician who did not exhibit
some of these peculiar Trump-specific traits would be far more easily
“normalized” and accepted as legitimate. If Tom Cotton, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cotton-pompeo-and-trump-are-a-recipe-for-war-with-iran_us_5a205ccfe4b03350e0b534aa" class="">a truly frightening man</a> whose immigration positions <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/12/26/tom-cotton-not-nativist-to-want-immigration-policy-crafted-to-benefit-american-citizens-not-foreigners/" class="">seem functionally identical to Trump’s</a>,
were to run for president in a few years, I’m not sure we’d see the
same level of liberal fury, because Cotton wouldn’t be so stupid as to
actually use the word “shithole” to describe the countries he’d give the
same treatment to as Trump. And while Trump may have <i class="">called </i>Haiti and Africa “shitholes,” at least he hasn’t, say, denied an ongoing genocide (as <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Superpredator-Clintons-Abuse-Black-America/dp/0692736891" class="">Bill Clinton did with Rwanda</a>) or pushed to lower the minimum wage in Haiti (as <a href="https://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-suppressed-haitis-minimum-wage/" class="">Obama’s State Department did in 2009</a>).
The United States has always treated the Haitian people as expendable
shithole-dwellers, as Paul Farmer documented in his important and
underrated book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Uses-Haiti-Paul-Farmer/dp/1567513441" class=""><i class="">The Uses of Haiti</i></a><i class="">. </i>(By the way, <a href="https://lonelyplanetwp.imgix.net/2015/12/GettyImages-79290706_master_cs.jpg?fit=min&q=40&sharp=10&vib=20&w=1470" class="">here is what Haiti is actually like</a>.)</p><p class="">To see a particularly extreme example of Trump Exceptionalism,
consider the framework put forth by Harvard professors Steven Levitsky
and Daniel Ziblatt in their new book <i class=""><a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Democracies-Die-Steven-Levitsky/dp/1524762938" class="">How Democracies Die</a>. </i>In a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/opinion/trumps-how-democracies-die.html" class="">column</a> about their work, Nicholas Kristof explained their criteria for what constitutes a “dangerous authoritarian leader:</p><p class=""><i class="">1. The leader shows only a weak commitment to democratic rules. 2.
He or she denies the legitimacy of opponents. 3. He or she tolerates
violence. 4. He or she shows some willingness to curb civil liberties or
the media…. “With the exception of Richard Nixon, no major-party
presidential candidate met even one of these four criteria over the last
century,” they say, which sounds reassuring. Unfortunately, they have
one update: “Donald Trump met them all.”</i></p><p class="">Note that they say that, except Nixon, <i class="">zero </i>U.S.
presidents of the last century meet even one of the stated criteria.
None of them have “tolerated violence,” which apparently doesn’t include
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/world/asia/indonesia-cables-communist-massacres.html" class="">embracing mass murdering dictators like Indonesia’s Suharto</a>, or <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/05/how-to-justify-hiroshima" class="">wiping out an entire city of people with an atomic bomb</a>, or <a href="http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a-million-bombs/" class="">dropping 250 million cluster bombs on Laos</a>, or <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/05/03/why-do-north-koreans-hate-us-one-reason-they-remember-the-korean-war/" class="">burning down virtually every town in North Korea</a>, or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/18/us-military-usa" class="">training Latin American death squad leaders</a>, or <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=82588" class="">supporting violent coups by brutal military juntas</a>, or <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/gul-rahman-death-at-cia-black-site-prison-cobalt" class="">torturing people to death</a>. Presumably, we are talking about violence within our borders, which likewise doesn’t include <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/do-not-resist-and-the-crisis-of-police-militarization" class="">turning police into soldiers</a> and <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass-incarceration" class="">locking vast numbers of people in cages</a>. Likewise, none of them have in any way showed a willingness to curb civil liberties, meaning that the <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/06/05/edward-snowden-revelations/" class="">construction of a massive ubiquitous state surveillance apparatus</a> has no implications for civil liberties. Likewise, <a href="http://markrozell.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Rozell_and_Sollenberger_UE_and_Bush_Legacy_Chapter_2013.pdf" class="">unilaterally expanding the power of the executive branch</a> has no implications for one’s “commitment to democratic rules,” and nor does <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich#U.S._indictment_and_pardon" class="">offering rich people exemptions from the criminal justice system</a>. </p><p class="">Levitsky and Ziblatt, in their book, seem most concerned with
#2, the denying of “legitimacy” to the other side, and the erosion of
the “norms” underpinning democracy. Democracy, for them, does not
necessarily mean that government should actually do what the public
wants it to do (since it <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/is-america-an-oligarchy" class="">doesn’t and never has</a>).
Rather, it means “recognizing that our political rivals are decent,
patriotic, law-abiding citizens—that they love our country and respect
the Constitution just as we do. It means that even if we
believe our opponents’ ideas to be foolish or wrong‐headed, we do not
view them as an existential threat.” Civility and respect, then, rather
than actual public participation in policy-making, are what matters, and
someone who doesn’t respect their political opponents is
anti-democratic. If you don’t think George W. Bush is “decent” and
“law-abiding,” then—and I don’t, because I think he’s a morally bankrupt
war criminal—you are no better than Trump.</p><p class=""><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Anatomy-Monstrosity-Nathan-Robinson/dp/0997844779" class=""><img class="wp-image-2085 alignnone" src="https://images.currentaffairs.org/2017/01/anatomyad2-1024x646.jpg" alt="" moz-reader-center="true" height="379" width="600"></a></p><p class="">I dwell on Levitsky and Ziblatt because their book actually
offers a highly illuminating insight into how this kind of Harvard
liberalism conceives of politics. Although they are mainly concerned
with proving that Donald Trump is a monstrous departure from the norm,
it quickly becomes clear that their standard for what constitutes
“authoritarianism” would encompass a broad range of anti-establishment
candidates, including Bernie Sanders:</p><p class=""><i class="">What kinds of candidates tend to test positive on a litmus
test for authoritarianism? Very often, populist outsiders claiming to
represent the voice of “the people,” wage war on what they depict as a
corrupt and conspiratorial elite. Populists tend to deny the legitimacy
of established parties, attacking them as undemocratic and even
unpatriotic.. They tell voters that the existing system is not really a
democracy but instead has been hijacked, corrupted, or rigged by the
elite. And they promise to bury that elite and return power to “the
people.”</i></p><p class="">And when one of these candidates comes alone, one that attacks
“established parties” as “undemocratic,” telling voters that the
existing system is “corrupt,” Levitsky and Ziblatt make it clear that
political parties need to act as “gatekeepers” to ensure that the
candidates do not win: </p><p class=""><i class="">Potential demagogues exist in all democracies, and
occasionally, one or more of them strike a public chord. But in some
democracies, political leaders heed the warning signs and take steps to
ensure that authoritarians remain on the fringes, far from the centers
of power. When faced with the rise of extremists or demagogues, they
make a concerted effort to isolate and defeat them. Although mass
responses to extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether
political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. Put simply,
political parties are democracy’s gatekeepers. </i></p><p class="">They then explain what political parties ought to do to fulfill
this “gatekeeping” function. Let me quote it at length, because it’s
fascinating: </p><p class=""><i class="">Keeping authoritarian politicians out of power is more
easily said than done. Democracies, after all, are not supposed to ban
parties or prohibit candidates from standing for election, and we do not
advocate such measures. The responsibility for filtering out
authoritarians lies, rather, with political parties and party leaders:
democracy’s gatekeepers.Successful gatekeeping requires that mainstream
parties isolate and defeat extremist forces, a behavior political
scientist Nancy Bermeo calls “distancing.” Prodemocratic parties may
engage in distancing in several ways. First, they can keep would-be
authoritarians off party ballots at election time. This requires that
they resist the temptation to nominate these extremists for higher
office even when they can deliver votes… Parties can root out extremists
in the grass roots of their own ranks… [W]henever extremists emerge as
serious electoral contenders, mainstream parties must forge a united
front to defeat them. To quote Linz, they must be willing to “join with
opponents ideologically distant but committed to the survival of the
democratic political order.” In normal circumstances, this is almost
unimaginable. Picture Senator Edward Kennedy and other liberal Democrats
campaigning for Ronald Reagan, or the British Labour Party and their
trade union allies endorsing Margaret Thatcher. Each party’s followers
would be infuriated at this seeming betrayal of principles. But in
extraordinary times, courageous party leadership means putting democracy
and country before party and articulating to voters what is at stake.
</i></p><p class="">Here, then, we have two Harvard professors arguing that when a
candidate comes along alleging that party elites are rigging the system
against voters, party elites need to respond by… rigging the system
against voters. Note that it doesn’t matter whether the candidates are <i class="">correct </i>to
say that the party is undemocratic and corrupt. As soon as they have
made the charge, they become a “populist authoritarian” who must be
stopped at all costs so that the “democratic political order” can
survive. The euphemisms here are downright Orwellian, although to be
honest Oceania was a little more subtle in its propaganda against
Eurasia and Eastasia. </p><p class="">We can see here a ready-built justification for the
“superdelegate” system, as well as the DNC’s collusion with the Clinton
campaign against Bernie Sanders. If you accept Levitsky and Ziblatt’s
logic, <i class="">democracy itself </i>compels party
elites to make sure that populist candidates are “isolated and
defeated,” and “kept off party ballots at election time.” That may still
be true <i class="">even if those candidates stand a better chance of winning than the party elite’s preferred nominee </i>(“Even
when they can deliver votes”), meaning that an electable populist is
worse than a disliked establishment candidate. The logic here is simple:
once you believe that “democracy” requires “respect for the other’s
decency” any criticism of the system that is too strong (e.g. “I think
my opponent is corrupt and morally noxious”) cannot be tolerated,
because it rejects democracy. So, in the interests of democracy, one
must use undemocratic means to suppress the criticism. (Levitsky and
Ziblatt also have, of course, a lot of stuff about how the Founders
believed strongly in checks on democracy. This is true: James Madison <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/34794-us-guardian-elite-rulers-date-back-to-nation-s-founding" class="">believed that</a>
a central task of government was to “protect the minority of the
opulent against the majority,” and “philosopher king”-type rhetoric
about how democracy should only be entrusted to the “responsible” and
“intelligent” has been a constant in American liberal thinking.)</p><p class="">In fact, we can even see that for a certain type of liberal, if
a “populist” won the Democratic nomination, the correct course of
action would be to support the Republican. As Levitsky and Ziblatt say,
even if the party membership would be upset at a seeming betrayal of
principles, anything is justified to keep the “authoritarians” out of
power. This somewhat confirms my theory that if Bernie Sanders had been
nominated by the Democrats, many of the Democratic elite would have
rather jumped ship to the Republican Party than support him. (Only the
threat of Trump might have kept them from doing so, though I still
suspect a number of them would have been begging Michael Bloomberg to
run.) We saw exactly this in England, where the Blair wing of the Labour
Party <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/this-is-why-you-dont-listen-when-they-tell-you-that-youll-fail" class="">seemed like it would rather <i class="">destroy </i>the Labour Party</a> and preserve Conservative power than allow Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership to continue. That might seem like madness, but <i class="">How Democracies Die </i>shows that it’s the perfectly rational consequence of this ideology. (Indeed, Barack Obama <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/10/barack-obama-rang-with-reassurance-for--theresa-may-on-election-night" class="">apparently preferred</a> Theresa May’s conservatives over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in the last election.) </p><p class="">It’s very important, then, to carefully scrutinize perspectives
that single out Donald Trump as a unique threat to something called
“democracy.” I <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Anatomy-Monstrosity-Nathan-Robinson/dp/0997844779" class="">do thin</a>k
Donald Trump is a more dangerous individual than nearly any prior
president. But it’s not because he calls the system “corrupt” and is a
racist who uses swear words, it’s because he might press the nuclear
button in some irrational fit of pique. (Then again, JFK <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/" class="">nearly did exactly that</a>…) I am under no illusion, though, that Trump is the first president to <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/04/bill-clinton-has-always-been-this-person" class="">pander to white supremacists</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_refugees_held_at_the_Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base" class="">treat Haitians like crap</a>. Beware anyone who says that Trump is threatening to erode our democracy, because they’re assuming we already have one.</p><p class=""><em class="">If you appreciate our work, please consider <a href="http://currentaffairs.org/donate" class="">making a donation</a> or <a href="http://currentaffairs.org/subscribe" class="">purchasing a subscription</a>.
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