The Moral Hazard of Dependency

Paul Krugman in his most recent editorial asks the titular question "how did the Clinton-Trump race get so close?"  He assembles the most plausible answers.   Race, of course, is a factor, and perhaps the biggest factor.   "A lot more Americans than we’d like to imagine are white nationalists at heart," he writes, then goes on to add "implicit appeals to racial hostility have long been at the core of Republican strategy; Mr. Trump became the G.O.P. nominee by saying outright what his opponents tried to convey with dog whistles."  The media, of course, is another factor.   On the one hand, with its predisposition to "fairness" which led to the so-called "normalization" of her adversary, it also led to the "abnormalization" of Clinton.   Krugman is quoting Jonathan Cait, who goes on to say "the news media’s obsession with the emails has, without necessarily intending to do so, conveyed the impression that Clinton committed not just run-of-the-mill political scandals but extraordinary offenses of a historic scale," meanwhile failing to point out a similar scandal in the Bush administration.  That scandal resulted in the deletion of not 30 thousand emails, but rather 22 million emails, "systematically flouting the same public-records principle that Clinton evaded" on a much larger historical scale.  Ditto the media's recent obsession with the foundation, which Krugman notes, coincides with her fall in the polls, "an extraordinary series of hostile news stories about how various aspects of Mrs. Clinton’s life 'raise questions' or 'cast shadows,' conveying an impression of terrible things without saying anything that could be refuted," meanwhile all but ignoring the activity of the Trump Foundation which appears to be little more than a money laundering-tax avoidance scheme. 

Altogether, the media, with its predisposition of "fairness" has created an unmerited "false equivalency," and though there seem to be attempts to back away from it -- with traditionally conservative media outlets like the Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsing Clinton or the normally apolitical USA Today "un-endorsing" Trump -- the real damage has nevertheless been done.  In the meantime, it is interesting to read George Will's comments in today's Post.   Among conservative intellectuals, there is a sort of incredulousness that conservatism and the republican party have degraded themselves with the nomination of Trump, what he calls "his piratical capture" of the conservative party.   "At the risk of taking Trump’s words more seriously than he does," he writes, "on some matters he is to Clinton’s left regarding big government powered by an unbridled presidency" -- his trade policies appealing to  "faux conservatives comfortable with presidents dictating what Americans can import and purchase at what prices, and where U.S. corporations can operate" -- his social welfare policies, on social security in particular, revealing that "he, like Clinton, is for enriching this entitlement’s benefits" thereby enlarging "progressivism’s success in changing America’s social norms and national character by de-stigmatizing dependency." There is, of course, a legitimate debate to be had regarding the moral hazard associated with "dependency," and I suspect Will would relish the debate, but it is not one to be had with an "exhausted volcano, the intellectual staleness of its recycled candidate unchallenged because a generation of younger Democratic leaders barely exists."  One would almost agree.  Conservative outlets can grit their teeth and endorse Clinton, because, as I have said before, on core economic issues that appeal to the biggest of the big money conservatives, particularly trade, she is perhaps to the right of the current republican nominee.  How odd?

Will, however, ignores other aspects of his party's decay, not least a sort of intellectual flabbiness.  At one point in my life, I remember discussing "institutional core values" at some length, and Will touches on two "core values" of the republican party -- laissez faire economics and individual accountability.  The first, I've argued, is something of a false idea, in part because the "economy" is a social construct comprised of the existing rules-regulations-laws that inevitably favor some over others.  Will, for example, criticizes Trump's support for the Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision diluting property rights by vastly expanding government’s powers of eminent domain."  Trump supports it "100 percent," surprise! because it allows government agencies to use "its eminent domain authority to seize private property to sell to private developers."   As a private developer, with the "means" to sway local government, that legal decision favors him over small property owners without the "means" to resist local government.   Will's consistency, however, is admirable, but concerning. Insofar as "property rights," particularly "intellectual property rights," as defined in existing law, give pharmaceutical companies monopoly protection over particular "life saving drugs," like epinephrine, allowing what can only be described as "price gouging."  There are existing rules-regulations-laws that inevitably favor some over others, and the only real political questions are these: who is favored? and how? and what, if desired, can be done to shift the balance?  One can argue whether the system is "rigged," but rigged against whom? and for what reason?  I would argue that the economic system is "rigged" in the same way that basketball is "rigged" in favor of "tallness."  The rules of basketball apply equally to all, and of course it is possible for a tall man to fail and a short man to succeed, but let's be honest.  It takes such extraordinary ability for those who start short to succeed in basketball that for most it's simply impossible, and it seems a bit disingenuous to hold short people accountable for their lack of representation in the upper echelons of the NBA.   Likewise, it takes such extraordinary ability for those who start short, the "poor," to advance in our current economy that it seems impossible, and so too it seems a bit disingenuous to hold "poor" people completely accountable for their economic condition and the cultural malaise economic stagnation or regression creates. 

Will, however, complete ignores the other aspects of his party's decay.  With Nixon and the southern strategy, likewise with Reagan and what might be called the evangelical strategy,  the conservative party embraced an incipient racial and religious bigotry -- what has been called social conservatism -- for the sake of electoral wins that would otherwise be unavailable to them.  It is unlikely that the vast majority of Americans would support the republican economic agenda, laid bare, insofar as it so clearly favors the rich at the expense of the working class and the poor.  If the current malaise takes "a charlatan’s successful selling of his fabulousness," it took another charlatan's successful selling of a demonstrably false notion, trickle down economics, to set aside any real discussion of a monied elite's economic agenda and refocus the popular republican party on bread and circus social issues.   Although Trump's rhetoric is infinitely less sophisticated than Reagan's, infinitely more narcissistic and messianic, trickle down economics is no less a promise to the people, the demos, that "“I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years.”  There was some trickle down, of course, but it wasn't quite the "golden flow" that the people expected.  At the same time, social conservatism gathered steam during Bill Clinton's admittedly smarmy presidency, and subsequently provided a convenient focus for the resentment following the economic collapse of the Bush years.  Clearly, it's their fault, and we all know who "they" are.  With the election of Obama, the Americans who are "white nationalists at heart" could feel their nation had been co-opted and focus an ineffectual resentment on our first black president, and the religious conservatives could focus their resentment on the prevailing social trends toward expanded civil rights for gays and all those who do not hold "true" christian values.  It's not surprising that the two coalesced into the conspiracy-theory suppositions that Obama was not "really" an American, but rather a secret a muslim operative bent on implementing sharia law.  

Clinton is correct, I think, in her condemnation of the republican party not only as the party of failed economic ideas (the admittedly old aunt-ish pun of "trumped up trickle down") but also as the party of racial and religiously inspired intolerance.  Will imagines that "the American project was to construct a constitutional regime whose institutional architecture would guarantee the limited government implied by the Founders’ philosophy: Government is instituted to “secure” (the Declaration of Independence) preexisting natural rights."  If those "natural rights" are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I would agree, but go on to ask "natural rights for whom?"  There are those who believe -- sincerely believe -- that "rights" are (or ought to be) hierarchical, with white christian men on the top with not only the "right," but the duty to exercise "natural" paternal authority over all others.  Even if the modern conservative rejects the imperious racism of the "white man's burden" -- even if he extends the basic rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to all -- there still remains a basic flaw in contemporary thinking on the limitations of government.  The founding fathers could believe that a "right to life" could be secured through a simple negative liberty, being "free from" government execution without due process.  But does that "secure" the right to life in today's world?  To take just one example, one that is somewhat contentious, medical science has progressed beyond prayer, a poltice and blood-letting as the standard of care, and we should remember that the founding fathers of our country could not have possibly imagined the rise of the existing health care systems, with its complex entanglement of employers, insurance providers, big pharma, profit and non-profit hospitals.  What does it mean, however, to turn away from someone in need of life-saving medical care simply because they do not have benefited employment, or the right insurance, or access to the right right drugs, or sufficient means to pay for insurance or the co-payments of insurance without impoverishing themselves?  Is that a failure to "secure" the right to life?  Can we ignore the government's role in the present reality where drug prices are kept artificially high by one set of laws protecting intellectual property while another set of laws requires that we insure ourselves at escalating prices to mitigate the escalating cost not only of health care itself, but the escalating cost of personal bankruptcy to the health care system?  I do not know how the founding fathers would have reacted to the complex entanglement of today's health care systems, but that is my point.  We do not live in the world of our founding fathers.  We live in a present reality, and like it or not, we must contend with it.

In the end, most do not like it, particularly the conservative party.  In a recent Vox conversation between Sean Illing and Mark Lilla, there was one telling exchange.  Illing remarked, "what’s interesting to me is how little ideology has to do with Trump’s popularity. His campaign is largely a negation — of the present, of the direction of the country, of the establishment. That Trump has virtually no solutions or plan for the future seems to be an afterthought to his supporters."  I would disagree some with his assertion that Trump's campaign lacks an "ideology."  I put ideology in scare quotes, in part because it is the ideology of any aspiring messianic demagogue.   The present reality too complex to really fully comprehend, and so, to many, the world seems to be on the verge of apocalypse.  A hyperbolic conservative media has contributed to this sense of impending doom, but it takes a fully narcissistic personality to believe -- sincerely believe -- that he is the chosen one.  Of course -- of course! -- he is not the chosen one, and anything he puts forward that has any resemblance to a "policy prescription," quickly reveals itself to be utter nonsense.  Even his vaunted trade prescriptions are based on a fundamental errors, or at least don't sufficiently account for what would likely happen in the present reality if they were actually implemented.  His confidence in his "solutions" can only be described as  the Dunning-Kruger effect full blown.   To give it a diagnostic sound, Trump has "a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is.  Dunning and Kruger attributed this [to the] inability of those of low ability to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their ability accurately."  Of course Trump is not stupid, but one suspects that he has lived in a bubble of sycophants his "entire adult life," one that has reinforced his illusory superiority and filtered out the sorts of meaningful criticism that would enable him to self-appraise, as evidenced by his over-the-top reactions to anything that pops his bubble, but that is, as so many have noted, beside the point.  It is the Dunning-Druger effect itself -- the absolute, unwavering sincerity of Trump's belief in himself as the chosen one -- that moves his following.  

Nevertheless, Illing is largely correct.  Trump's campaign "ideology" is largely the non-ideology of "negation," particularly of the present reality.  Mark Lilla's response is equally telling.  He suggests that many believe "all the changes wrought by a global economy and the Internet and mass migration will undermine our culture."  He adds, "it's quite natural that unless there's a picture of the future that is compelling before them, they're going to feel an urge to return to something that they believe is familiar."  Trump represents, in short, a reaction against the present reality.  Politico reports that Trump's populist rhetoric "is intended to appeal to college-educated middle-class voters who tell pollsters that they believe there are 'two sets of rules — one for insiders, another for the rest of us.'"  As Politico goes on to write, Trump called out “the special interests, the lobbyists and the corrupt corporate media that have rigged the system against everyday Americans, and they’ve rigged it for a long time.”  There's a certain truth to his assertions.  Though I can't quite believe it is an "intention driven conspiracy" of the "powerful" against the "weak" -- there are too many conflicting interests even among the powerful -- I do believe the present reality favors special interests over everyday Americans.  It is difficult, however, at least for this college educated middle class voter, to suspend reality long enough to believe that Trump can or would address the core issues.   Unless we are willing to actually descend into the apocalypse and rebuild a simpler world from scratch, one must contend with the complexities of the present realities.  Nothing Trump has said allows me to believe, even for a moment, that he has the intellectual capacity to actually understand the present realities, much less amend them without inviting catastrophe.  Indeed, as Lilla suggests, "in the modern world, anti-intellectualism is essential to the forces of reaction.  Because it's possible to blame all these changes on the articulate class." When Trump attacks the "elites," he is appealing "to people who are not articulate, " but he also reassures them.  "While they may not be able to argue with their adversaries, " Lilla suggests, "they have a kind of preliterate virtue that literacy and intellectual life has robbed them of. Then a kind of holy ignorance emerges, which is a sign that you are the saving remnant."    When he claims to be "taking on big business and big media and big donors," and then adds "we’re taking them on for you,” he is appealing not only to a sort of virtue, but to his own messianic stature, to all those who want to believe in him as their personal savior.  One who can deliver them from the disturbing complexities of a present reality that doesn't serve them, that they're powerless to understand, much less correct. 

So Will too is correct:

“Charismatic authority,” wrote Max Weber in 1915, seven years before Mussolini’s march on Rome, causes the governed to submit “because of their belief in the extraordinary quality of the specific person . . . . Charismatic rule thus rests upon the belief in magical powers, revelations and hero worship.” A demagogue’s success requires a receptive demos, and Trump’s ascendancy reflects progressivism’s success in changing America’s social norms and national character by de-stigmatizing dependency. 

Well, Will is partially correct.  I don't think one can lay the blame the decay on progressives alone, and besides isn't that simply a projection of conservatism's problems onto others?  Trump's success requires a demos brow beaten into receptivity by social conservatism -- a demos irradiated by a conservative media that has our country always on the verge of apocalypse because of America's changing "social norms," not least the disruptions the natural hierarchy of civil rights and sexual norms with gay rights -- a demos immersed in an anti-intellectual "holy ignorance" that denies not only the secular humanism that would challenge the literal interpretation of the bible, but also fundamental science -- a demos already deeply vested in "magical powers, revelations" and "worship," not of secular heroes per se, but certainly a "personal savior" -- a demos already well prepared to believe, with a broad extension of faith, "in the extraordinary quality of the specific person."  It is a moral hazard of dependency, a different kind and magnitude of dependency, but nevertheless giving one's self over to the authority of another.