The Resumption of History: Part 4 – The Sources of American Soft Power
by Carlo Graziani
Part 3, Of Justice and Power, ended like this:
So we cannot look to Marx for usable thinking about Power. For that, we must turn instead to the “bourgeois” political philosophers of the American Revolution.
Justice and Power in America
The philosophers of governance who did think hard about the Problem of Power were living a century or more before Marx, in England and in the American colonies. The English Enlightenment furnished the raw material for the deeply skeptical view of human nature that informs the US Constitution. The very notion of “checks and balances” that Americans absorb in their civics classes reflects the nearly paranoid level of suspicion held by the writers of that document, that the Federal Government, or a State, or even a mob of people, might take it into their heads to do something corrupt. Each of the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights asserts a proscription on what the Federal Government may do with admirable directness and clarity (except for the Second Amendment, which begins with an apology, but that’s another story), showcasing the concern for limiting power. There was one thing that Madison, Jay, Hamilton, et al. were absolutely determined about, above everything else: Americans would never have another Sovereign. Nobody, but nobody would ever be above the law.
That’s a really tall order, though. A piece of paper cannot really do all that work by itself, no matter how impressive the calligraphy and the signatures. All it takes is for high officials with enough power to conspire not to be bound by its terms, and the constitution is moot. This is a dispiriting story that has recurred many times in many places all over the world.
It almost appeared to happen in the United States in January 2021, but then it did not. Which if you think about it is odd. In most countries in the world, an incumbent leader in control of military and security forces, with a reasonably large political base, plenty of time to make preparations, and a determination to wreck democratic norms to remain in power, would not have that much difficulty in doing so. But Trump couldn’t pull it off. So, that’s interesting. Why not?
The answer, I think, is that the real constitutional checks are not in that piece of paper but in our minds and in our culture. That is where the “Ideology of the Enlightenment” that I’ve been working around to talking about is doing its work. In the United States, today, there are still enough people who were socialized to the idea that, for example, the President cannot just change an election outcome that doesn’t suit him. Think about that. There are a lot of places in the world where people are too cynical about elections, and Power, to believe that.
Mike Pence—Mike Pence!—the utter mediocrity plucked from a dead-end political career in Indiana who probably couldn’t name three signers of the Constitution if there were a free corn dog in it for him; whose loyalty to Trump led him to dutifully allow his boss humiliate him in new ways each week of his term as Vice President; that Mike Pence could not bring himself to sign off on the farcical plot abstain from his constitutional duty to certify the election results. This notorious moral coward was more scared of being busted for violating the Constitution than he was of Donald Trump and his mob of latter-day brownshirts!.
I don’t think that this was a near miss. I think it was, rather, the tip of an iceberg. If this idiotic coup had gone further, then in order for Trump to remain in power many of the 2.1 million civilian federal workers and 1.2 million military personnel employed by the US government would have had to take actions in support of the coup that would have made those individuals feel physically nauseated. I believe that Trump would likely have been rejected by the government in a manner analogous to an organism’s immune response rejecting a foreign organ transplant. I feel sure that the sheer outrageous Soviet-style obscenity of self-appointed “alternate” elector slates arriving to nullify the votes of millions of citizens according to John Eastman’s demented plan would have triggered an insurrection inside the Federal Government, with officials at Justice, Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security etc. actively rebelling, to the point that in the end the whatever nominal power Trump retained, the joystick would have gone slack in his hands. I’m deep in counterfactual territory here, but I don’t think it is too far-fetched to imagine that the Secret Service might actually have taken him into custody, if only to escort him to Mar-a-Lago.
That is our secret sauce. This country indoctrinated itself into the values of rule of law, writ large, for over two centuries, to the point that those values became a cultural norm. We are still, demonstrably, as of January 2021, a people that will brook no compromise concerning the ultimate rules that our rulers must submit to. Would you like something to be proud of, as an American? Forget about our economic leadership, or our technological primacy. Be proud of that.
Let me finally spell out the point of this extended rumination. When I allude to “The Ideology of the Enlightenment” in this essay, what I mean is not only the notion that it is useless to design a system of governance to deliver Justice unless the exercise of Power by that system has been carefully and mindfully circumscribed. I also mean that it is absolutely essential to have clear messaging about the importance of the problems of Power; that one must propagandize the aspect of Power limitation in governance—such as freedom of political speech, or of the circumscribing of official, judicial, police, and prosecutorial authority—and the crucial role that it plays in a strong, successful democracy; that one must socialize one’s citizens into the values of Power limitation as a critical means of inoculating one’s democracy against tyrants. It is dangerous for us to ever forget this.
Note that this is also, and not inconsequentially, a discussion of freedom. But not “freedom” in the sense of the word as it is shouted by the kind of entitled idiot “patriots” who like to wave “We’re Number 1” Foam Fingers while presumptuously helping themselves to an individual’s license to do anything they like at anybody else’s expense. This is “freedom” in the sense of preserving our liberties as citizens to choose our government, and limiting the corruption that could destroy those liberties. This is a discussion about the freedom that’s worth having, worth protecting, and worth talking about without shame. The freedom that makes the country worth defending in the first place.
It is also a discussion about corruption. There is an unusual feature of Western, and particularly US institutions compared to those characteristic of the rest of the world. The level of corruption of all kinds in those institutions—in Central Banks, in Courts, in Government Departments, as well as in private institutions—while not zero, is so much lower than in the rest of the world that the fact is frequently remarked upon by visitors from developing nations—I have met a few who never even found the routine corrupt practices in their home countries noteworthy in the slightest until they came to the US and suddenly didn’t have to bribe anyone. This relative lack of institutional corruption is a phenomenon that is clearly related to the same set Enlightenment values: corruption doesn’t check itself, it is checked when institutions designed to limit it are set up in a culture that expects it to be limited. This feature of our society is, I believe, one of our most important sources of soft power. Most of the world dwells in such extensive and endemic corruption that the idea of living without it can seem more utopic than the idea of “freedom”, believe it or not.
At the moment we, in the US, still appear to have some immunity to tyranny, some attachment to our lawful institutions of government, and some allergy to corruption. We do not do these things perfectly. For example, our attachment to a “Unitary Executive” as a legal concept is an abomination that needs to be sent to some kind of graveyard as quickly as can be arranged, before executive power becomes unbounded. Also, we allow our police and prosecutors far too much power. I still believe that we grant the FBI and the FISA court too much deference, in the name of fighting Terrorism. Nonetheless, the needle does seem to be moving on even these issues lately. There are some grounds for optimism.
We could lose those things, though. We have become confused about what we’re about in recent decades, and it shows in what our youth thinks of us. I’ve had some conversations with twenty-somethings lately that have left me very concerned, because of the latent bothsidist/whataboutist attitudes underlying such phrases as “to my generation” that precede some observations of near-complete detachment and cynicism. Well, honestly. Who can blame them? We transmitted to them an idea of our values based on the neo-liberalism that we learned from Reagan and Thatcher. I’d be cynical too.
On the other hand, perhaps we may now live in a time when it is possible to refocus on what matters.
Tomorrow: Awakenings
All 5 parts, once published, can be found here: The Resumption of History
President Obama: Challenges to Democracy In the Digital Information Realm (LIVE) at 3:15 ET
Omnes Omnibus
I see where your optimism is coming in. FWIW I agree with broad strokes of what you are saying here, but then I am an optimist as well. Be prepared for some serious push back from a good many commenters.
Chief Oshkosh
This is a great piece of thinking and writing. Thank you. Bill Mauldin wrote about this in “Up Front,” his almost-in-real-time (published in 1944) observational and autobiographical book explaining the background to his Stars and Stripes cartoon characters “Joe” and “Willie,” two GIs on the European frontlines of WWII. In explaining why America as a concept and as a country “works” and why so many of its citizens from so many different backgrounds were willing to volunteer (I know that there was a huge draft, too) and fight for democracy, he says democracy at the functional level is basically when a bunch of normal people collectively say “you can’t do that!” when someone tries to wrest power from the electorate. I’m not explaining his words well at all, but it’s a great book, and I highly recommend it as window into the lives of the frontline soldier, and very specifically, frontline US soldiers in Italy and France. I imagine there’s a lot of what Willie and Joe went through going on right now in the Ukranian ranks.
kalakal
A precedent may be the 1920 Kapp Putsch in Weimar Germany. When the government attempted to disband 2 of the largest Freikorps paramilitaries they rebelled, and with some active support from the military, occupied Berlin and installed a government. The military refused to intervene and the elected government fled. Within a day a general strike, including nearly all the civil service began, the country was paralysed, Berlin was without power and water. The coup collapsed after 4 days
Carlo Graziani
@Chief Oshkosh: You know, I’ve read about Joe and Willie, in passing as background color in various readings about the Second World War. Now I need to go read about them.
Sure Lurkalot
How do we reconcile a democracy envisioned to be of by and for the people with millions of them willing to cede that power so readily? Citizens in many states have voted for referenda only to be denied by their elected representatives. It appears that many millions would be perfectly fine with state legislatures overturning election results. Hell, half of our citizenry cede power by not voting.
The concept of citizenship being a bundle of rights but not obligations is a democracy killer. It seems our 21st century idea of being a good citizen is to buy shit and lots of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Carlo Graziani: First, find a book of the cartoons and read them. They say a lot directly.
SpaceUnit
I thinks it’s worth pointing out that there are different magnitudes of corruption. Yes, one is probably less likely here in the US to have to grease some official’s palm in order to get one’s papers stamped or to be able to a bribe a cop. But those represent the most petty types of corruption.
The corruption we see in the Republican Party ( office holders at the state, federal and local level ) is of an ideological nature. And that makes it far more dangerous. It is born of their allegiance to an extremist movement that supersedes any loyalty to the constitution or procedural norms, to truth in any form. It has utterly corrupted their commitment to democracy.
A handful crooked county commissioners taking money from real estate developers is no real threat to our overall system of government. Republican-majority state legislatures willing to throw out votes and appoint their own electors is very much a threat.
And I’m not convinced that the bureaucracy will be the firewall that saves us.
Carlo Graziani
@Sure Lurkalot: I agree with this also. Every right has a duties associated with it, and in the US we don’t like to talk about those.
There are a great many pathologies still to address, and sometimes I have also despaired. I just happen to have found this moment one that has brought me reason to look around and find some threads of hope. We have some strengths, and perhaps they furnish some places to build upon. And maybe, this may be a moment to begin building.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sure Lurkalot: Part of the solution is to simply have higher expectations for and of our fellow citizens. People object to sayings like “This is not who we are” and “We are better than this,” but I see them as a call to what Lincoln called “our better angels.” Biden is good at this. “Come on, man!” is an appeal to our shared common sense and decency. People do respond.
You all may begin flaming me at your leisure.
Chief Oshkosh
@Omnes Omnibus: Absolutely agree. FWIW, “Up Front” has a cartoon on nearly every other page (just flipping through it now, exceptions are pp. 80-81, 172-173, and 220-223).
Yes, I’m working a big project late, had too much coffee, and have hit a state of focused, compulsive, procrastination… ;)
Carlo Graziani
@SpaceUnit: Yeah. The Republican party is a problem. I’m not sure I would class it in the “corruption” category. But certainly in the remaining existential threat category.
Because I am living an optimistic moment, I suppose I should guard against teleology. I don’t want to suggest that there is anything inevitable about American “incorruptibility”, if that is even a thing.
I am suggesting that Americans were educated and accultured to certain expectations concerning the way their institutions ought to function, and tend to get awfully pissed off when they find them not functioning that way. Pissed off in a way that many people in the rest of the world might find surprising, because those people’s expectations of their own institutions lead them to shrug off nepotism, larceny, absenteeism, petty tyranny, pork barrel politics, etc. as routine cost of doing business. They would be surprised at the suggestion that someone might get in legal jeopardy for such shenanigans, unless they endangered the political position of some much bigger shot.
craigie
I wonder if that would have been a better outcome, in the sense that the GQP would have been faced with the fact that what they were doing was not, fundamentally, American.
bookworm1398
Politically what gives me hope is seeing that in history has strayed from freedom before but always pulled back from the brink. McCarthism, Japanese internment, the refusal to certify the 1920 census – after a bit people realized this was unamerican and stopped supporting it. I expect to see the same with the current voting restrictions and gerrymandering though it may take a few years.
On corruption, it was my impression that US used to be quite corrupt 100 years ago but then got cleaned up. But I don’t really know- can someone confirm?
SpaceUnit
@Carlo Graziani:
I envy you your optimism.
And no, I’m not being sarcastic.
Gin & Tonic
In 2019 Ukraine held a Presidential election in which the incumbent, running for re-election, lost resoundingly. He conceded graciously and immediately (as soon as polls closed). Full, official results were published the next day, and the newly-elected President was inaugurated four weeks later with the full cooperation of the government and the polity.
The US-centric chauvinism of this piece is embarrassing in comparison. It took nearly a week to get results here, the incumbent never conceded, and something like 40% of the population still believes he actually won. 30 years after being freed from the USSR, Ukrainians understand the principles at stake better than Americans do 250 years after their own independence.
Carlo Graziani
@SpaceUnit: I’ve gone in cycles. After November 2016, I pulled the plug on all media for two years. I couldn’t bear it. Remembering having gone to bed angry and woken up angry every day of the W administration, I felt that what was coming would probably take years off my life. So I effectively hid out.
When I finally started peeking out again, I was a bit embarrassed by my cowardice. And really motivated to try and figure out what had happened.
It’s ironic that it would take a tragedy such as this war to change my outlook this much. But I really think we’re living a moment when things are suddenly shifting, for the better. I could be wrong, and look very foolish for saying such things, even within a few weeks from now. But fuck it. This is the picture I’m seeing. I’ll just paint it.
Villago Delenda Est
TFG had no hope of pulling off a coup because the military remained true to their oaths and gave him no support. The officer corps loathes him.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: For most of US history, that kind of transition has been the norm.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: I confess, I did not expect Omnes the Idealist to show up, but it is the season for miracles.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: And now it isn’t.
PJ
@bookworm1398: Except when it didn’t pull back from the brink, as in 1861. Not trying to be a downer, just pointing out that sometimes the dark forces in some American souls win out big time, and it’s “Fuck yeah! Let’s burn this country down!”
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: What do you think prompted all my bitching about doom posting?
Carlo Graziani
@Omnes Omnibus: I must have somehow missed that episode. Was it good?
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Twice in over 200 years isn’t too bad.
New Deal democrat
I disagree with this essay on two points, one long term and one short term.
1.”The English Enlightenment furnished the raw material for the deeply skeptical view of human nature that informs the US Constitution. The very notion of “checks and balances” that Americans absorb in their civics classes reflects the nearly paranoid level of suspicion held by the writers of that document,”
It’s true that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 furnished the near term raw material for the ideology of the US Constitution. But that is not the original inspiration.
The entire history of Republics, going back at least 2500 years, is the effort to design a system where the law, and not a tyrant or a junta, is supreme. This has always included checks and balances, and has always included elections governed by rules agreed upon ahead of time. Some Republics, notably the Roman Republic (which after all lasted 500 years), the Republic of Venice (which depending on how you count lasted up to 1200 years); and the Swiss Confederation (700 years and counting with a brief interruption by Napoleon) have been very successful.
The bane of Republics has been when power becomes entrenched, negating the designed checks and balances.
This is where the US finds itself today.
2. “This country indoctrinated itself into the values of rule of law, writ large, for over two centuries, to the point that those values became a cultural norm. We are still, demonstrably, as of January 2021, a people that will brook no compromise concerning the ultimate rules that our rulers must submit to.”
Sorry, but I disagree with this very strongly. The proverbial 27%, and considerably more, are prepared to throw that overboard in order to keep power. In fact, Bush v. Gore over 20 years ago demonstrated that at the very highest level of the Judiciary, deciders were prepared to throw out the law and issue a one-off ad how opinion to make sure the GOP won. And we have a de facto system of Presidential impunity, where they are immune from prosecution both during and after their terms. That, in straightforward terms, is being above the law.
The rule of law *also* means that citizens can plan their lives without worrying that what is permitted and what is forbidden will not arbitrarily and suddenly shift like sand under one’s feet.
When you have a Supreme junta that holds power for life, is accountable to no one, is the final word on all issues, and willy-nilly changes what has been permissible and what has been forbidden for the past 50 or 100 years, you do not have the rule of previously agreed-upon law.
Omnes Omnibus
@Carlo Graziani: I couldn’t possibly say.
Villago Delenda Est
I think that one of the things we’ve lost over the last 150 years, though, is the inherent distrust of what, for lack of a better term, can be called the merchant class. Adam Smith had little good to say about them. The Founders and Framers, having dealt with the Honorable East India Company, had major reservations about corporations. Jefferson believed that banks were a greater danger than standing armies. One of the things the government MUST do is keep plutocrats in check, because they LOATHE democracy and “free” markets, which are a pure economic assertion of power by the people in general.
Carlo Graziani
@bookworm1398: There used to be wholesale replacement of the Federal government with every Administration. Of course the government was a lot smaller back then, but it meant that every office that could be given away had a lot of political value. The Civil Service was created in <checks Wikipedia> 1883 to start to limit the problem.
In a sense this illustrates my point. It’s not easy to create corruption-free, or even corruption-limiting institutions. The US has taken several attempts at it, and is probably not done. But one has to be motivated.
Villago Delenda Est
@New Deal democrat:
Can’t disagree with you on the short term point at all. The Federalist Society, which has been working to undermine The Enlightenment and the Constitution for nearly half a century, pretty much wrote Bush v Gore through the avatar of the fascist scum Scalia. Utter bullshit, from start to finish, and the craven O’Connor went along with it.
Salty Sam
Indeed. I was working in the Middle East during the Watergate kerfluffle. It was a point of pride for me that Nixon was being held to account for misdeeds. But the locals I interacted with didn’t understand- “He just did what every politician does…” was the zeitgeist.
Omnes Omnibus
@New Deal democrat: I think that this does come down whether one thinks that the current state of affairs is a new normal or if this is just the ugly end point of one of those pendulum swings that we’ve gone through throughout our history.
Carlo Graziani
@New Deal democrat: I think, however, the essential point to explain, is “how could Trump have failed?”
In almost every other country in the world, given the circumstances he had available to him—a large, passionate political base, incumbency, total control of a powerful, well-organized security state, plenty of reasonably intelligent, amoral advisers, plenty of time, and above all, indomitable will to power—he would have had no difficulty whatever subverting the democratic order.
I don’t disagree with what you are saying about the Supreme Court. Bush v. Gore made me feel ill for weeks too, and I still regard it in the light of a coup d’etat. We have too much trash in our house to pretend that smell is air freshener.
I am saying that we did see where the limits are on January 6. And it was a relief to me to find that there are such guard rails. There are a lot of places in the world where I am quite sure no such limits exist.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic:
Thank You for saying what needed to be said. I bet we can find a Victorian gentleman talking about the white man’s burden and how Britain is unique and oh so civilized among nations in the late nineteenth century.
New Deal democrat
@Carlo Graziani: “how could Trump have failed?”
The man is dumber than a bag of hammers. He bankrupted *casinos,* after all!
“we did see where the limits are on January 6.”
Hard disagree. When GOP legislatures overturn Democratic electoral votes in 2025, the GOP Court stands aside, and the GOP majority of 26 House delegations installs President Trump or DeSantis, those limits will be shattered.
Carlo Graziani
@New Deal democrat:
I couldn’t possibly disagree. But I don’t think that is why his plan failed. There simply wasn’t one that could have succeeded.
Wow. How do you do that? I can’t tell what will happen in six months! :-)
Betsy
Your observations make me think of a principle outlined in “Albion’s Seed,” a dearly held understanding of liberty among a certain batch of colonists that it is the freedom to impose one’s will on others. When those of that ilk talk of “tyranny,” they mean “government power that [protects others / prevents me] from imposing my will upon them.”
When WE talk about tyranny, we mean corruption, autocracy, and totalitarianism. BUT THAT IS *FREEDOM* TO MODERN CONSERVATIVES just as it was to their forbears in “Albion’s Seed” – slavers, patrician heads of households, landlords, takers of others’ labors.
For examples of this inverted concept of “freedom”: Look at the Texas law that purports to imbue private citizens with a right to sue for damages when others get abortions. Look at think-tank legislation that creates similar “rights” to oppress others, such as a new “freedom of religion protection” that says if an individual uses the power of the state to prevent you from imposing your religious belief on them, that individual (not the *state*, which is the entity that the constitution limits!!) are violating your freedom of religion.
This notion of “freedom” is about protecting the right of the powerful to control others and protecting would-be autocrats.
We need to take back the concept of tyranny and start talking about it in its REAL SENSE! Tyranny is gerrymandering. Tyranny is the unitary executive. Tyranny is the Supreme Court as currently composed via thwarting of judicial appointment processes. Tyranny is unaccountability to the people at any level of government.
Tyranny is NOT the government stopping you from trafficking in others’ labor or commandeering their bodies.
Ruckus ??
@Chief Oshkosh:
It occurred in the military that I served in as well. I don’t believe it was exactly as Mauldin wrote but it was still there in the background. I wonder if it is still there today. Our nation has fallen into the trap of the almighty wonder of wealth, although it has been going on long before I was born. And in my mind it has gotten more so in the last 50 yrs. SFB was in my mind the result of decades of that line of thought. So much so that enough people voted for a POS who has never been successful about any thing but making up bullshit about how wealthy he is and how great he is because of all that wealth that he doesn’t have. He’s really the signal that much of what Carlos and you are saying is exactly correct.
Ruckus ??
@Gin & Tonic:
Ukraine is physically closer (right now way, way to close) to the major country that is exactly the opposite of what Carlos is explaining. We have been around longer and have had periods of our history that needed correction and it hasn’t necessarily been 100% successful. And the last 30 yrs has had a full scale attack on the concept of real government vs corrupt money that is this concept. We are not alone in this attack. The concept is being played both in public and behind the scenes in an effort to instill money as the governing premise, rather than actual governing.
SpaceUnit
@Betsy:
I hadn’t heard of that book before, but your comment made me google the title.
Think I might need to order it. Thanks.
ETA: Also, everything you said is righteous AF.
Carlo Graziani
@Betsy: Thanks Betsy. I don’t talk about the importance of clarity of language, but you are absolutely correct. The eerie skill of culture warriors in commandeering language for perverse purposes and thereby polluting the discourse is another troubling and difficult issue. I don’t know a good solution, other than to speak clearly and consistently ourselves, and I’m not sure that this is enough without some media weaponization of our own.
It’s odd, what you say about religious freedom. The Christian right does indeed appear to measure the extent of its religious freedom by the degree to which it may suppress somebody else’s freedom. There is a deeply rooted authoritarian streak there, possibly all the more venomous for being frustrated by the loss of actual Christian authority in the past few decades. I wrote about stoking rage on Tuesday, and this is easy rage to stoke.
The fact that the language of “religious freedom” can be used to excuse and validate this inexcusable bigotry shows how much of a challenge is still ahead: not only to we need to reclaim valuable terms such as “freedom” for ourselves, but we need to actively deny those terms to bigots by calling them out for what they are: bigots.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani:
I am agree more w/ New Deal democrat’s (& indeed Adam L Silverman’s) assessment of US domestic politics here.
In fact, I think the issue is more fundamental than that. Susceptibility to authoritarianism is basic psychological condition among human beings, & for a substantial portion of humans (which ever polity or type of government they live under) that authoritarian instinct generally has the upper hand. The greater the anxiety & insecurity in the population, the larger the portion of population will let their authoritarian inclinations come to the fore. Communism is delusional because people will behave selfishly most of the time. The challenge liberal democratic governments needs to grapple w/ is the fact that the anti-liberal reactionaries & the apathetic make up a majority in just about any polity. (By the same token, illiberal democracies & even authoritarian regimes need to grapple w/ the fact that liberal forces can gain a majority if they can bring the apathetic on board.)
This is crystal clear to me, having closely followed political developments in the US, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, & more casually that in the other parts of the world (& after reading Adam’s series on the US’ domestic “cold war”). In China obviously there is little formal check on power at any level, yet the regime retains significant popular support for delivery on material comfort & personal safety. There was a strong streak of anti-Mainlander nativism & nihilism in the Hong Kong protest movement of 2019, culminating in violent rioting toward the end. Had they actually succeeded in overthrowing Hong Kong’s government (however unlikely that counterfactual), I suspect what would have followed would be a Jacobin reign of terror. The DPP in Taiwan has always fanned anti-Mainlander nativism (including their descendants) to realize electoral gains, & for decades there had been policy discrimination against Mainlander students in Taiwanese universities (relative to other foreign students) & Mainlander spouses married to Taiwan (relative to those from SE Asia). Now that the DPP’s dominant political position appears secure, I see disturbing signs of the KMT style nepotism/corruption roaring back (also plagued the 1st DPP government that held power in the aughts), as well as illiberal practices reminiscent of the Gingrich/GWB era GOP (in terms of seeking to dominate the mediascape & marginalize opposing voices as politically incorrect through public intimidation, disrespect of established political norms w/o consequence, etc.). All of these developments are obvious if you follow local media & social media, but you will not find any mention of it in western MSM, because they are unwilling or unable to see.
Looking more broadly, every single one of the Arab Spring countries have either backslid into authoritarianism or worse fallen into anarchy (becoming failed states). Then there are the democracies that have been sliding toward illiberalism (at varying speeds), such Poland, Hungary, Israel, Turkey, India, Brazil, the Philippines, even Japan under the revanchist right wing of the LDP. The Russian re-invasion of Ukraine & the great power competition w/ China has obscured for now these developments from the public consciousness in the West, but they continue apace.
To me, any solution has to 1st recognized the the reality of the human condition, that we all have our inner authoritarian inclinations, just like we all behave selfishly most of the time. I admire your optimism, & am not actually against what you are proposing. Shifting the prevailing values is indeed the long term solution. It is possible. After all, after a few millennia there is finally universal consensus that slavery is beyond the pale (though it will quickly reemerge as soon as national & global governance collapses). After a few decades there is finally global consensus that physical genocide of people is beyond the pale. There still isn’t global consensus that cultural genocide is beyond the pale, there still isn’t even consensus on what it is, & that discussion has been intwined w/ geopolitics (always has been). However, changing values is a multi-generational struggle, whose outcome none of us will live to see. We also need short to medium term solutions that ensure the survival of liberal democracies w/in our lifetimes.
To narrow back to the US, your passage on corruption is… myopic I am sorry to say. Yes, petty corruption in the US is remarkably low by world standards, but not out of ordinary by developed country standards, including newly developed economies like Taiwan, South Korea & Singapore. Indeed, even in China the petty corruption that the average citizens are confronted w/ have fallen dramatically over the decade of Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign & governance reforms. (Due to historical & current opacity of the CCP regime, I can’t say how much improvement, if any, there has been w/ corruption at high levels). OTOH, plenty of obviously corrupt practices are simply legalized in the US, such the entire lobbying industry. While lobbying may not be corrupt in the US in the legal sense, the pernicious effect on both “Power” & “Justices” not less significant & just as plain. Surely I don’t need to list the litany of examples.
We are all relieved that the farce of the Jan. 6 Plot failed, but I personally do not take solace. It merely showed that the very last line of defense of the American democracy held, this time, in face of a challenger that was consistently incompetent, transparent in his intentions & held charismatic appeal only to a relatively small core. What if Tom Cotton had been president?
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: BTW, please don’t take my disagreements as anything other than attempts at productive discussion. I thank you for writing this series, it has been stimulating to read, & pleasure to discuss!
Matt McIrvin
My answer to “why did Trump fail?” Is that he did not fail. He succeeded but with a delay. The judicial, informational and ideological apparatus he put in place will reinstall him as president in 2025, and then the real dismantling of democratic institutions will begin in earnest.
If he had truly failed, he’d be in prison now, dead or in exile.
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: Hey there.
The “Corruption” argument cuts at many levels. I would not say—starting from the end paragraph of your post—that Xi Jingping’s anticorruption campaign could be taken as such at face value. To me, at the time, it seemed clear that every CCP official who was replaced for “corruption” was being replaced by another one who owed his position to Xi. None of this had any “structural” aspect of corruption-fighting. From afar, it appeared purely an exercise in political base-building.
I’m a bit hampered here, because I’m trying to build an integral argument, but it’s coming out bit-by-bit, and it’s difficult to defend bit-by-bit. The overall argument is about a loss of purpose of the West. The purpose that I’m attempting to tease out, are the political values, which became improperly entangled with the commercial values in the neo-liberal fusion of the Reagan-Thatcher triumphalistic noise, which in my opinion explain much of the predicament that the West is in today.
Today I was attempting to sketch, perhaps in a very evocative, even monument-raising manner (a historical sin) what those values are. Because we are in an episode, it’s easy to forget that we are in a narrative that is supposed to hang together.
I like the periodization that has been enforced by this 5-day drop of this thing. But I fret that I can’t tell the story the way that I would like to, because I keep getting hung up on the chapters. They are supposed to segue into the following chapters. If I deserve an ass-kicking, I would like for it to come tomorrow, when the whole thing comes together.
Anyway, returning to the relative corruption issue. Here’s a perfect question to examine in this light: Will the Yuan ever displace the dollar as a global reserve currency? I have actually read a number of posts by angry financial types who are certain that this is certain to happen, because they are angry that the Federal Reserve has not adopted their favorite rate policy, or because they are sure that the Treasury is “printing money” or some other cranky reason.
But I’m pretty sure the answer is simply “no”. The reason being that Chinese state banking and governance institutions lack the transparency and integrity that characterize the US Treasury, and Federal Reserve. And they are unlikely to acquire those characteristics under the management of the CCP. And that is enough to guarantee that the global financial community will never entrust its collective financial destiny to the control of the Chinese Central Banking authorities.
You see, this is not about petty corruption. That was really an illustration. This is about cultural attitudes towards corruption. Engendering such attitudes takes will, and consensus, and a long time.
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: None taken. At some point, you and I definitely need to figure out how to have that beer. If you ever find yourself in the US, particularly in Chicago, I would want to know about it.
Carlo Graziani
@Matt McIrvin: One thing I noticed recently is that the Mueller Report has not yet been unredacted. Which is interesting, because the reason for the redactions was to protect ongoing investigations — Flynn, Stone, and, if I recall correctly, Manafort. There is nobody at the Justice department with an interest in keeping that material private, and a lot of interest in releasing it, at least for the sake of setting the record straight. But they haven’t.
When I do the math, I come up with “there is still an investigation in progress”.
Ishiyama
@Carlo Graziani: “This damn tree leaks!” (You’ll laugh when you see the illustration.)
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: Xi’s anti-corruption campaign certainly cannot taken at face value, the high level targets are almost certainly politically motivated. That is why I cannot tell if there has been any improvement in high level corruption compared to the past, which from western reporting was rampant. However, corruption at the level that the individual citizen & average businesses (large & small) have to deal with have fallen dramatically, & that increases regime legitimacy. You definition of corruption is a legal one (I think), but so much of the practices that would be deemed as illegally corrupt in the rest of the developed world are legalized in the US. Whether or not these practices are deemed corrupt in the narrow sense, they result in the capture of the power structure by select interest groups. It is not just the Rs that are captured, by a significant part of the Ds, as well. I think that structural issue needs to be resolved in the short term.
As for Yuan replacing the Dollar, not any time soon, if ever. 1st, because the Yuan is not (yet) fully convertible & there is not (yet) a deep & hyperactive market for trading Yuan denominated assets. People & countries will not place the bulk of their holdings in a currency that they cannot readily sell. However, I think the main reason the Dollar remains the global reserve currency for the foreseeable future is because there is simply no other palatable alternative. We already talked about he problems w/ the Yuan. There is too much volatility w/in the Eurozone & lack of unified budgetary policy for the Euro to take the spot. OTOH, US domestic & foreign policies over the past couple of decades have really dented its “full faith & credit”. The perpetual massive budget deficits, the now repetitive drama around raising the debt ceiling, overly financialized economy, scorched earth obstruction by reactionaries, weaponizing the dollar in foreign policy, all of them ultimately weaken the position of the Dollar. There are just no other viable alternatives for now. & the Dollar Hegemony may not be replaced by single global reserve currency in any case, but different ones for different regional economic conglomerations.
To chalk up the Dollar’s continued hegemony simply to the continued strength of the US’ political institutions is myopic. BTW, when the global reserve currency changes, it can happen relatively quickly.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: Love it meet up at some point, but probably not until 2023.
Bupalos
@Gin & Tonic: Ukraine is a sort of incipient miracle, and it’s born of hard lessons that are fresh in Ukrainian minds. I think it’s really inappropriate to use it in this kind of whataboutist way.
That said, we all need to look hard at how much “American exceptionalism” even those of us on the left are yet infected with, how it lulls us to sleep. We’ve been very lucky for a very long time. It’s made us all lazy.
Luckily the right wing authoritarian/would-be dictator moment we came through in 2020 was as dumb and lazy and bumbling as the left that was too dumb and lazy to fight it. Hopefully we’ll rouse ourselves for round 2.
kalakal
Regarding corruption in America a few years I remember being deeply shocked by part of the book The long Gray line by Rick Atkinson. The book follows the lives and careers of the 1966 West Point class. What shocked me was how many of them and their families employment depended on the election results where they lived. Depending on their political affiliation ( usually GOP) a staggering amount of wives got middle ranking posts in all sorts of governmental jobs for which they had no training or experience when the appropriate party was in power. It was almost a feudal client relationship.
On a larger scale the very rich can buy immunity from justice on an individual basis for the most heinous of crimes eg Epsteins 2008 plea deal or on a corporate level, Goldman Sachs’ have been found guilty 66 times since 2000 for financial crimes, the fines are slaps on the wrist and can even be offset against tax.
Justice has to be done and has to be seen to be done and that is not the case.
The biggest source of strength right wing militias have is not their numbers or their martial prowess, neither are that impressive, it is their relative immunity from justice. The forces of the state are all too often ready to treat peaceful protests by minorities and liberals with extreme force, compare and contrast the Bundys with pipeline protesters.
This is deep, society destroying corruption
BrianM
@Chief Oshkosh: Thanks for the recommendation. I just ordered a copy of Up Front.