If America is ripe for Trump as a tyrant what does that say about Obama?

In a provocative essay, Andrew Sullivan suggests America is an extreme democracy ripe for tyranny[1].  America’s multiculturalism, sexual freedom, disrespect for any authority or expertise and intolerance of any inequality—whether earned or natural—characterise its extremism. These characteristics challenge the previous moderate democratic order the result is a descent into public domain dominated by an incoherent mess of views, identities, and demands. From this incoherent public domain, a tyrant emerges with a promise to defend the old order and return stability to the public domain. From this promise or intent, he will find supporters in those who want to protect the old order as well as those dislike the extreme democracy.

Sullivan comes to this conclusion via Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, who provides his analytical focus. Plato, in his famous dialogue, the Republic, described a process by which an extreme democracy emerges and with it a tyrant to change a democracy into a tyranny. Sullivan relies on this analysis to explain Donald Trump’s emergence as a viable candidate for the presidency. He his analysis rests on three premises. First, he accepts that Trump fits Plato description: a member of the elite who takes his chance to rule by using the mob who support him to his attack rival elites such as the wealthy. Second, Trump, like the tyrant, promises to bring order to the incoherency of the extreme democracy. Third, America is an extreme democracy ripe for tyranny.

OK, OK, we know you don’t like Trump, but why do you hate America?

Sullivan wants us to focus on Trump, for he despises him and what he offers. Despite his prejudice, it provides no lasting insight for his essay remains at this superficial level of personalities. He avoids the difficult questions of why or how democracy changed, what motivates Trump, and why America’s political institutions have seemingly become fragile to the point of collapse.

What marks the change from democracy to extreme democracy? Sullivan describes the characteristics but does not address the causes. To say it changed has to indicate that it had a turning point or a point of departure from when it stopped being a democracy and became an extreme democracy. A democracy and an extreme democracy are both marked by freedoms. How do the freedoms or the extent of the freedom differentiate a democracy from an extreme democracy?

Sullivan does not look within the democracy, or Trump, to find what animates either one. He remains on the surface of symptoms and outcomes where many freedoms and the appearance of political, social, and moral incoherence which has made many people fearful. Perhaps it is what lies beneath the surface that scares him. 

A superficial analysis overlooks what motivates a tyrant or an extreme democracy

If he focused on what animates democracy, and Trump, he might have seen a different, darker, more disturbing message. Trump is only a symptom and is not a symptom of an extreme democracy but a potential harbinger. The deeper problem, and the more difficult problem, is how to reform American democracy, if it can be reformed, to avoid the extreme future that Trump appears to foreshadow. Even if Trump is defeated in this election we will not see America return to a healthy democracy that is less susceptible to the fate of becoming an extreme democracy unless the sources of extremism are addressed. However, such an analysis is problematic if not impossible within his essay for the fundamental problem is within his essay—America is not yet, nor is it close to becoming, an extreme democracy.

America is not an extreme democracy even if Andrew Sullivan wants it to be

Sullivan’s argument is based on the premise that America is an extreme democracy. He believes that the symptoms he describes indicate that extremism. In this analysis, he is mistaken and he is mistaken because he has relied on Plato for his analytical framework and not Aristotle. Had Sullivan relied on Aristotle rather than Plato he would have seen that an extreme democracy is a tyranny that lacks a tyrant. That America is not an extreme democracy, for it is not tyrannical, helps us to understand why it is not waiting for a tyrant. With Aristotle he would have seen an extreme democracy is tyrannical which is why it gives birth to or is receptive to a tyrant. Trump is not a tyrant in waiting, for he can only be a tyrant if he taps into the tyrannical ethos of an extreme democracy. Sullivan confuses great freedoms and great discontent, political incoherence, and political factions for extreme democracy. In other words, the political uncertainty with great freedoms does not indicate that extreme democracy exists. What America appears to suffer from is each of these elements; symptoms of extreme democracy, an apparent tyrant in waiting, oligarchic support for the apparent tyrant, without the necessary ingredient: the extreme democracy or the extreme democracy that has become tyrannical. Aristotle, who lived through extreme democracy, was able to describe its characteristic in his book the Politics.[2]

 

Sullivan has confused social media for what is

If Sullivan had considered Aristotle, he would see that America only has the shadow of extreme democracy, as do all democracies. The extreme democracy is more prevalent on social media than in the public domain. Without these characteristics, it cannot be considered an extreme democracy. If it cannot be considered an extreme democracy, then America is not yet ripe for tyranny. No matter what we may think personally of Trump, he is not a tyrant waiting to emerge from within an extreme democracy. He may be something else, but he is not going to rule as a tyrant nor is he able to draw on extreme democracy.

If we are to accept that America is an extreme democracy and Trump is a tyrant in waiting, what does it say about the incumbent?

The article is an extract from the full essay which can be found here: https://lawrenceserewicz.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/andrew-sullivan-trump-and-extreme-democracy/

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[1] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

[2] Politics, Book 5: 1312b 30 -1314b 18 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0058%3Abook%3D5

Trump, Truthers, and the struggle for the common good

[F]actual truth is no more self-evident than opinion, and this may be among the reasons that opinion-holders find it relatively easy to discredit factual truth as just another opinion. Factual evidence, moreover, is established through testimony by eyewitnesses – notoriously unreliable – and by records, documents, and monuments, all of which can be suspected as forgeries. In the event of a dispute, only other witnesses but no third and higher instance can be invoked, and settlement is usually arrived at by way of a majority; that is, in the same way as the settlement of opinion disputes – a wholly unsatisfactory procedure, since there is nothing to prevent a majority of witnesses from being false witnesses. --Hannah Arendt[1]

In totalitarian regimes, which twisted facts to suit their “truth”, majorities of witnesses could be “encouraged” to bear false witness. In democracies majorities can be convinced that an opinion is a factual truth. In both cases, though a citizen armed with facts could hold power to account. Yet, for the citizen to hold power to account facts have to be embedded in the truth or political knowledge, which is why totalitarian regimes rewrite their history books. The totalitarian rulers know that the nature of political things cannot be changed or made otherwise by fiat, so they do the next best thing, they change the opinion about those facts.

In a democracy, political things are confused with everyday things. Even though buying a shirt would never be confused with casting a vote, they are often equated as a similar choice. What differentiates them though is that political things exist within a context that shows their political nature. To cast a vote, a citizen requires a ballot and an election. The ballot, the ballot box, and the election are political facts that create the context for political things to be revealed. Decent politics exists where people replace opinions of political things with knowledge of political things. The knowledge comes from the study of political things that are anchored in reality by facts. A political fact torn from such context is easily spotted as a falsehood such as claiming Abraham Lincoln died in 1965 or Donald Trump won the 2016 Iowa Republican Caucus.  However, political knowledge is often confused with political opinions that reflect prejudices or guesses about political things rather than knowledge of the political things. Unlike a totalitarian regime which often relies on violence to enforce its rule, the democracy becomes distorted as political opinions begin to replace facts.

In a democracy, those who want to control the public domain, who resist the effort to obtain political knowledge, will seek to reduce facts to opinions. The goal is to reach a state where any “fact” can be shaped to fit the “truth” the speaker wants to claim. A prominent example of this trend is Donald Trump's doubts about Barack Obama's birth certificate. He wants his opinion, that the President’s birth certificate is fraudulent, to replace the fact. He asserts his opinion to create a doubt about the facts so that they can be dismissed. Were he to achieve this, he could have greater power in the public domain for it would reflect his opinion and no the facts. However, to do this he has to pull apart the context within which the political fact exists, which is what makes the birth certificate valid. He has to dismiss the birth registration process, the bureaucratic context, and the integrity of all the people involved. 

Democracies have always been susceptible to demagogues. They want their opinion to be the basis by which the community acts and to do this they have to discredit political knowledge and political facts. When “truthers” seek to discredit political facts as a common standard for behaviour within the public domain their opinions take root. Such opinions flourish when they begin to replace the common standard of truth.  Without a common standard of truth, based on political facts, the common good that binds the country begins to fray. To destroy this common good, a liar that is one who wants to replace facts with opinions, will shape his “facts” to fit what his audience expects. Through this method, he undermines those who have political knowledge or political facts, a truth teller as unpersuasive.

If it be true that all governments rest on opinion, it is no less true that the strength of opinion in each individual, and its practical influence on his conduct, depend much on the number which he supposes to have entertained the same opinion. The reason of man, like man himself, is timid and cautious when left alone, and acquires firmness and confidence in proportion to the number with which it is associated. --James Madison Federalist #49

With truth tellers discredited, the “truthers” can impose their opinions as the truth without concern for verifiable political facts. Moreover, the “truther” will insist that any facts they disagree with are simply opinions. (It is your opinion that Obama’s birth certificate is valid. It is your opinion that steel will soften and melt under intense heat of burning jet fuel). The political is defended as a constitutional right. The “truther” wants to claim that it even if his political opinion is not true or factual he is entitled to speak it as constitutional right. He will assert that he has a right to be wrong. The danger is that no one has a right to be wrong about facts; Germany did invade Belgium, the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, Trump did lose in Iowa. Without the insistence on facts and the truth derived from them, decent politics begins to wither. The belief that that opinions replace facts means that a shared understanding of political things begins to fray. When opinions replace facts as the basis for political truth, when the difference between right and wrong is reduced to an opinion, then freedom based on the common good becomes doubtful.

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[1] TRUTH AND POLITICS by Hannah Arendt Originally published in The New Yorker, February 25, 1967, and reprinted with minor changes in Between Past and Future (1968) and The Portable Hannah Arendt edited by Peter Baier (2000) and Truth: Engagements Across Philosophical Traditions edited by Medina and Wood (2005) p. 304