At the same time, I was thinking about Trump's so called "softening" on the immigration issue, which is a deliberate and clumsy attempt to move back to the center after residing for most of the primary season into the general election at the far right. Politico reports Rob Stutzman, a GOP operative in California, saying “Nuance is antithetical to his brand, so shifts aren’t credible and make him look weak. Because he demagogued on immigration to win the primaries and mocked his opponents who had thoughtful policy positions on immigration, he has no credibility to soften, tweak or moderate his stance. Ironically, he’s hemmed in by the wall of rhetoric he built over the past 18 months, and now it’s his cell.” As Clinton's never-ending email story amply illustrates, in the age of digital communication, Faulkner was even more right than he could have known when he wrote "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Every bombastic clip of Trump will survive on YouTube if nowhere else, and so one wonders what it means for someone like Trump to moderate a position. As a man who built his "brand" on adversity to "political correctness," on a deliberate lack of nuance or policy wonkiness, on a "strongman" persona, but most of all on "authenticity," what exactly does his rightwing erection of the wall or his more centrist "softening" reveal the "authentic" Donald Trump? In the end, probably neither. Whether Trump has a clinical personality disorder, I am not qualified to say, but if he were a literary creation, I would say he resembles a narcissist's narcissist. Hollow at the core, Trump loves, absolutely adores, not so much an authentic core Trump, but simply the crowd's cheering adoration of Trump. Politico goes on to quote Rick Tyler, who served as a communications adviser to Cruz’s presidential campaign. “People are starting to mock Donald Trump now. ‘#AmnestyDon’ was trending on Twitter. And this is all self-inflicted,” Tyler said. “This is Donald Trump not having a core governing philosophy to guide him, and not understanding the entire electorate. He oversold all of this, but I'm not sure he even understood what he was selling."
All of which leads me to believe that Trump really has no interest in actually "governing," and sees it as a "task" that he can delegate to an appropriately sycophantic subordinate. Having said all that, I do believe he desperately wants to win the election, as confirmation of his greatness, and his fall back position seems to be well to the right or perhaps more precisely a far right authoritarianism that appeals to the adoring crowds that gather to hear him speak. Salon, this morning, has a headline article titled "Desperation and Demagoguery: Trump play-acts as president in Mexico, then goes full nativist in Arizona." The writer, Simon Maloy, goes on to tell us, "so what we’re left with is a campaign that spent Wednesday afternoon trying to shake up the race with a transparently desperate grasp for international legitimacy, and then spent Wednesday night stomping all over their own efforts by getting caught in silly lies and having the candidate go on an extended wallow in the nativist fever swamp," by saying things like "anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise we don’t have a country." Centrist crowds don't stamp their feet, holler "build the wall" or "hang the bitch," or provide the sort of adoration that, like heroin, Trump seems to need. Regardless what Trump may or may not believe, and he may not believe in anything except perhaps his own "greatness," Trump reverts to the sort of authoritarianism that Putin would find comfortable. Although Russia has been the American conservatives bug-a-boo for the last half century, displaced or augmented by radical islam, Trump seems to intuit that what he proposes for America is essentially its "russification." With no sense of how he would actually govern, he simply proposes that he would be to the US what Putin was and is to Russia.
And his crowds eat it up. George Lakoff, along with others, have suggest that Trump appeals to a certain personality type, those who desire a strong or authoritarian "father" figure. It may well be that extreme positions on the left and right are drawn to the authoritarian, and the writers for RationalWiki have given a longish list of similarities between the conservative hard right and the communist party of old, a good deal of which pertains as well to contemporary Russian leadership. I won't work through the entire list -- it can be found on the site -- but a quick perusal should be sufficient to make the point that Lakoff and other's have made that Trump is not running on a set of policy proposals relative to specific "issues," so much as a authoritarian figure.
- [Authoritarians] strongly endorse "tough on crime" policies and the death penalty, especially when "crime" can be associated with a particular minority population -- e.g. the sensationalist headlines featuring crimes committed by immigrants on sources like Breitbart News.
- [Authoritarians] strongly support "traditional values," meaning hardcore social conservatism, pro-life attitudes, and hostility to LGBT rights. While thrice married Trump hardly represents "social conservatism," he has nevertheless endorsed most "traditional values." On Wikipedia he is described thus: "Trump describes himself as pro-life and opposes abortion with exceptions for rape, incest, and the health of the mother.[333] The Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, praised Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees as 'exceptionally strong,' Trump has stated that he supports "traditional marriage".[335] He opposes the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide,[335][336][337] saying he thinks the decision should be left to the states.[336] He would 'strongly consider' appointing Supreme Court justices that would overturn the ruling.[338]"
- [Authoritarians] have weaknesses for conspiracy theories. ThinkProgress lists 12 conspiracy theories that Trump has demonstrably endorsed, ranging from "asbestos is safe" to the Clinton murder of Vince Foster, all of which have been substantially debunked.
- [Authoritarians] are reactionary in nature and extremely nostalgic for some sort of "golden age." Trump's reactionary pugilism is famously demonstrated by the back and forth around the images of Heidi Cruz and Melania Trump, which both Trump and Breitbart News defended with the playground assertion "he started it!" Trump Although Trump is never clear on when America actually was great, his campaign slogan, "make American great again," directly invokes a nostalgia for a past (and lost) glory days.
- [Authoritarians] support increasing spending on an even larger national defense while rarely questioning if it's necessary. Also, they both tend to admire "masculinity" and "militarism." As politico reports, "He has, however, repeatedly called the military a “disaster” as a result of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and the GOP-led Congress, and he’s vowing to rebuild it. 'I’m going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody — absolutely nobody — is going to mess with us,' Trump says in a 23-second video stating his position on 'the military' on his campaign website."
- [Authoritarians] make populist appeals to the lower classes, mainly by promising to cut their taxes, regardless of whether it will be done or whether it can be afforded. As Wikipedia describes it, "Trump's campaign's tax plan calls for reducing the corporate tax rate to 15%, concurrent with the elimination of various business loopholes and deductions.[345]Personal income taxes would also be reduced; the top rate would be reduced from 39.6% to 25%, a large "zero bracket" would be created, and the alternative minimum tax would be eliminated, as would the estate tax (which currently applies to individual estates over $5.45 million or $10.90 million per married couple).[346]"
- [Authoritarians] have strands of anti-intellectualism, with intellectuals who question them being seen as "elitist," particularly the so-called "media elite."
There might be a couple of bullet points to add. Along with the disdain for "intellectualism" is a corresponding disdain for "legal" or "policy-based" solutions to the perceived problem. Back to the "immigration" issue, for example, as one commenter to the Breitbart article on immigration listed above put it, "So the first time they cross and get caught, it's a Misdemeanor and subsequent illegal crossings are a felony. Why aren't we treating these a holes to the benefits of being a felon at the very least and in this guys [sic] case a sex offender."[sic] In response, another commenter wrote, "because we are wimps, letting progressive fk holes run this country into the ground." Then too, along with the tendency to admire "masculinity" and "militarism," one might add the tendency to see violence as the principle way of solving problems. Another commenter suggest that "we don't need a wall, we need some good men and women who can shoot straight. We're being invaded, so we should defend ourselves by means necessary." His comment was echoed by several others, some more outlandish than others, and it is clear that most imagine the solution to be a strong man willing to exercise violence, as in "just let them roam the country side til Trump is elected." Then too, the end, it probably doesn't matter if one is a left leaning authoritarian or a right leaning authoritarian, a christian authoritarian or a muslim authoritarian, so much as the tendency to demand a strong, unambiguous authority, which, when the center doesn't hold, ultimately becomes a totalitarianism differing only in its "justification" for the preservation of authority.
Centrism, however, is messy. It is perhaps interesting to note that the Breitbart article only details the capture, with ominous hints that those apprehended represent only a fraction of the drug and sex offenders creeping into the US, but says nothing about what happened after the capture. I doubt that they were sent running back across the border while a gang of red-necks used them for target practice in anticipation of the coming hoards, but I do strongly suspect that they were handled IAW the laws of the US, to include those that mandate due process within the legal system, which is messy, and rarely unambiguous, with the adversaries maintaining their adversarial stances long after a verdict has been rendered. One can advocate for a harder line on immigration, both legal and illegal, as a matter of policy, but "authority" for the enforcement of that harder line must exist outside the whims of a single authoritarian person. Fundamentally, the best conceivable way of insuring that there is, on the one hand, "authority," and that it rests, on the other hand, outside the whim of any particular person, is the "authority" vested in the rule of law. Although imperfect, steps can always be taken toward its "perfection," which is what the founding fathers no doubt had in mind when they penned the constitution to a form "a more perfect" union. One should note, they did not say "the perfect union," but "a more perfect" union, suggesting the possibility of an "even more perfect union."
Centrism, or at least the centrism I endorse, is fact based and ultimately pragmatic. For example, as reported by the Migration Policy Institute, who in turn cites "Mexico's National Survey of Occupations and Employment (Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo, or ENOE), the emigration rate from Mexico (refers to emigrants leaving Mexico regardless of their destination, although most head to the United States) has remained steadily low in recent years, after experiencing a drop following the 2007-09 U.S. recession and global financial crisis. From 2008 to 2012, the emigration rate dropped from 6.4 migrants per 1,000 residents to 3.3 migrants. It ticked up slightly in 2014 to 3.5 migrants per 1,000 residents." One suspects, or least I suspect, other than the immigration of refugees, that much voluntary immigration can be attributed to economics. The best way to reduce voluntary Mexican immigration, whether legal or illegal, would be to tank the US economy yet again, or perhaps preferably, to take steps assisting Mexico in the improvement of Mexican economy.
I am not, however, advocating for the balance fallacy, whether in the positive, or as it is more often framed in political discourse, in the negative. I have made no secret that Clinton is not my "ideal" candidate, and I wouldn't make a case for her if there were a viable alternative, but there isn't. She is, in my estimation, the lessor of two evils, though even that mis-states the case, because it implies that her evil is somehow the equivalent of Trump's evil. They are not. Clinton represents centrism, and while on can have legitimate differences about her policy positions, there are no policy positions for Trump, and where there is the semblance of a policy position, it is either so ambiguous as to be meaningless, or a concoction out of thin air. As Jimmy Kimmel said, "A lot of these groups are insisting that I "present both sides of the argument", and I'm not going to do that either, because - well, for the same reasons that I wouldn't present both sides if a group of people decided that pancakes make you gay. They don't. And there's no point in discussing it." Those who do "fact-checking" have labeled so many of his assertions as "false," "four Pinocchio," or "pants on fire," not because he was distorting or eliding facts to make a rhetorical point, as Clinton clearly does, but because he was simply making up "pancakes make you gay" sorts of assertions. His "immigration" assertions can be "fact-checked" here. It is irrelevant whether he believes them to be true, or whether swaths of the American people believe them to be true, if they are false, they are false. No amount of conspiracy theorizing can make them true, and ultimately "there's no point in discussing it." In the end, Trump offers only the authority of Trump, and for some that is appealing, but for me it is appalling.
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