Money, money, money

Back in the day, when I was a chief academic officer, I would sometimes tell people that some problems are like "tax reform."  At a high level of abstraction, everyone's for it.  Everyone wants a simpler and fairer tax code, but the problem in coming at a simpler and fairer tax code, of course, lies in the particulars.  Everyone wants a simpler tax code -- everyone except those who benefit by its complexity.  At the most mundane level, think H&R Block and those who benefit from the preparation of tax returns.  At a less mundane level,  much of the complexity comes from tax breaks for special interests, which often are anything but fair.  Everyone wants to eliminate the tax breaks for "special interests" -- everyone, of course, but those "special interests" that benefit from the tax break.  At a high level of abstraction, everyone is "for" a simpler and fairer tax code, until we actually start examining the reality of the tax code and how particular changes might have impact on particular tax payers.

Imagine, for example, a congressman considering "tax reform."  Setting aside any outright bribery by those representing the special interests -- that is, setting aside he outright corruption of a quid pro quo arrangement -- there is a deeper corruption.  Imagine, to continue the example, a particular lobbying groups representing a broad industry "special interest" make it known, up front, that they will have a difficult time "supporting" the re-election of those candidates who support a particular change to the tax code.  The support can come in the form of advocacy or campaign contributions, both of which are necessary, if not sufficient, to a successful re-election bid.  If the congressman decides in favor of "tax reform" and follows through on that decision,  eliminating a "special interest" loophole in favor of simplicity and fairness, not only does he lose support of a broad industry, but his opponent by doing absolutely nothing potentially gains the support he just lost.  If the congressman decides against "tax reform," and the lobbying groups will give him any number of reasons why he should be against it and how he can "spin" his resistance with his constituency, he does not necessarily get a bonanza in campaign contributions, but he has removed the possibility that his opponent might pick up that advantage.  The congressman will, at the very least, "think twice" about advancing "tax reform."  Consequently, the status quo has considerable resilience, particularly when those who would be negatively affected by a change have the money to resist change.

That, in a nutshell, is what Lawrence Lessig calls "systemic corruption" in his book Republic Lost.  A candidate can run on a platform of "change," as Obama did in 2008, and at a very high level of abstraction, where one does not have to engage the actual numbers and the mundane rules, "change" can get considerable support.  No one is really satisfied with the status quo as a whole, but even so, Obama was quickly confronted with an inherent systemic recalcitrance to change.  It's not that some change isn't possible, and we got the Affordable Care Act, but the conservative response was not really "repeal and substitute a better act," but simply "repeal and reset the status quo."  The Tea Party reaction to Obama, despite the pretentious of being "outsiders" immune to the systemic corruptions, have not really effectuated change, except to make the whole process of governance more feckless and "meaner," in every sense of the word.  Moreover, if Paul H. Jossey's account of the fund-raising associated with the Tea Party is even half true, just half true, the Tea Party supporters were the victims of the very political operatives that they sought to constrain.  As Jossey sums it up, "the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme," one that "transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives."  As a consequence, politics has never been seen in a dimmer light.  The approval ratings of congress, consequently, have plummeted.  In the current election cycle, we again have a candidate running as an "outsider" uncorrupted by the system, espousing at a very high level of abstraction a "back to the future" platform of change.   Everyone is free to imagine the sort of change they might desire, but short of a "strongman" takeover, a Putinesque putsch that throws constitutional "separation of powers" out the window, he too will confront a congress inherently recalcitrant to change.  His campaign is flailing, in part because he has systemically alienated those whose support is necessary, if not sufficient, to a successful campaign.

Which brings us to Clinton.  I am always a bit surprised by her "untrustworthy" reputation, particularly when compared to Trump whose mendacity seems to know no bounds.  While one should take it with a grain of salt, according to Politifact, she has been the most truthful the 2016 candidates, and with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, the least mendacious.  One really doesn't need fact check much of Trump's fabulation.  A half second's though reveals much of what comes spewing forth to be incredible on the face of it -- Obama and Clinton the founder and co-founder of Isis, really?   Moreover, he's less transparent than any candidate since ... no, he's less transparent than any candidate period, refusing even to release his tax returns.  Clinton has been subject to more scrutiny, of a more partisan and malignant sort, than any candidate within my recall.  While she hasn't come out of it wholly unscathed, the republicans haven't been able to find an indictable offense.  Then too, although she may choose her words carefully and resists the open forums of the "press conference," her life is a matter of open public record, not figuratively, but literally, in excruciating detail, with more detail no doubt to come.  One difference, and perhaps it's the significant difference, is this:  Trump may be as corrupt in his business dealings as the proverbial used car dealer, but Clinton is "systemically" corrupt -- that is to say, part and parcel of the systemic corruption described by Lessig and others.  Although it takes the imaginative ingenuity of a good conspiracy theorist to see Clinton as personally corrupt -- to see her personally as an indictable felon -- it takes much less ingenuity to see her as a player in a corrupted system of governance.

So we have Lessig writing of the 2008 election that "Clinton's vision of the precedence was much like her husband's" -- that is to say, "she saw the job of president to be to take a political system and do as much with it as you can."  One could say the same today, though her husband's "pathetic scandals" with Monika Lewinsky have morphed into her own email scandals (less fun, more portentous).  She still has "a raft of programs she promise[s] to push through Congress" and again, to the best of my knowledge, "nowhere on that list [is] fundamental reform of how Washington works." So, the question, of course, remains: what to do about it?  In case it's not obvious, there's a catch 22 at work.  The very people who can do something are caught up in the system that thwarts the "fundamental reform" envisioned by the likes of Lessig and others.  To do so "within" the system, as Obama promised to our later disappointment, as Sanders promised to our inevitable disappointment, isn't like "fixing" the airliner while one's flying to Washington, it more like "dismantling" the airliner while one's flying to Washington.  At some point in the flight, it occurs even to the most sincere "reformer" that "dismantling" the airliner might not be such a good idea, particularly if they want to arrive safely in Washington and do "good" work for the nation.

So again what to do about it?  Although I don't find Lessig's suggestions at all compelling, behind them is a recognition that the change, if it is to come about, must come from outside the system itself.   Such is the appeal, in part, of the populist candidates like Sanders and Trump, the former crowd funding his campaign, the latter ostensibly self-funding his campaign.  Although it would have been interesting to see what Sanders would have done as THE candidate, we won't really have that opportunity, though one suspects he is more of a "pragmatist" and a "realist" than the Bernie Bro's might have wanted.  Then there's Trump, who is ostensibly flying his own plane to Washington, so he ostensibly doesn't particularly feel the need to either dismantle the plane or rebuke the money funneled through the K street operatives.  He promises a sort of terrorist attack -- yes, an ethno-nationalist terrorist attack --not on the corruption in the system, but on the system as a whole, beginning with the constitution and the implicit rule of law he will promise to keep and defend.

With Trump, one asks, OK, you've blown it up, now what?  If one attends to what he has actually done, and what he actually says when he actually says something, he is not promising to dismantle the existing systemic corruption of wealth.  He is, rather, quite openly, promising to be the oligarch's oligarch and institutionalize the systemic corruption of wealth.  He is promising a Putinesque putsch.   As just one egregious example, he promises to repeal the so-called "death tax."   Trump framed the promise in the language of populism, saying “American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death, and it’s just plain wrong,” but as Alternet's R J Eskow points out, "only estates of $5.4 million or more must pay any estate tax at all," and as he goes on to detail, "today’s estate tax is only imposed on less than 0.2 percent of households. Fewer than two estates in a thousand pay it.  More than 2.5 million Americans die each year, but less than 5,000 estates were taxed in 2014."  The repeal of the estate tax will not benefit "American workers" by any standard definition of "American workers," but it will benefit the likes of Donald Trump and their heirs. To put it in perspective, Eskow writes "The estate tax will collect an estimated $270 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. At an average teacher’s salary of $56,310, that money could be used to pay nearly half a million teachers for an entire decade. It could be used to double the scope of Hillary Clinton’s infrastructure plan." 

Which brings us back to Clinton.  She has not made reform of the systemic corruption an up front agenda item, and as Robert Reich has posted in his blog, "she hasn’t established a powerful mandate for what she wants to get done. Her policy proposals are admirably detailed but cover so much ground that even her most ardent supporters don’t have a clear picture of what she stands for. And she’s had to spend more time on the campaign trail attacking Trump’s outrage du jour than building a case for a few big ideas."  As I've said in previous posts, she's a policy wonk that would much rather DO president than BE president, and to my mind at least that's hopeful -- that, and the number of major republicans that have endorsed her.  There will likely be no honeymoon, as Reich also notes, and the delegitimizing disinformation machine of fox news will likely quickly crank into action, particularly around the social issues and immigration.  Having said that, however, she is not exactly pro-wallstreet and big money, but she is not anti-wallstreet and big money either.  Perhaps, maybe just perhaps, she might find the common ground for compromise that Obama has failed to find.  Still, the sort of policy she would like to implement, as Reich notes, are likely to be resisted:  "the heart of American politics is now a vicious cycle in which big money has enough political influence to get laws and regulations that make big money even bigger, and prevent laws and rules that threaten its wealth and power. " 

Clinton, as president, however, does present an opportunity, not at the macro, but at the micro level.  The can provide cover while the real revolution takes place.  As Reich points out, "organizers from the Sanders campaign have already launched Brand New Congress, an ambitious effort to run at least 400 progressive candidates for Congress in 2018, financed by crowd-sourced small donations and led by a nationwide network of volunteers. Sanders himself recently announced the formation of “Our Revolution,” to support progressive candidates up and down the ticket."  The suggestion is to adopt the methods, if not the policies, of the Tea Party.  The goals of Brand New Congress, for example, are indeed ambitious:

They want "an honest, accountable Congress, but trying to win each congressional seat one-by-one is impossible. So let's replace Congress all at once. Our plan is to recruit and run 400+ candidates as a single, unified campaign with a single plan. By giving the people an option for big, tangible change, we plan to whip up the same enthusiasm, volunteerism, voter turnout, and grassroots donations as Bernie's presidential campaign.

Having said that, however, just a note of caution -- not a claim, but a caution inspired by Jossey.  The goals are laudable, but the ambition brings to mind the old saying, "if it's too good to be true, it probably is." I am sure there are plenty of unscrupulous operators out there quite willing to capitalize on the progressive, Sander's inspired populism as the Tea Party inspired conservatism.  If we want a transparent and accountable government, we should want the same from the organizations that purport to support it -- just saying -- but that said, the idea is energizing.  

So, as Reich points out, "the most promising source of a new countervailing power in America was revealed in Bernie Sanders’s primary campaign: millions of citizens determined to reclaim American democracy and the economy from big money. "  If this "revolution is going to succeed, it must also succeed in the red states.  Reich also notes, parenthetically that "Donald Trump’s faux populism tapped into similar sentiments, but, tragically, has channeled them into bigotry and scapegoating."  There is a secondary strategy, one that would likely be endorsed by Lessig -- focus on and solve the vicious cycle of the money problem first.  If we have more democracy, less oligarchic capitalism, we are then placing our faith in the good will of the American people.  Given even a modicum of civility in our discourse, their votes will help resolve the social issues.   Beyond that, I'm not sure how you convince the rural, under-educated and isolated whites that have been "irradiated" by the likes of Fox News and the conspiracy laden Breitbart to vote their interests, not their prejudices, but it is and always will be worth the effort.  

Anti-Intellectualism Redux: an extended note on the media

First, a note on Trump.  I have to admit that I find the man at once deeply repugnant and inherently fascinating.  All that he is, all that he stands for, I find repugnant, but there he is, on a national stage, representing ostensibly "conservative" American politics, mounting a campaign within and against our government, a comic book villain come to life.  I can barely stand to listen to one of his rants, but there is no denying that those same rants have connected with an undertow within American life and that the current is stronger than anyone might have imagined.  It threatens to pull us under and out to sea.  I don't mean to sound apocalyptic.  I won't be appearing on a street corner soon with a "the-end-is-near" sign.  I do not for a moment believe our politics at the moment are "symmetrical," that Clinton is just as bad as Trump.  To support Clinton over Trump is not to "sell out," but to recognize the fundamental asymmetry in our political life.  Clinton represents, at least to my mind, a status quo, the promise of politics as usual.  We can call it the politics of money.  Both parties have been overly dependent upon those that Lawrence Lessing called the "Lesters" in his TED talk a couple of years ago -- the big money donors, bundlers, and lobbyists that support them -- and nothing in Clinton's or Trump's campaign suggests that they want to "do away" with the influence that implies.  There are, of course, different sources of big money, and they support different "agendas," and those differing "agendas" have more or less defined the parties.  The biggest of the big money has supported the republican party, but their economic agenda laid bare has difficulty getting the support they need among the "voting class."  So the republican party, however, has been doing the Faustian invocation for how long? -- since Nixon at least -- calling forth the evangelical right in support of conservative "values," calling forth the nationalist right in support of "states rights" and small government.  Therein lies the asymmetry.  As so many have noted, they have no cause to be surprised that Satan has at last appeared among them in for the forms of Ted Cruz, as Gary Legum put it, "a hardcore Christian whose family literally thought he was called by God to become the president, a sentiment that would have been unsustainable in a general election, and who was so disliked within the party that many of his colleagues actually preferred Trump."  And, of course in the form of Trump, whose supporters, as Bob Cesca has put it, "are non-college-educated white men, ranging from younger “bros” to, more typically, white male baby-boomer retirees with plenty of spare time to be relentlessly irradiated by Fox News and AM talk radio."    

As an aside, it is perhaps a minor tic in favor of religion that the evangelical right is less inclusive of the nationalist right than vice versa.  The defection of Mormons from the Trump camp is a case in point.  He offends the conservative family and church values they espouse and, for the most part, live.  I am not making a case for religion, so much as a case for common decency, and the latter is not lacking in the evangelical right, but then again Utah will likely go to Trump in the election, partly out of the sheer habit of pulling the R lever and similar fundamentalist, anti-intellectual pull to the further reaches of the right.  Still lurking within and staining the LDS Church are the FLDS types, and those who lean in their direction, where "small government" is heard as "no-government-but-the-prophet's-government," a heavily armed, deeply racist enclave mentality, and they just may trump, pun intended, the more rational, global missionary and global business oriented Mormons, but then again, perhaps not.  Utah is a singularly red, singularly urban state that is growing more diverse by the moment.  The urbanity and the growing minority population of Salt Lake City might, just might, stump Trump in Utah.  It will be interesting, and difficult to parse when all is said and done.    

If intellectualism "accepts conflict as a central and enduring reality" and understands human society as a form of equipoise based upon the continuing process of compromise," to use Hofstader's line, both the evangelical right and the nationalist right do, perhaps, believe that conflict is a central reality of life, but they see conflict quite differently than the intellectual.  Therein lies the asymmetry.  I tend to think of conflict as a "conflict of irreconcilable, but equally desirable values" -- i.e.  "truth is a virtue," except perhaps when the "truth" does needless harm.  We don't tell three year olds that their "art" is beautiful only in the eyes of an adoring grandparent, or that the little black dress really does make make your wife look chunky, just as we don't "bear false witness" when taking the stand in a court of law, or make business promises that we cannot (or have no intention) of keeping.   The ninth commandment is compromised right from the start.  In a political context, we might say that "liberty is a virtue," except when one set of liberties impinges on other's set of liberties -- i.e. your "religious freedom" begins to affect another's "freedom" to secure a marriage license or even a wedding cake.  When values conflict, rarely are there obvious commonsensical solutions, and no matter what the consensus decides, one or another set of values will be compromised.  Having said this, however, the further one falls off into a fundamentalism, whether to the left or to the right, the more "essential" and uni-dimensional the conflict  between good and evil becomes -- that is to say, the more all or nothing, the more Matthew 12:30 with-me-or-against-me the partisan divide, and the more apocalyptic the conflict becomes -- and the less chance there is a nuanced recognition of conflicting, but desirable values.  The less chance there is for a  "continuing process of compromise" that results in an "societal equipoise."  There are only winners and losers, and one must do everything in one's powers to insure one's own values win.  Such is, ultimately, anti-intellectual and anti-democratic in the governing sense of the word democratic.  

Again, if intellectualism "accepts conflict as a central and enduring reality" it accepts the humanities as legitimate intellectual disciplines that help us understand the world.  When I say "humanities" I am thinking principally of my own discipline, literature, but one could say the same of history and art as well.  So, speaking in defense of literature, particularly narrative literature, we have of late given short shrift to "plot."  Every plot is animated by "conflict."  "Mary went to the grocery, bought steaks and baking potatoes, and cooked dinner for her family" is not a plot until one notes that Mary has grown increasingly concerned with the inhumane treatment of animals and the effect of "feed lot" farming on the environment, until one notes that she has been reluctant to confront her "meat and potatoes" husband because the alcohol that comes before and after dinner fuels a rage, until one notes that he lost a job he despised but one that still provided "for her and his family," a loss that encourages the drinking and fuels the rage that he takes out on her and his family.  "Mary went to the grocery" is not a plot, that is, until one adds conflict, and here I want to suggest that the difference between "popular entertainment" and "literature," likewise the difference between "propaganda" and "literature" is the degree to which it recognizes and reveals the conflict between incompatible but equally desirable values.  "Popular entertainment" and "propaganda" tends to reduce "conflict" to its comic book simplicity of the good guys against the bad guys, and nuance is lost with the triumph of the good over the forces of evil.  Popular entertainment verges into propaganda when it all too clearly supports an agenda.  One thinks, for example, of the popular show "24," where the comic book hero, Jack Bauer, battles the forces of evil, almost always a money-inspired terrorism.  Supposed good guys can be revealed as evil, but once the mask is removed, there is no ambiguity.  They all in evil, as the revelations around the character of Nina Meyers demonstrates.  "Literature" is essentially relativist, and reveals its skepticism of uni-dimensional good just as it reveals its skepticism of uni-dimensional evil.    
  
I point this out, in part, because it comes back to critiques of the press, that they print only the "bad news" that develops out of one form of "conflict" or another.  True enough.  "Mary went to the grocery" is not a story, and the "good news" is that in 99.99 percent of the time, it doesn't result in anything resembling a story.  So, yet again, if intellectualism "accepts conflict as a central an enduring reality," it accepts the press and its role in revealing the conflict that so often animates our lives.  Having said that, la couple of things.  First, the "press" or the "media" is assumed to have a relationship with verifiable facts and consequently, the "truth."  Second, let us not speak falsely now, the motivation of the press and the media is not "truth," per se, but "profit," and that in itself gives cause for skepticism around all media, but some more than others.  There are plenty of examples of media outlets that suppress and distort verifiable facts, and they do so because they are not after anything resembling the truth.  They are after the sort of "story" that will drive "traffic" and "revenues," often with a target demographic in mind.  One need only think of the National Enquirer and other print outlets that inhabit the check out counters at the grocery and sell themselves as "news," but have little or no compunction inventing a story more or less whole cloth.   There is little reason to believe that the father of Ted Cruz had a hand in the Kennedy assassination, nor is there any reason to believe the allegations in "Princess Di's Confession: Harry's Real Father," or the allegations immediately beneath it, "Dick Morris: Lying Hillary's 15 Biggest Whoppers."  There is about as much reason to believe the Enquirer as there is the Onion's "Queen Elizabeth Hoping She Dies Before Having To Knight Any DJs."  The Onion's saving grace, of course, is that it doesn't purport to be "news," or have any relationship with verifiable facts.   The Enquirer, of course, has become "popular entertainment" as "propaganda" for the Trump campaign, and one would expect "stories" turning Clinton into a comic book villain. 

Having said that, the so-called mainstream media works to merit the assumption that it has a relationship with verifiable facts and, consequently, the "truth."   It is a self-imposed ethical constraint that facts must be "verifiable" before they are published.  The relationship between the "facts" and the "truth," however, is fraught.  In a certain respect, the whole of 20th century philosophy has explored this relationship and it is well beyond the scope of a blog post to outline even the most superficial summary.   Let me just say this (and for those who care, it is a sort of  Rortian pragmatism): a rational democracy is contingent upon the belief that there are "facts," that they can be "verified," and that they cohere to form an "informed" opinion.   Based on the same set of "facts," my "informed" opinion may differ from your "informed" opinion, and  indeed there is considerable bias in how one "interprets" the facts.  The political sin lies, not in the differences of opinion -- that is to be expected, even desired -- but in getting the facts wrong -- the outright misrepresentation of the truth and the suppression of inconvenient truths.  It has been the traditional obligation of the mainstream media, so to speak, to "report" not only those differences of opinion and the "conflicting" policies they suggest, but also political sin -- the misrepresentation and suppression of the "truth."    Whether she deserves the epithet "lying Hilliary" is a matter of opinion, but the mainstream media HAS reported on her suppression and misrepresentation of the facts, and has done so on numerous occasions.   Leaving aside the email controversy, for example, FactCheck.org reports that "Two days after Donald Trump gave a major speech on economics in Detroit, Hillary Clinton came to Michigan to offer a rebuttal. We found that Clinton stretched the facts on a few points."  The same organization, under the same banner, also reported, more bluntly, that "Donald Trump made several false and misleading statements in a speech at the Detroit Economic Club on Aug. 8."  The press at its best, that is, aspires to the condition of "literature."  Within the partisan divide that animates the plot of American politics, it is essentially relativist, and reveals its skepticism of uni-dimensional good just as it reveals its skepticism of uni-dimensional evil.  Neither Clinton nor Trump is wholly blameless, and it takes a complete lack of self-reflective irony to actually believe one's self blameless, but the blame is "relative."  On the assumption that the journalists at FactCheck chose their words carefully, there is a difference between "stretching the facts" and making "false and misleading statements."  It is a difference of degree, but those differences are ultimately important.  There are lies, and then there are damn lies.

So what does it mean when "Trump blames 'disgusting' media: 'I would be beating Hillary by 20%'" as Politico reports.  As they go on to write, "His latest tweet storm first targeted The New York Times, which published an article Saturday about the GOP nominee’s allegedly failing campaign, but quickly expanded as an indictment of the media in general."   First, it should be remembered that, if one of the traditional roles of the media is to reveal political sin, and they do indeed reveal Trump's political sins, his suppression and misrepresentation of the facts.  No political figure enjoys being "outed," and so it is not surprising that Trump does not enjoy being "outed," particularly when the nature of the story runs so counter to his own self-image.  Having said that, however, all politicians are "outed."  As Plato recognized with his desire to ban the sophists and rhetoricians from his Republic, hence all politicians, the discursive demands of making a detailed and nuanced proposal are one thing. The rhetorical demands of making a point and making it comprehensible to an impatient public -- a public that has grown increasingly politiphobic, increasingly anti-intellectual, and increasingly suspicious of what appears to be double talk in "continuing process of compromise" -- are another thing.  The KISS principle -- keep it simple stupid -- under the rhetorical demands of democracy quickly morphs into something less benign -- keep it simplistic for the (proudly and willfully) stupid.  Ultimately, even for those politicians who are sincerely idealistic, who want to do good for the nation, the rhetorical demands of democracy, one might say, inherently demand the distortions of "truth" -- the stretching of facts -- that we so decry.  The socratic gadfly, the media, is ultimately an unpleasant necessity to democracy, not only to "out" those who distort facts, but perhaps even more important to "out" those who make "false and misleading statements." 

Second, Clinton recognizes the inherently antagonistic relationship between politicians and the media and, consequently, exercises caution around the media (perhaps a bit TOO much caution, which itself arouses suspicion).  The media has not been her friend, despite Trump's assertion that “The media protects Hillary!”   I will not even try to give a complete listing of the stories that have been critical of Clinton over the past quarter century, and unlike Trump, that has perhaps made her a bit media shy.  As John Thrust put it in a recent interview with Politico,  “There are plenty of other politicians who don't do as much press because they're terrified they're going to do something to hurt themselves.” The terror is perhaps justified in Clinton's case.  The press, both tabloid and mainstream, has pounced on the never-ending email scandal, and they have done so, in part at least, because it supports the on-going conservative narrative about Clinton, that she lies, that she is untrustworthy, that she is "crooked."  Her denials, I admit, seem to me rather lame.  They don't do much to inspire confidence, and when fact checked, don't hold up well to scrutiny.  As FactCheck.org put it, "Hillary Clinton wrongly claimed that FBI Director James Comey found her public statements about not sending or receiving classified email on her private server to be 'truthful.'”  There isn't much there, however, and to put it into perspective, of the 30,490 emails in question, 0.004 percent, or 110, had classified markings at the time.  Her terror as actual terror is perhaps justified as well.  As the Wall Street Journal reports, "even by the standards of rowdy Donald Trump rallies, the sight of a boy repeatedly yelling “take the bitch down” about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stood out."  It was news, not because of the content of the chant, which has become too commonplace to report, but because a young boy was chanting it, apparently with the approval of his mother.  Then too, there is the sort of fatwa that has been issued on Clinton, when Trump himself called out to the 2nd Amendment People.   In the context of his rallies, it's certainly not hard to misinterpret the remark as a fatwa, no matter if Trump indeed intended it as a call for guns right advocates to vote her down or as "sarcasm" or as both.    

Trump himself, however, we know is something else entirely.   It perhaps goes without saying that there is an inherent contradiction in Trump's relationship with the media -- on the one hand, he clearly craves it.  There is that curious incident from his past, where Trump himself called a People magazine reporter, claiming to be a publicist for Trump, John Miller.  Whether one finds it creepy, pathetic, or playful many depend upon what one thinks of Trump's character, but it unmistakably wants to use popular media as a forum for rebuilding the so-called Trump brand as the rakish and rich, popular and potent new bachelor.  People, of course, has a relationship with the truth and is, consequently, a step or two up from the National Enquirer, but their stories appeal to many of the same prurient interest in the lives of "celebrities."  Trump, it seems, is comfortable in that media environment, where no news is bad news, for it is being news, reappearing in the public spotlight, that perpetuates the celebrity of the celebrity.  I might add that, so far as the celebrity of the celebrity goes, it is a media environment where the negativity of negative content doesn't much matter.  An article decrying the divorce of Blake Shelton contributes as much to his celebrity as any other, and perhaps more because it provides the conflict necessary to a very familiar plot line.  It is within this circus of this circular media environment, where celebrity perpetuates celebrity, that Trump earned so much media coverage.  Trump benefited from abut $2 billion worth of "earned media." As the NY Times reports, "like all candidates, he benefits from what is known as earned media: news and commentary about his campaign on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on social media. Earned media typically dwarfs paid media in a campaign. The big difference between Mr. Trump and other candidates is that he is far better than any other candidate — maybe than any candidate ever — at earning media."  He "earned" his coverage by providing "stories," his over-the-top outlandishness tapping into pre-existing conflicts within American life in ways that were far from "politic" in the normal sense of the word, but certainly entertainment tonight.  

Trump may be comfortable in the perpetual motion machine of celebrity media, but he is, on the other hand, clearly less comfortable within the confines of the more mainstream media.  As Mediate put it, "on Friday morning’s Today Show, Trump was confronted with a clip from that audio, and not only denied it was him, but lashed out at hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie for even bringing it up."  The Today Show hovers somewhere between People magazine and the evening news, but in either case, in that context, truth matters, and as Trump's "lashing out" is perhaps a recognition that it might matter beyond that context.  Also, though they might have been less successful in this regard than we might have hoped, it is also a recognition that Trump has not quite been able to turn mainstream media into his own vanity press.  As Politico notes, "the argument that Trump’s rise was enabled by basic cable and the networks that have raked in millions in badly needed advertising cash (while giving Trump an unmediated platform to spout whatever ooze he chooses) is a core contention of many media analysts and many of Trump’s defeated foes.  Ted Cruz and his staff, in particular, are enamored of the idea that the GOP nominee secured the nomination as a result of $2 billion or so in unmediated 'earned' free media." It gives them an excuse for failure.  Having said this, however, the counter-argument that Trump's current slump in the polls has been enabled by the same "unmediated platform," who continue to report, just as they did during the primaries, on "whatever ooze he chooses" to spout.   

Clearly, what plays in the auditorium with his supporters does not necessarily play with a larger, more diverse audience, and he can't have it both ways.  He cannot make outlandish remarks to the adoring crowds at his rallies and then pillory the media for reporting them to a somewhat less adoring "mainstream" audience.   Yet that is precisely what he does, and at one level or another, one must assume it is not just disingenuous hypocrisy, but an actual strategy -- one that begs an answer to the question, "why would he continue to do this?"  One answer, of course, is that he has no intention of actually "winning" the presidency.  There's this on Alternet, as re-posted on Salon: "Michael Moore: Trump is sabotaging his campaign because he never really wanted the job."  The subtitle captures the gist of the article:  "At first, he might have been running for president to get a better deal for 'The Apprentice.'"  The article is mostly pure speculation and itself wouldn't have received much attention had it been my musings, say, and not the musings of a (counter) cultural celebrity icon like Michael Moore.  In defense of the article, however, unlike most conspiracy theorizing, it does not strain the limits of credulity.  There is no vast secret network, or secret government agencies populated with sinister men in black, and one can easily imagine it happening pretty much the way Moore describes, especially this epiphanic moment: "Then something happened. And to be honest, if it happened to you, you might have reacted the same way. Trump, to his own surprise, ignited the country, especially among people who were the opposite of billionaires. He went straight to No. 1 in the polls of Republican voters. Up to 30,000 boisterous supporters started showing up to his rallies. Television ate it up."  Trump had effectively become the star of the reality TV show, "The Presidential Race," but then came the second epiphany, that Moore describes as the "Oh Shit!" moment, that I and others have noted.  After winning, he would actually have to govern, something he has shown little interest in doing throughout his business life, as perhaps the history of his Altantic City casino deal best exemplifies.         

If the polls are accurately predicting the result in November, and if Moore is correct in assuming that he really doesn't want to actually govern, Trump finds himself in a quandary.  He must find a way to "win" by "losing." What happens if enough people really believe despite the evidence presenting in the mainstream media, as fringe groups already believe, that he "cannot lose" unless the election is "rigged?"  What happens if enough people really believe, again as many already believe, that the mainstream media itself is conspiring against Trump and that the propaganda media of the increasingly far right alone is "telling it like it is?"   At one level, of course, the simplest and perhaps best explanation for these assertions is that he's just giving himself excuses should he lose.  If the ump hadn't called him out at home, we'd have had a walk off victory.  One doubts that Trump has thought it through much further than that, but here's my own conspiracy theory.  Trump has come as close as anyone to "mainstreaming" the far right and his appointment of the disgraced Robert Ailes of Fox News to help with debate prep and Breitbart News Chairman Stephen Bannon as campaign chief executive point to deeper ties to a media propaganda machine with deep ties to the right, but tenuous ties to the truth.  One suspects that there is little hope that the Trump campaign will turn itself around, at least not with Trump doubling down on "I am who I am," but there will be a future after Trump.  As Josh Marshall has reported in Talking Points Memo, "earlier this week I asked the question whether Trumpism would outlive Trump's campaign." It will and "the GOP is now a Trumpite party and will remain a Trumpite party. To get a little more specific, this means that the white ethno-nationalist party which Trump has brought out of the shadows and mobilized is now and will continue to be the Republican party."  Trump's off the cuff musing about the 2nd Amendment People may have been less a threat of violence, less a fatwa per se, more a prediction of a gathering storm. 

Here's the conclusion:  the mainstream media "enabled" the rise of Trumpism.  As Moore put it, "Trump became the first American celebrity to be able to book himself on any show he wanted to be on — and then not show up to the studio! From 'Face the Nation' to 'The Today Show' to Anderson Cooper, he was able to simply phone in and they’d put him on the air live. He could’ve been sitting on his golden toilet in Trump Tower for all we knew — and the media had no problem with any of that. In fact, CBS head Les Moonves famously admitted that Trump was very good for TV ratings and selling ads — music to the ears of the NBC-spurned narcissist."  He became the villain people love to hate, deeply repugnant, but fascinating in his own right.  But, and it's a big but, now that Trump has said out loud what was already rumbling underneath the surface of 21st century Republican politics" as Marshall observed, "he's normalized a litany of statements and actions that were politically verboten, at least from the party's leadership. He has activated the voice of GOP white nationalism, spoken its language out loud and in so doing made it conscious of itself and expanded its ambitions."  If conservative sites like RedState find Trump as repugnant as any die hard liberal, it is in part because he has pulled the pants of the GOP down and revealed the skid marks in the underwear, in part because there really is a place for a conservative party WITHIN American politics, apart from the extremes of evangelical zeal for a christian theocracy and ethno-nationalist zeal to insure that the emergent theocracy is a white theocracy.  Trump has insured that the GOP will no longer have a place WITHIN American politics, but is now for the foreseeable future ONLY a radical insurgency that, should they by some calamity actually win, spells only disaster for American democracy that must embrace diversity out of sheer demographic necessity if nothing else.  RedState can protest the hiring of Ailes and Bannon, pointing out that, "as has been remarked before, Trump judges' [sic] people's character and competence solely by how nice they are to him. If a person flatters him, they are great at their job. If a person criticizes or challenges him, they are terrible at their job and probably are soon to get fired. This is especially true of people in the media."  They are, however, simply pointing out what Trevor Noah has already pointed out, that much of Trump's behavior, especially toward the media, is that of an African president -- is that of a petty dictator of the sort that Trump and his  radical insurgency actually admire -- and he has normalized that behavior as well.    

Irony Deficiency

In a recent Tom's Dispatch article, Andrew Bacevich identified three causes for the decline in American politics.  They were, more or less in order of importance, the evil effects of money, the perverse impact of identity politics on policy, and the substitution of "reality" for reality.  These are not "new" issues, and according to his analysis they have been slowly leaking steam for sixty years and have now left us stalled in the muddle of nowhere with "nothing to show."  Despite all the handwringing, or perhaps because of all the hand wringing, the candidacy of Sanders and the nomination of Trump have revealed Bacevich's three fissures in ways that are all the more disturbing because the political class has not imagined ways out of the muddle.  Indeed, one has the sense, reinforced by the media diaspora across the internet, that American politics, perhaps even the country at large, is AFU and of course, OF COURSE, it's the other guy's fault.   It is here that I add a fourth cause for the decline in American politics -- an irony deficiency.

I see the irony deficiency as a sort of anti-intellectualism, which takes us back to Hofstadter's thesis in "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," one laid out pretty much at the time Bacevich begins his analysis of American decline.  As Hofstadter wrote, intellectualism:

accepts conflict as a central and enduring reality and understands human society as a form of equipoise based upon the continuing process of compromise. It shuns ultimate showdowns and looks upon the ideal of total partisan victory as unattainable, as merely another variety of threat to the kind of balance with which it is familiar. It is sensitive to nuances and sees things in degrees. It is essentially relativist and skeptical, but at the same time circumspect and humane.

It is this relativism and this skepticism, when turned self-reflectively back on one's self, that develops one's sense of personal irony.  One can, and perhaps should, read this as a celebration of democracy, and one suspects the founding father's would have approved of Hofstadter's characterization of the "intellectual" and would have likewise seen "anti-intellectualism" as "anti-democratic." A total partisan victory of any sort is a dictatorship, and a dictatorship is inherently anti-democratic.  Hofstadter, however, had a more nuanced view, and found anti-intellectualism embedded "in the democratic institutions and the egalitarian sentiments of this country" and went on to write, "it is rare for an American intellectual to confront candidly the unresolvable conflict between the elite character of his own class and his democratic aspirations."  As Nicholas Lemann points out, "of the many forces arrayed against intellectualism, Hofstadter returns most often to evangelical religion—an almost constantly strong influence through all of American history—and business, especially the cheerleading tendency in business that produces the enthusiastic type Hofstadter calls the 'hundred percenter.'” Of course, intellectualism would be opposed to evangelical religion, which is anything but relativist and skeptical.  If it supports education, it supports an education that promulgates an absolute dogma, certain not one that promotes "critical thinking," and even more certainly not one that promotes "creative or critical thinking" about core dogma.   Business is a bit more nuanced, but not much.  It would seem to support an education that promotes "creative or critical thinking," but only insofar as that creativity or critical thinking is immediately utilitarian -- the idea that practical training should take precedence over book-learning -- or, for the more elite, the idea that professional training (particularly in business itself) should take precedence, especially over the arts and humanities, but also the so-called STEM disciplines except insofar as research those disciplines have an immediate pay-back in a "patentable" product.

The Evil Effects of Money

I won't reiterate Bacevich's argument here, but I will simply point out that behind much of the discussion there is a sort of logic, and you can see the logic at work throughout much of the discussion of the "fundraising" necessary for campaign expenses.  For example, Shane Goldmacher, in a recent Politico article, writes that Trump's fundraising efforts are 

a sharp departure from the primary, when [he] claimed he couldn’t be bought and his decision to pour tens of millions of his own money into the race was central to his image as a selfless billionaire sacrificing for the betterment of the nation. But now that both he and Clinton are leaning on big donors to fund their fall campaigns, it is Clinton who is more open about her own finances and where the money is coming from. 

One hardly knows where to begin unpacking such a statement, but first the assumption that money, lots of money, is necessary to winning an election.   Let me say up front that it is necessary, but not sufficient.  One can point to the failed candidacy of Jeb Bush as an example.  He had the necessary cash on hand to run an effective campaign, but failed regardless.  One could do an autopsy on his failed campaign, and for my own two cents, in retrospect it is obvious that he failed to take into account the disaffection of two overlapping constituencies within the republican voting class, the evangelical and the white nationalist right.  Ted Cruz co-opted the former, Donald Trump the latter, leaving Jeb Bush with the support of the conservative donor class, which has always insufficient to win an actual election.  It's important to recognize this because, citizen's united aside, it is clear enough that elections cannot be bought outright.  

They can, however, be bought to a degree -- that is to say, the degree to which donors provide the funding necessary to run an effective campaign.  The republicans are caught in something of a quandary here.  The ideological stance of the candidate IS important, and donors had contributed to Jeb Bush on two assumptions, that he was strong enough to hold the prevailing coalition of the republican voting class together and that he would represent their interests once elected.  The republican donor class, until recently, have resisted contributing to Trump around the same two assumptions.   He is, apparently, strong enough to hold the prevailing coalition of the republican voting class together, though he unwittingly clarified it in ways that have made many very uncomfortable, revealing that the racial resentments of the white nationalist right trump the religious sentiments of the evangelical right, but in doing so he thumbed his nose at all else.  It is not at all clear that he would represent their interests once elected, particularly their interests in global trade, the treaties that establish the terms favorable to their interests, and the military coalitions that help insure a stability conducive to trade.  He could thumb his nose at the donor class, and the party elites that support them, in part because he claimed that he was "self-funding" his campaign.  Unlike all the other candidates, he could speak his mind - however muddled, however "politically incorrect," however fabulous -- because he "couldn't be bought."  His statements may not accord with the facts, but the were ostensibly "true" to Trump.
       
The second assumption, implicit to much of the discussion above, is this: money is never just given, but is given in the expectation of "something" in return, even if that "something" is a consistent pursuit of the candidate's previously professed ideology.  This caveat is important.  It is one thing to receive a large donation, BECAUSE the candidate has a position the donor wants to support and the donation is predicated on that being her "true" position, that being a stance the donor can rely upon.  Such does not completely escape cynicism.  The candidate may express a position BECAUSE she knows, up front, that it is the position expected of her by her donors, positions made clear by the legion of lobbyists whose job it is to make the position of the donor class clear.  The candidate's job to make the positions of the donor class acceptable to the voting class.  In this way, the donor class "pre-selects" the candidate and provides them with the resources necessary to win elections.  This represents a big money perversion of democracy, but it escapes the outright hypocrisy and corruption of the quid pro quo that simply buys a vote on a position favorable to the "contributor."   

In a capitalist society, we shouldn't be surprised.  Money is a medium of exchange.  I give you money.  You give me goods and services.  While the assumption may not be AS true for small donors, who individually are in no position to either "pre-select" a candidate's views or demand a specific quid pro quo, it is CERTAINLY true of large donors, who are in a position to demand the goods in return.  Consequently, within democratic capitalism, it is important for the voting class to know who is giving, how much they are giving, and what they might expect in return should their candidate be elected.  Clinton, at least, provides a donor list for scrutiny, and it is clear enough that she is a "pre-selected" candidate, one who knows up front what the donor class expects of her and is willing to toe the line.  Consequently, many of the small donors who contributed to Sanders felt "sold out" when he endorsed Clinton, in part because it ran counter to so much of his previously professed ideology, his antipathy to the donor class, particularly the so-called global elites.   There was, one might add, a form of faux intellectualism in Sander's campaign.  He resembled nothing if not the sort of campaign that might have been run by one's favorite, slightly eccentric, radical but not rabid college professor -- a more likable Noam Chomsky.  I say faux intellectualism, not so much in critique of Sanders, who probably is circumspect and humane, but of those who turned him into a "movement."  As Sanders' endorsement indicated, he accepted conflict and mostly likely saw society as an equipoise based on a series of compromises.  As a career politician, he probably didn't expect a complete partisan victory up front, and his discernible influence on Clinton, the big money candidate, was perhaps more than he expected up front.  By nudging Clinton to the left, his campaign put America into a better, if not ideal position, but those small donors of the voting class and the celebrities like Susan Sarandon who turned him into a "movement" wanted the ideal without the compromise.  They became, in almost every respect, the flip side of the evangelical coin, devoid of the self-reflective irony.    

Trump however has signaled over and over his willingness to engage in the more outright corruption of the quid pro quo, the deal.  One might expect some of the same disappointment relative to Trump, now that he is beginning to solicit funding.  As Goldmacher put it, "trump’s move to keep his bundlers secret is just one element of a dramatic campaign-finance flip, from attacking donors to soliciting them, from bashing super PACS to embracing them, from promising to release his taxes to refusing.  Some of the very donors he demonized by name Trump has since gone back to seek support from, hat-in-hand."  As Goldmacher reported elsewhere in Politico, "after spending months scolding his rivals for being beholden to their financial backers, Donald Trump unveiled an economic advisory council last week — and filled it with some of his biggest donors."  If Trump wants the funding necessary to run a national campaign, he will need to convince the conservative donor class that he will support their interests, and that he will do so consistently.  Since these interests run counter to much of what he has professed, particularly what he has professed on behalf of the voting class, he will need to convince the contributing donor class -- despite his protestations against trade, despite his railing against NATO and the middle east wars -- that he can, quite literally, be bought.  Although this points to an obvious hypocrisy, his lack of transparency points to an even deeper distrust of democratic processes that would subject that hypocrisy to scrutiny.   If big money donations are going to play a role in democratic processes, it is important for the voting class to know who is giving, how much they are giving, and what they might expect in return should their candidate be elected.  It is even more important when the candidate is so clearly and so cynically offering access in return for cash, is so clearly being "bought."

Whether or not "the reversals ... rob Trump of credibility on what had been one of his most effective outsider themes and signature lines of attack" remains to be seen, but I suspect not.  Having committed to Trump, they too have turned Trump into a movement of sorts.  They have directed their evangelical zeal toward his campaign.  As Goldmacher put it, "Trump continues to hammer Hillary Clinton for her pursuit of campaign cash, even as he has joined in the hunt. 'She’s got to do right for her donors,' he said last Monday at a rally in Ohio 'I’m going to do right for you.'”  Even more so than the Sanders followers, the Trump followers, already conditioned by evangelical religion, have invested almost as much faith in "The Art of the Deal" as they have in the Bible.  It would take a great deal of self-directed skepticism, a sense that one just might maybe have been wrong about Trump and his character, to even ask the question "what exactly ARE you going to do for us?"  Instead they are like Job, after all their afflictions, maintaining the faith and awaiting the beneficence that will reward their faith.     

The Perverse Impact of Identity Politics

As Friedman of the New York Times reports, Trump said at a rally in Wilmington, N.C., on Tuesday. “By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know."  There is so much that is wrong with this statement that it's hard to know where to even begin.  The liberal press interpreted the remark as a threat against the life of Clinton or the judges she might appoint if elected.  There is good reason to do so.  While one can accuse the Huffington Post for liberal bias, they end each story on Trump with the following line: "Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims."  If one clicks on the link for "incites political violence," it take one to a story listing the various incidents where Trump has condoned and even called for violence.  The direct evidence is hard to ignore since most of it is actual video from his campaign rallies.  Taken within this larger context of calls to violence, the remark loses some of its ambiguity.  Although one might be tempted to dismiss it as political bombast, Friedman makes the point (slightly paraphrased) that "there are always people down the line who don’t hear the caveats. They just hear the big message: The (wo)man is illegitimate, the (wo)man is a threat to the nation, the (wo)man is the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal. Well, you know what we do with people like that, don’t you? We kill them. "  It could be just political hyperbole, but as Friedman goes on to point out, "an informal Trump adviser on veteran affairs, Al Baldasaro, a Republican state representative from New Hampshire, already declared that Clinton should be 'shot for treason' for her handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack."   Even if the remark is not meant literally, it is not beyond the pale that someone might not take Trump or Baldasaro at their word and assassinate Clinton. 

Let's assume that Trump really didn't mean to suggest violence, that we was simply calling for a united vote from all those who support their 2nd Amendment rights.  As Trump communications adviser Jason Miller explained,  his "comments were meant to spur 'American voters who are passionate about their Second Amendment rights ... to use that power at the ballot box' and that any suggestion otherwise was 'desperate,' 'outrageous' and 'ridiculous.'"  The statement is still wrong on so many levels that it beggars description.  First, one might ask, why didn't he just say "those who support the 2nd Amendment should unify their vote against Clinton?"  Either he lacks the verbal skills necessary to clearly articulate a position and will need his "apologists" over and over and over again if elected president, or he chose his words carefully and is sending a deliberate signal.  To be honest, I don't think Trump has the ability to choose his words carefully.  His syntax is convoluted and he has difficulty putting together simple declarative sentences in sequence.  He is certainly no Obama and he is even more certainly no Reagan in terms of verbal felicity, but let's again give him the benefit of the doubt.  If chose his words carefully, one can only assume that he meant to "send a signal," and left himself "personal deniability" should he be called out on it.  His verbal tic -- "many people are saying" -- is clearly a way of "sending a signal" while leaving himself room for "personal deniability," so there is some reason to believe it has gone beyond a verbal tic and has become an habitual way of communicating.  The question then becomes, "to whom is he sending the signal?"

Before I answer that question, let me take a brief detour that will lead me back to the point.  There is another aspect to Trump's locution that bears noting.  He didn't say "those who support 2nd Amendment rights."  He said "second amendment people," and in the process created (or referenced) a whole new identity group.   There are two aspects to this "new" identity group, the first of which concerns a belief concerning the "legitimacy" of the federal government, the second of which is the "signal" right to keep and bear arms to protect one's self from and, if necessary, take action against an illegitimate government.  As Heather Digby Parton writes for Salon, "we are already seeing the contours of their latest attempt to make that victory illegitimate.  Donald Trump has announced that he believes the election results will be invalid if Clinton wins.  He told Sean Hannity that 'November 8th, we’d better be careful, because that election’s going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it’s going to be taken away from us.'"  He adds, "I’ve been hearing about it for a long time,” and of course he has.  For example, "the voter fraud myth has been flogged by the right wing for decades now despite no evidence that it exists. Trump has begun building up his argument based upon recent court rulings against certain onerous Voter ID laws."  One could point out that these laws, along with heavily gerrymandered districts, actually DO rig elections, but not in favor of either racial minorities or the democratic candidates they tend to support.   Nevertheless, fully "69 percent of North Carolina Trump voters think that the only way Trump can lose is if the Democrats steal it. There’s no reason to think Trumpies are any less gullible in other states."   

So, if the election is rigged, the results stolen, what to do? -- the answer, in brief, is to "declare independence."  Consider, for example, the rhetoric of the "constitution party."   They write:

Disarmament is apparently one of the building blocks President Obama intends to use in building his new Orwellian, total surveillance police state. Despite his and Vice President Biden’s rhetoric, they must understand that disarmament will not “keep millions of people out of harm’s way” nor will it save “thousands of lives.”  Vice President Biden has been quoted as saying the president is considering executive action after his inauguration on January 21. Such an executive order is not permitted under the Constitution and it would place the president clearly outside the law. That is apparently a place in which the president seems quite comfortable as he legislates by executive order, appoints his czars to run his administration’s agenda without Senate confirmation, and conducts wars while insisting that even consulting Congress – let alone getting approval – is not required.  He chooses the example of history’s tyrants instead of the founding fathers. Why would he do that unless disarmament is part of his long-term strategy to fundamentally change America, and he needs a helpless, disarmed public to accomplish his goals?

Such was written, apparently, before Obama's second term inauguration and of course he didn't issue an executive order, didn't confiscate firearms, or anything of the sort.  Nor has he declared martial law, ensconced himself as dictator, or given much credence to those who want "very bigly" to believe his presidency is illegitimate, and will see Clinton in the same way as simply a continuation of Obama.  Nevertheless, similar themes are being hammered home during the 2016 election with Trump claiming that "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment."   Fact checkers have pooh-poohed Trump's assertion, but they focused on the larger issue of simply abolishing the 2nd Amendment, finding no evidence of that what-so-ever.  As Politifact reports, "She wants to enact stricter gun control, but has no objection to responsible gun ownership."  The fact checkers, however, overlook the weasel word "essentially." If one's intent is to defend oneself from an illegitimate federal government, sensible gun control -- e.g. the banning of assault rifles -- becomes ominous.  It "essentially" becomes the first step on the slippery slope toward the "surveillance police state" enforced against a "helpless, disarmed public."  As the Tenth Amendment Center put it, "A person buys an 'assault weapon' because it declares their self-ownership and right to revolution in a way a discreet-looking rifle does not.  Gun control advocates perceive this, perhaps on a subconscious level. It’s an act of defiance against their ideology which preaches government is ultimately sovereign and has a moral imperative to maintain superiority of arms over the people. It’s why they don’t care what type of swords, crossbows, pikes or spears people own; those weapons pose no threat to the government or its ability to control the populace." For those who see a "right to revolution," appeals to "sensible gun control" or to "responsible gun ownership" are simply "head fakes."  

I am suggesting that Trump is not calling upon "responsible gun owners" to vote against Clinton, but is calling upon those "Second Amendment People," perhaps on a subconscious level, who believe the current government is illegitimate, who believe they are "empowered" by the 10th Amendment to resist an illegitimate government, and who believe the "right to bear arms" is essential to that resistance.  One need only peruse the web sites briefly to understand that "Second Amendment People" have fundamentalist conservative attitudes on most flash points -- abortion, taxes, education, and immigration. One need only reflect briefly that "states rights," local sovereignty, and self-ownership are also buzz words for rather sketchy racial and gender orientation attitudes.  

I won't do a detailed take down of the arguments advanced by the 10th Amendment Center or the Constitutional Party.  I must say there is a sort of erudition to their arguments, but for the most part it is a mis-placed erudition.  It is a style of argument familiar to those who frequent the pews of the evangelical right.   They have invented a bogeyman, a federal Obama-led conspiracy against the American people.  They justify action against that imagined bogeyman using a variety of pretexts cherry picked from the debates surrounding the creation of the constitution and the constitution itself.   In the end, they believe themselves to be engaged in a contest between good and evil.  It is skeptical, but it lacks the irony of self-reflective skepticism.  It directs its skepticism only, with great nuance one might add, at the actions of the invented bogeyman.   The only acceptable outcome is the total partisan victory of the good over the evil, and it eschews any "continuing process of compromise" as itself evil.  

Everything in the context of Trump's remarks suggests that he is, yet one more time, poking at the coals of white identity, but he is doing so in a way that threatens -- if not overtly, then covertly -- an orderly presidential succession, a hallmark of our democracy.  I am suggesting that a sizable part of the population will believe from the outset that  her presidency is illegitimate from the start, that she did not win "fair and square," that her presidency does not represent the "will of the people," and that she should, to use Newt Gingrich's words, "be opposed at every turn, by any means necessary, and, if possible, destroyed."   How literally those hearing the signal will take the word "destroyed" is anyone's guess, but it only takes one.  Given "Trump's Long Dalliance with Violent Rhetoric" and his refusal to quell it, the Secret Service might want to redouble their protection of Clinton.   

The Substitution of "Reality" for Reality

When all is said and done, Trump's and the republican party's relationship with the press will deserve a full analysis, more than can be done here in a paragraph or two.  Over the last quarter century, they have engaged in what might be called a "confirmation bias" style of argument, and it is the sort of argument familiar to religious fundamentalism.  It begins with certain dogmatic assertions that MUST be true and cannot be doubted.  It is not that the assertions have been SHOWN in any way to be true and have consequently removed themselves from the possibility of doubt either by logic or by evidence.  It is rather a compulsory truth and doubt is simply impermissible or irrelevant.  It is conducive to a parental and authoritarian style of argument -- that is to say, when authority is questioned, the response is "because I said so."  Or for the biblically minded, it is the response of the lord to job -- "can you pull up Leviathan with a fishhook?"  To which Job ultimately replied, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know." Job's submission was complete and, because it was complete, rewarded.  If the authority deigns to offer evidence, it is only evidence that confirms the truth of the originating assertions.  Those who continue to offer up contradictory or anomalous evidence -- the sort of evidence that creates skeptical doubt -- must be intentionally trying to subvert faith in the true dogma.  They must be under a different -- and perverse -- compulsion.

I am suggesting, of course, that the relationship between the republican party and the press is the relationship between those who hold a true dogma against those who continue to offer up contradictory or anomalous evidence.  Their pulpit, so to speak, is fox news, and the voice of opposition is the so-called "mainstream media" which continuously tries to subvert the true faith.  Thus it is that fox news, itself mainstream media by almost any measure, can castigate the mainstream media without irony.  As Allen S. Weiner and Duncan Pickard write in the Washington Post, The latest victim in the presidential race’s assault on truth — to say nothing of nuance — came last week in the flurry of accusations surrounding the United States’ payment of $400 million to Iran.  Donald Trump called it ransom, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) accused the United States of acting like a 'drug cartel. '"  Fox News, of course, did nothing to correct that impression that we were paying ransom, but a bit later did report that "the Obama administration is being accused of stalling a congressional investigation into a purported $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded “ransom payment” to Iran in exchange for the release of several U.S. prisoners, according to documents and information provided to the Washington Free Beacon by sources familiar with the matter."  To unpack this single sentence takes some grammatical nuance, but bear with me.  First it is a passive construction.  It suggests that the Obama administration is being accused, but the sentence never states by whom he is being accused.  Second, it doubles down on the passive construction.  One might leap to the conclusion that the accusations come from "sources familiar with the matter," and the "matter" is evidence suggesting the payment as an act of bribery, but the "sources" are simply the people that provided the documents to the Washington Free Beacon and they are "familiar," not with evidence that might support the accusation of bribery, but merely with the expected partisan squabbling behind the accusation of bribery.  In the end, there is little in the way evidence for a quid pro quo payment  to secure the release of the prisoner except the "coincidence" of timing.  Even if Iran used the money as a bargaining chip relative to the nuclear deal and the release of prisoners, my overwhelming response is a shoulder shrug.  The money had been under dispute since 1979, through the tenure of five presidents, both republican and democrat.  The dispute was settled on terms favorable to the US, the prisoners released alive, a nuclear deal signed -- good, good, good in the "continuing process of compromise."  It is, however, the very act of "compromise," particularly with a muslim regime, that is ultimately suspect.     

Although Trump himself no more represents the dogma of a true conservatism -- and if he fails, as appears very likely, those who hold the faith will assume, yet once again, that the failure can be attributed to a lapse of faith, his swerve away from the truth of true conservatism -- he has nevertheless adopted their relationship with the press, and upped the ante.  He has displaced the dogmatic "reality" with a narcissistic "reality," a selfie "reality."  The ransom claim is just small potatoes.  His latest stunt concerns Obama as a founder of ISIS.  As Politico reports, 

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a top Trump surrogate, expressed frustration with Trump’s “imprecise language” and “shorthand” speaking style.  “He sometimes uses three words when he needs 10,” Gingrich told Fox News, adding that had Trump, for example, explained that Obama and Clinton’s decision to pull out of Iraq created the vacuum that allowed the emergence of the Islamic State, he’d be “100 percent accurate.”  “When you instead comprise them into ‘Obama created ISIS’ — I know what Trump has in his mind, but that’s not what people hear,” he said. “He has got to learn to use language that has been thought through and that is clear to everybody and to stick to that language because otherwise the mainstream media is gonna take every possible excuse to pile on him.”

It is odd to hear Newt Gingrich speaking as the voice of reason.  Nevertheless, while the decision to pull out of Iraq is debatable, at least it refers to a reality and it is debatable.  Here again, however, Gingrich's defense of Trump is just wrong on any level.  If Trump cannot express what "Trump has in his mind," that alone disqualifies him from assuming the presidency.  At the very very least one might hope the so-called "leader of the free world" would be able to express what he has in mind, and to do it in ways that is "clear to everybody."  Behind Gingrich's remark, however, is the assumption that the "mainstream media" is anti-Trump and by extension anti-conservative, that they spend their time looking for and taking "every possible excuse to pile on." In some respects, one suspects this is simply projection.  In their good vs evil, life-and-death struggle with Obama, the conservative media and fox news in particular "does take every possible excuse to pile on."   The characterization of the Iran payment as "ransom" is just one small recent example of the same.  It is assumed, in other words, that the "mainstream media" is engaged in an evil vs good, life-and-death struggle with Trump and conservatism, but I doubt that many within the mainstream media would have characterized their engagement with Trump in quite that way, at least not initially.  It very well may seem that way now.

As many have pointed out, this descent first into a dogmatic "reality," then into a narcissistic "reality," has been fueled in part by social media.  Trump's verbal tic, "many are saying," may be a way of weaseling personal deniability, but it is also an indicator that we have descended into the domain of social media, where the number of "clicks" and the number of "likes" are the arbiter of success.  Truth is a secondary concern, so long as "many are saying," and there is traffic.  It perhaps goes without saying that a self-absorbed Bieber peeing into a mop pail would get more "traffic" than a sober climate scientist discussing melting ice floes, that a nude Miley Cyrus swinging on a wrecking ball gets more "traffic" than an expert on the wreckage of middle east history, so too the self absorbed Trump swinging on his own wrecking ball gets more "traffic."  As reported by the Washington Times, the radio host Hugh Hewitt gave Trump an out on his "Obama founded ISIS," but he didn't take the opportunity.  “No, I meant that he’s the founder of ISIS - I do,” Mr. Trump said.  "It’s no mistake - everyone’s liking it,” Mr. Trump said. “I think they’re liking it."  It is there that Trump gives himself away.  Trump isn't asserting that it's "no mistake" because it's true.  Trump is asserting that it's "no mistake" because "everyone's liking it."  The truth, ultimate, has been displaced by the thumbs up "like," and the implicit "applause line" appeal of "like me."