Corey Robin's Blog, page 32

A Facebook post by Lisa Duggan reminds me of the power of Michael Rogin’s book The Intellectuals and McCarthy.

Though it’s less famous and influential than Rogin’s later book Ronald Reagan, The Movie, The Intellectuals and McCarthy was a formative text in my own development. It came at a critical moment in my thinking—either the year before I went to graduate school or in my first year of graduate school—and permanently left its mark.

In his book on McCarthy, Rogin took aim at historians like Richard Hofstadter and social theorists like Daniel Bell who had argued that McCarthyism was essentially a form of irrational mass politics, a midcentury American populism that, though right-wing, was the inheritor of left-wing movements like the Populists or Young Bob LaFollette’s movement in the 1920s and 1930s. What united all these characters, Hofstadter and Bell argued, was a sense of “status anxiety,” the social vertigo induced by modern industrial society, which left men and women without that sense of place that they had in more traditional forms of society. (This is a fairly familiar theme in all modern social thought, from Tocqueville to Durkheim to Arendt, from Talcott Parsons to Robert Putnam. It gets resurrected every seven years or so as if it were some blazing new insight, but it’s been around for centuries.)  LaFollette was a particularly irresistible precedent for Hofstadter and Bell because he, like McCarthy, was from Wisconsin. And it was LaFollette who McCarthy defeated in the infamous 1946 campaign that propelled McCarthy to the Senate.

Through a close analysis of the electoral data, Rogin took the Hofstadter-Bell thesis apart, piece by piece. He showed that McCarthy and LaFollette represented two quite different constituencies, that McCarthyism was much more a function of elite politics than mass politics, and that it was driven by quite specific political and economic grievances and issues—and fairly traditional and conventional fissures of party politics—rather than any exotic motivation or free-floating social psychology. What The Intellectuals and McCarthy taught me above all else is that politics, conventional or traditional politics, matters, particularly at those moments when we think it doesn’t. I had already learned a version of this from Arno Mayer—whose Marxism entailed a close analysis, in the European context, of “history from above,” where high politics and events and contingency mattered just as much as deep social and economic structures—but Rogin provided an excellent model of that kind of analysis for the American scene.

More generally, Rogin’s work stands as a cautionary note to liberals and the left: When it comes to conventional political positions and partisan disagreements, we tend to invoke conventional categories of politics. But when someone like a McCarthy—or a Trump—arises, we forget or toss out everything we know about conventional politics and instantly resort to more far-flung notions and categories (fascism, authoritarianism, and the like). This also applies—especially applies—to how we analyze political phenomena like violence.

As readers of this blog and my various posts on social media will know, I’m dubious about that move. And I’m especially dubious of it in this moment. Not because I don’t think there are psychological or other dimensions of politics; clearly, there are. And not because I don’t think there are some fruitful parallels to be drawn between American conservatism and the European hard right; I wrote a book, after all, making that exact move (much to the chagrin of some), and I’ve made repeated connections between European fascism and everyone from Thomas Jefferson to the neocons.

But I’m suspicious of our opportunistic (in the literal sense) invocation of those categories: how we invoke psychology or fascism in some moments—moments we deem extraordinary—but not others. (Rogin, it should be said, never made that error: in his mature work, he managed to achieve an unparalleled equipoise between a shrewd political realism and an extraordinary sensitivity to the extramural dimensions of politics. That—along with works like Carl Shorske’s Fin-de-Siècle Vienna—has always served as a model for my own work on political fear and the political right.) That is why I have been so maniacally insistent on the boring bread and butter of conventional GOP party politics and policy: debates over Obamacare, rumblings over tax and trade and debt, and all the rest.

I fear that in the sudden discovery of what some of us have been saying for some time—that conservatism is a radical, reactionary mode of politics, and always has been—we somehow believe the rules of ordinary politics don’t apply. I fear that in our rush to pathologize Trump—to think that he’s extraordinary and that only extraordinary categories can help us understand him—we are simply repeating the error that Michael Rogin warned us against so many years ago.

I’ve been reading David Cay Johnston’s excellent book The Making of Donald Trump. And without mentioning or even alluding to Hitler or fascism, the book raises an interesting—if unexpected—parallel about Trump’s and Hitler’s rise to power.

One of the themes in a lot of the historical scholarship about Germany in the 1920s and 1930s is how Hitler and the Nazis were able to take advantage of the systemic weaknesses of Weimar: the cracks in the political structure, the division among elites, the fissures in the parties, the holes in the Constitution, and so on. What Johnston narrates, in almost nauseating detail, is how Trump’s ascension to wealth and fame and power—long before he makes his 2016 run for the presidency—is dependent not on the weaknesses of the political system but on the systemic corruption of a rentier economy.

At every step, Trump benefits, almost haplessly (it seems to require very little art), from the built-in advantages to wealth and the wealthy in our society: whether those advantages are in the tax system, the regulatory system, or the courts. (Trump actually spoke of this quite often during his campaign.) And in the same way that Hitler preyed upon his opponents’ cluelessness in the face of his political rise, so does Trump profit from his opponents’ cluelessness in the face of his economic rise.

At every moment when Trump might have been stopped, when he might have been forced into bankruptcy, had his credit denied, had his loans called in, his licenses revoked, at every juncture where he might have been convicted of a crime or sent to jail—and, again, this is well before he makes his successful bid for the White House—some unplanned and unintended conspiracy of economic reason and political lowlifery mobilizes to protect him. (And it really is unplanned and unintended. The genius of the American system is how the Invisible Hand works to produce systemic vice rather than incidental virtue.)

Whether it’s gaming regulators who don’t want to take him on because hotel values in Atlantic City might suffer, or an investigation-happy attorney general who suddenly gets a well timed campaign contribution, or judges upon judges who preside over settlements where records are permanently sealed and vital public information concealed, or bank officials and industry magnates who decide he’s too big to fail—and Johnston makes a fascinating comparison between the way the banks were treated in 2008 and the way that Trump has been treated for decades—this man’s rise to power has been predicated on all the most basic institutions and features of our economy.

Today is Purim, and so we begin the spring cycle of Jewish holidays that will culminate in Shavuos (the subject of my favorite line in all of Martin Scorsese’s films, but I digress). Naturally, I’m thinking about Passover, which we’ll be celebrating in about a month, and the meaning of the Passover story this year.

At progressive and liberal seders in the US this year, there’ll be a tendency to interpret the story through the current political moment. How could there not be? Immigrants will be cast as the ancient Hebrews; Trump as Pharaoh. And just as Pharaoh is depicted in the story as a sudden appearance out of the blue—remember, for years, things had been good for the Hebrews, and then a new Pharaoh came, “who knew not Joseph”—so will Trump be described as an intrusion upon an otherwise placid and benign setting, the undocumented a suddenly victimized Hebrew.

But we know that will not do. The war against the undocumented, waged by Republican and Democrat alike, has been going on or decades. And Trump, however specific and peculiar his viciousness, is the result of decades of political rot and mis-leadership, from both parties.

 

 

So this year, I ask all of us to resist the easy or partisan telling of the Passover story.

Instead of treating the undocumented as the ancient Hebrews—and thus as somehow separable from the rest of the society—let’s see in their plight a more common portent, a way in to understanding how so many in our society, immigrant and citizen alike, are excluded and subjected and oppressed.

And instead of treating Trump as Pharaoh, let’s view him as one of the plagues. Hopefully, the last plague, but whether first or last, as one of many signs and symptoms rather than the source of a society that’s falling apart.

At some point in the coming weeks, I’d like to write an essay, a brief essay, on political criticism in the Age of Trump—a how-to, or a rules-of-the-road, for the way we ought to be doing analysis right now.

One of the counters I often get to the various claims I make about the weaknesses or vulnerabilities or incoherences of the Trump regime—or when I point out policy moments when I think those weaknesses, vulnerabilities, or incoherences are being expressed—is this: Well, even if Trump pulls back from position x or even if he does action y (where y is not as a bad as z), he’s still awful, he’s only doing it to save his ass, he’s not giving birth to a new order of justice, he’s no friend of the left, and lot of people still will suffer.

I’m always brought up short by that response. Because, I think to myself, of course he’s not going to do anything good, of course he’s not going to do anything for the right reason. He’s a horrible man leading a horrible party that believes in horrible ideas. Given everything we know about this party and this movement, how could it be otherwise?

But also, and more important, how does it tell us anything to say that if something changes in Trump’s positions, it’s not in alignment with the ACLU or Jacobin or Bernie Sanders or even the most minimal Clintonism? How does it tell us anything about what we really need to know—which is not that Trump is bad or that a lot of people are going to suffer under his rule (Does anyone on the left really dispute that? Do most people in the mainstream media even dispute that?) but whither are he and his movement and his party tending?

What I worry about—and why I want to write this essay—is that we seem to occupy two simple poles when we assess the Trump regime: fascism/authoritarianism/terribilism OR human rights, maximal liberalism, democracy, socialism, what have you. And if we can only toggle between these two poles—between Trump bad and left good—we’re going to miss a considerable amount of action within the Trump regime itself.

My presumption when I say the Trump regime is incoherent, vulnerable, weak, etc., is never that that regime won’t do a lot of damage or that there is anything redemptive in it. It’s that if we’re going to be watchful for and of the moment, we need to be watching what’s happening in the moment. And thinking and looking beyond the moment, both to the past and to the future.

I fear, in short, that some of our normative judgments—our insistent and relentless turn to the normative, our constant need to be normative, to always and everywhere remind ourselves and each other that things are bad and wrong, as if any of that were in doubt—are getting in the way of seeing the Trump moment for what it is and, more important, what it may be becoming.

I really don’t know how long this disaster can last. Every day, the crisis and chaos expand, geometrically. If it continues like this—that is, gets worse and worse, in ways we can’t anticipate—it’s critical that we on the left do two things.


 


First, make the connection between Trump and the Republican Party. The GOP tied themselves to this man; do not allow them to slip out of the noose they designed for themselves. I don’t simply mean they embraced Trump. I mean that he comes out of 50 years of their politics, and we have to make sure everyone remembers that. Do not make the same mistake Clinton made in the campaign.


 


Which brings me to the second point: make the connection between Trump and the Democratic Party. The Dems lashed themselves to a candidate who was flawed not because she was a bad politician (I still believe she wasn’t) but because she represented 50 years of Democratic misrule, going back to Carter. The Dems gave us Trump, too, not merely because they nominated a candidate who seemed so emblematic of everything that was wrong with the status quo but also because even with two talented politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, they have presided over a dwindling party apparatus in the states, massive and widening inequality, almost sociopathic indifference to that widening gap (just go back to Jonathan Chait’s “liberalism is working” meme or Clinton’s “America is already great”, not to mention the absolute refusal since the election to confront the social rot that produced Trump), and the resulting social degradation and cruelty that we see all around us.


 


We need to make a realignment, and that means taking on and overturning not only the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party. That’s the way every realignment has worked: it’s not just one party that goes, but both parties that go in some way, shape, or form. I have no idea if the way forward is a third party, a reconstituted Democratic Party, or something more fundamental in the streets—or all three and something beyond all that, too. I do know that we on the left have to ensure that whatever comes out of this catastrophe is something more than a return to the status quo. Assuming of course we have time to turn it to our favor. Which I believe we do.

I really wish people would stop with the “if Trump steps down or is impeached, Pence takes over, and that’ll be really bad because he’s not just super right-wing in a consistent and serious way, but he’s also super effective and politically potent and powerful” line.


 


First of all, we have zero—as in no—evidence that Pence is a super effective political player. Long before Dick Cheney was in the Bush White House, he had demonstrated his political savvy and skills, on multiple occasions and in multiple institutions and venues. Not so, Pence.


 


Second, it makes no sense to think Pence is super effective and powerful, on the one hand, yet has simply suffered the unfortunate happenstance of being stymied by Trump. If Pence were such a great politico, he would be making his mastery felt, in spite of Trump. Nothing suggests that he has. As far as we know, the guy is just a standard right winger with a granite face. He may be really good at what he does, but before we freak out about him, let’s have a better sense of his political potency and efficacy.


 


Third, and most important, while I don’t, in the end, think Trump will be impeached or resign—but who knows, things are moving so fast, anything is possible, so I won’t say it’s out of the question—the focus on Pence as his successor somehow stepping in and picking up the conservative agenda where things left off before Trump took it off the rails, is wrongheaded. That’s just not how politics works. For two reasons.


 


First, it presumes a weirdly static model of things. Trump steps down, Pence steps up, and things go on as they would have had Trump never appeared on the scene. There’s no sense in that story of what effect Trump being pushed out would actually have on the GOP (their demoralization and internal sense of confusion and chaos) or the Dems or the left (their newfound sense of power). If Trump is pushed out, one side will feel terrified (yes, conservatives can be scared, too), the other will feel emboldened and powerful. Why do you think the GOP is sticking by Trump so much as it is? Because he’s delivered anything for them so far? He hasn’t. It’s because, having made their bed, they have no choice but to lie in it and hope against hope that they’ll somehow, at some point, get a good night’s sleep. Anyway, that’s what I mean by a static view of politics: everyone thinks that an event can happen without it transforming the political space in which it happens. That’s just not the way things work.


 


Second, it also takes a weirdly personalistic view of politics, which has always dogged analysts in this country, including people on the left. As if the story is all about Trump or all about Pence—Pence is smarter than Trump, so he’s scarier and will be more effective!—and not about the larger force field that gets activated or deactivated around them. Again, that’s not how politics works, anywhere.

Looking beyond Flynn, it seems like there are three ways forward.

First, status quo: we have four years of this stand-still, in which a dysfunctional presidency keeps the entire nation in a permanent state of high drama and anxious alert, punctuated by the occasional act of brutality without a lot getting done.

Second, someone takes charge: either a James Baker-type fixer is brought in to stabilize the White House and regularize its operations so that Trump has the semblance if not reality of a functional presidency OR the Republican leadership steps in and figures out a way to sideline Trump either through resignation or impeachment.

Third, war.

I don’t see any other options. Am I missing anything?

In a draft of his “Essay on the Poor Law,” Locke writes:

Now no part of any poor body’s labour should be lost. Things should be so ordered that everyone should work as much as they can.

That passage, which Locke ultimately deleted, came right after his complaint that women were staying home with their kids and not working. As a result, he wrote, “their labour is wholly lost.”

Locke follows this observation up with a complaint about the existing poor laws in England: the problem with them is that “they are turned only to the maintenance of people in idleness, without at all examining into the lives, abilities, or industry, of those who seek for relief.”

That is what a reformed poor law must do: examine into the lives, abilities, and industry of those who seek public assistance.

 

Ever since I became a parent, I’ve found it impossible to read, watch, or hear about children dying or being killed.

But this is the story of my friend Rachel Kirtner’s niece, Talia Goldenberg, whose life was cut short by an extraordinarily arrogant doctor, a Dr. Johnny Delashaw at one of Seattle’s top hospitals (Swedish Cherry Hill), who didn’t listen to his patient and whose team didn’t listen to his patient’s family.

I seldom if ever ask for this kind of thing, but I ask you to do this today, to read this whole article through to the end. As a kind of lighting of the yahrzeit candle: Talia went into a coma three years ago today; she died, after being taken off life support, nine days later.

Please read the whole story here. And share it widely.

May her memory be a blessing.

From The Art of the Deal:

To buy an apartment in a condominium, all you need is the purchase price. To buy a cooperative—which is what most buildings in New York were at the time—you need approval from its board of directors, who have ridiculous, arbitrary powers, including the right to demand all kinds of financial data, social references, and personal interviews. They can reject you for any reason they choose, without explanation. It’s a license to discriminate. The worst part is that many people on these co-op boards get their kicks from showing off their power. It’s absurd and probably illegal, but it happened to be great for Trump Tower. Many wealthy foreigners didn’t have the proper social references for these cooperatives, or didn’t want to put themselves through the scrutiny of a bunch of prying strangers. Instead, they came to us.