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Dr. StrangeTrump: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Character Questions (As Much)
If you had access to my Facebook account and went back far enough in my history, you would find out that I neither voted for Trump nor supported him at any point before his election. As time has gone by, I find myself spending more and more time defending him from critics; more accurately, I have spent time attacking his critics, not because I love Trump but because I have come to be confounded by some of them. Would I defend a similarly situated Democrat? No, in part because I wouldn’t like their policies (I also don’t agree with Trump on trade and immigration, but leave that aside). Does this mean I have gone over to a completely transactional view of politics or that I have given in to my cynicism about the federal government and the people that people it? Probably, but a fuller explanation is interesting (at least to me).
The Problem of Corruption and Lack of Character
Aside from the moral problems (I’ll come to that later), it’s helpful to consider why a lack of character in leadership and the attendant corruption is a problem from a practical perspective. Our system is based on certain ideals; when corruption creeps in, people become cynical and start to look for alternatives. If a system purports to idealize the free market but really delivers crony capitalism more often than not, people will start to experiment with alternatives that seem (from a certain point of view at least) fairer even though time and again they produce worse outcomes. Some people will always be looking for a “better” way regardless of how good things are, but corruption exacerbates the problem and makes people more receptive to alternatives.
Interestingly, corruption works the same way in bad ideological systems (such as totalitarian systems like Fascism, Nazism, and Socialism), with occasionally good results. Upon viewing of Schindler’s List, I noticed how integral petty corruption was to the salvation of his workers. If any of the soldiers, SS men, or guards decide to put their Nazi “ideals” above their desire for black-market cigarettes, watches, or liquor, everyone dies.
So, corruption damages systems, whether that system is good or bad. Is our present system worth protecting from corruption? I find myself increasingly horrified to learn that the answer is something on the order of “not really” or more accurately “not completely.” This isn’t a call to a “burn it all down” revolution, but it is a call to rethink what we should and shouldn’t preserve if we find ourselves with an opportunity to renegotiate our present norms and assumptions. In this, Trump’s presidency has been clarifying in that everyone is revealing what their real beliefs and goals are.
What is exasperating about Never Trump conservatives is that they seem to be willing to abandon what I thought were fairly orthodox conservative viewpoints in order get Trump. Max Boot is the most cartoonish, self-defeating example, but the problem is more general than that. We used to talk about public choice theory and the problem of agencies taking on a life of their own with their own agenda; now we lionize career bureaucrats and demand everyone assume that they are just doing their job in good faith. (Side Note: I’ve never bought into the “Obama corrupted this agency or that agency” argument. The FBI is what it always was: J. Edgar Hoover’s political intelligence and intimidation outfit) We used to worry about the scope of the administrative state; now we get upset when Trump exercises his pardon power (which the Constitution vests in him alone) without running it by someone in a basement office at DOJ. I’d rather see Sheriff Joe in jail, but it was revealing that people seemed to think the pardon power effectively belongs to someone else.
If we had the system of government laid down in the Constitution, Trump’s character would be more problematic. Alas, we haven’t had that system here since 1929 (or earlier). As it stands, it’s number 103 on the list things that concern me.
Good Government as Anti-Constitutional Government or Threats: Existential and Otherwise
“So what does concern you?” asked no one at all. Primarily that so many have taken such an anti-Constitutional pose, either because they hate or fear Trump so much or because they really were ok with rule by the administrative state all along. In part, it comes down to which threats you believe are existential and which are not.
Trump is problematic, but our system has remedies for that, the most prominent being impeachment and defunding. Congress has conceded plenty of its prerogatives over the last hundred years to the executive, but in a system like ours that does not assume that good people will always be in charge and depends on checking ambition with ambition, it is hard to fault the executive (any of them really) for taking advantage of what has been freely given by another branch. Absent dropping a nuclear bomb (which seems less and less likely as time goes by), what Trump does can be checked if only Congress was willing.
But Congress doesn’t want to do that because its hard; instead, we are treated to the anti-Constitution spectacle of the executive branch investigating itself, with some wanting to make it so that Trump can’t fire is own subordinate. Let’s be clear why: so that when the inherently political act of impeachment is discussed, Congress can avoid responsibility by pretending to defer to the supposedly apolitical experts. Some see this as necessary because of the unique threat Trump represents, but I see them as modern-day Ropers, willing to cut down all of the laws in order to get at the Devil. Morrison v. Olsen provides no cover here, as that case dealt with a lapsed statute that created an officer controlled by the judicial branch rather than the executive.
We could discuss here that much of what we think of as good, honest government is really an invention of early nineteenth century progressive activists (an ethos most conservatives have bought into, wittingly or not), but that is a topic of another day. What matters here is that the Constitution is not some guarantor of good government; it merely dictates with whom the final word on certain matters is vested. When the question is whether or not to have a criminal investigation, or fire an executive officer, or the like comes up, the only person who gets to have the final word on such matters is Trump, for good or ill. People got upset when Eric Holder said he was Obama’s wingman, but that is actually closer to the original understanding of what the Attorney General’s role was than the current view of the DOJ as some kind of independent agency. People want to purge politics from government, but I’m sorry, politics is how we make decisions in this country. If you want to live somewhere where decisions are made by people unaccountable to public pressure, then go live in a dictatorship. That isn’t to say that I would vote for a president who said he would only prosecute Democrats during his term or something similar, but if people elect someone who makes that promise then that’s what we will have. Again, there are ways of handling that scenario if it ever happens (resignations and refusals to serve, defunding, impeachment, etc.). But to have unelected officials put themselves, their opinions, and their agendas above those of the elected president represents a rejection of the Constitutional order. The Rule of Law, whatever it means, has to at least begin with the word long written down: “[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Trump abusing the pardon power, for example, may be a violation of the Rule of Law in the abstract, but there are concrete, set in stone ways of dealing with him: impeachment, electoral defeat, etc. If we don’t have the collective political will to do either, then we deserve what we get. It would be the final abandonment of what is left of our Constitutional order (and itself a violation of the Rule of Law) to invent new ways of dispensing with Trump or curtailing his power.
A Christian Perspective
I mentioned we would discuss morality later and here it is: If you were to say that it was important to have men of strong character lead this nation, I would have agreed with you in the past and I still have a preference for such men; now, as I grow in my faith I have become less and less interested in politics. Conservativism has a strain of “American as God’s Chosen Instrument/New Israel” that I have increasingly come to reject, to the extent that I prefer to skip church on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July so I can miss the calls to rededicate myself to America (and maybe also God). I mean, is the Church universal or its is something that history books 500 years from now will describe as part of an American civic culture that failed? In any event, the need to associate American government with Christian leadership has led many Christians into one of two methods of dealing with politics:
- Effective Disenfranchisement: Refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils. (the David French Method)
- Witness Gambling: Willingness to gamble your otherwise effective witness by either (1.) pretending your candidate is a Christian even if you don’t believe they are, or (2.) hoping that they really are a Christian now and that past performance won’t predict future results. (the Franklin Graham shuffle)
I chose the first method last election, but I am not convinced that it is necessary anymore. If I am right that American is not God’s chosen instrument (at least in the way some think of it), my choice of president has much less gravity. Conceptually, I should be able to vote for someone whose policies are best for the Church in America (for example, by not requiring religious agencies to place children with homosexuals for adoption) even if they personally are not some Christian exemplar. I may be wrong in this and am open to arguments in the comments.
Well, there is my Magnum Opus on why Trump doesn’t both me as much as he otherwise would. There was a discussion in another post about how writers like Mona Charen and Jonah Goldberg don’t necessarily reveal a preference for the established order over Trump simply because they constantly challenge him; that is fair enough as far as it goes, but what you choose to rehash reveals what your priorities actually are. This is related to why I feel that otherwise effective charges of “Whataboutism” ring hollow: the fact that Obama or someone else might have done the same thing is not a complete defense of Trump, but it does make clear that a lot of what he does isn’t new and serves as a call to focus on the fresh or more important outrages of the day (which may very well be caused by Trump but are more often than not the work of his opponents) before doubling back to take care of things that, while wrong, have been accepted in the past.
Published in General
And that’s the main reason we’re in the fix we are: Congress doesn’t want to do much of anything but preen and spend money.
Just out of curiosity where do you differ and why on immigration with Trump?
I still take much joy as we near the anniversary of the second year of the Not Hillary Clinton Administration.
Let’s divide the issue into two parts:
Border Security
I think I’m more closely aligned with him on this in broad strokes than on specifics. I want to increase border security and a wall in certain areas will do that effectively, but I am skeptical that a wall through other areas is feasible or cost effective. While a stronger wall separating, say, Tijuana from San Diego makes sense, running it though some of the more hostile environments along the New Mexico – Mexico border, for example, may not be feasible or necessary. Some of those environments are there own deterrent as much as a wall. Some of my understanding about what Trump wants may be based off of misinformation, but if it isn’t then I do have some disagreement with him over specifics.
Restrictions on Immigration
Trump has said he wants a big beautiful door in the wall. When the rhetoric is put into practice though, my suspicion is that I favor less restrictions than Trump does as a general matter. As a matter of security Americans have a right to know who is coming into the country (at least as much as is feasible), but absent a criminal record and perhaps a few other disqualifying conditions I’m ok with people coming here (note that I’m fine with people having different preferences in this matter without considering them racist). It should be noted that this would be conditioned on them not being eligible for public assistance. To the extent that public assistance is available, I favor more restrictions.
My expectation is that Trump would want more restrictions than I do regardless of whether they could be on assistance or not.
As to why I’m this way, (1.) a general indifference to the matter, and (2.) the realization that we need net contributors, even if they are not particularly skilled, to avoid a general collapse in Social Security. I don’t like Social Security, but I also don’t want to see a violent unwind. If Americans insist on having only 1.4 or whatever kids per family, the new workers have to come from somewhere. It is designed like a ponzi scheme after all.
Good luck with that. Only a crisis that a substantial fraction of voters suffer will yield a change in the ponzi scheme. The incentive for those who’ve already paid something in to support continuing is insurmountable. Everyone wants to “get theirs”. Meanwhile, promoting unskilled immigration while unskilled Americans are on the dole fits the definition of pouring good money after bad.
The name of the game is delaying judgment day at this point. As Arnold says in I believe the third one, judgment day is inevitable.
This is full of really good observations and comments. The concerns conservatives have had over the last century are being raised by President Trump knowingly or not in ways that even some Democrats could understand. They are anti constitutionalists, the concept of good government is a progressive fantasy and so on. Trump may not actually be able to undo much nor necessarily try but whether intentional or not he is shaking things up and that’s a necessary but not sufficient condition to preserve the rule of law and constitutional government. We’re getting a a good view of just how dangerous big government in the hands of the so called experts is.
There is a third option: admit that Trump is not a Christian and couldn’t recite a theme of “2 Corinthians” anymore than the last president could spot the error in the eulogy he gave that described the deceased as “The Queen Esther to this Moses generation.” He’s an immoral philanderer, so proud of his Playboy cover he had two framed copies on his office wall in that famous picture with Jerry Falwell Jr.
I didn’t vote for him last time; it didn’t matter in Kansas. But I’m sympathetic to anyone who sees Trump for who he is and says “I can support him on a transactional basis.”
I understand the third option but I think it is unavailable to people who tying the United States and Christian leadership together. You back yourself into corner when none of the viable candidates left qualify: you can either throw your vote away or pretend.
I didn’t vote for Trump for the same reason (I don’t live in a battleground state).
Agreed. But the solution isn’t to disengage from society or pretend that philanderers are really holy men in disguise. The solution is to recognize that religion is religion and politics is politics, and that the wall between them is for the protection of the church and the religious, not the state and the politicos.
A politician is a whore: rent him knowing that he doesn’t actually care for you or your ideas. It’s just a transaction. And if he isn’t making you happy, swap him out for another.
Note to all: I edited despise in the first paragraph to “be confounded by” because it is more accurate. I edit my posts for typos all of the time but didn’t want to make a substantive change without flagging it.
This was a good post.
I also really get your paragraph on America as the City on a Hill/New Israel. I abandoned that view (if ever I held it) long ago. I still love the hymns – “God, bless this country” is still a good prayer and sentiment – but even the pledge of allegiance feels idolatrous, especially in the absence of any real need for such allegiance to a state who barely believes in it’s own sovereignty.
I don’t despise Trump or find him unlikable. I find him human, full of vice, and with a soft side. There are lots of people like that that are still affable. I was already at transactional between politics and faith. The good Christian men hadn’t been effective at protecting the Christian church in this country from the social progressive stampede. I needed a change.
A damn fine post that offers much to think about.
This is spot-on, but there is a 3rd method that is also deeply problematic:
Conflating your faith with Americanism: Treating American history, legal systems, governmental structures, and especially culture as being somehow the result of purely Christian concerns and actions. This has done enormous long-term damage as this age has pulled back from faith of any kind, for when you associate your faith with what are ultimately political processes, when your politics fall from favor, or your politicians fall from grace, your church suffers. This is somewhat akin to #2 (Witness Gambling), but #2 is fairly localized to specific endorsements, while #3 is more systemic.
This also leads people who are outside of your belief system to be seen and treated as Un-American. When your faith is seen as deeply entangled with whether or not you see others as “real Americans”, people who do not share your faith will be naturally excluded because you are saying to agree with your politics they must also join your faith, or vice-versa. This has come to mean that Republican = Christian, and Not-Christian = Democrat.
I think that is what I was trying to get at with the view of people viewing “America as God’s Chosen Instrument/New Israel.”
I guess I see #1 and #2 as the practical options once someone buys into your choice #3 at a theoretical/ideological level, or am I missing something of your argument for choice #3 being on the same level as the others?
None of us rehashes in a vaccum, though, and I think some people are willing to Be That Guy (or Gal, as the case may be) in hopes that their side won’t entirely overlook points which ought to be considered — even if hearing the same people being the ones considering them over and over again is rather obnoxious.
Take sex, for example. Grossly simplifying, red sex and blue sex operate according to different professed values. Red-sex rhetoric is big on stuff like purity, religion, marriage, and so on, while blue-sex rhetoric emphasizes consent and practical risk mitigation (like contraceptives and STD testing). Oddly enough, though, red-sex rhetoric has not proven very effective at delaying loss of virginity or producing stable marriages. Indeed, it’s pretty normal for youth raised on blue-sex rhetoric to have an easier time delaying virginity loss and avoiding divorce after marriage than do youth raised on red-sex rhetoric.
Does that mean that rhetoric advocating purity, the sanctity of marriage, and so forth, is bad? No. Does it mean consent and physical safety are the only goods? Also no. Correlation is not causation, of course, and there are other reasons besides the rhetoric for children raised on blue-sex rhetoric to have more success at achieving what red-sex rhetoric preaches. Nonetheless, what’s the rhetoric for if not to influence behavior? Even for those who believe in the general, er, thrust of red-sex rhetoric — heck, especially for them — something shouldn’t be adding up.
Consequently, some people are willing to Be That Guy, pointing out what doesn’t add up about red sex until others are sick of it. Mark Regnerus, in his quiet, sociological way, is one of them. Simcha Fisher is, in her own way, another. Many members of the red tribe are so sick of blue-sex rhetoric that hearing it spouted from someone on their own side seems like betrayal. Consent? Why should we talk about consent? Doesn’t the world have enough tattooed freakish SJWs yammering on about consent already? Aren’t our children’s ears already saturated with their trash? Shouldn’t we be emphasizing everything about sexual morality that isn’t consent in order to compensate?
Er, no. If we do that, we also lose, as Fisher points out.
In order to have a complete sexual morality of our own, we have to make consent our own, too, even if it’s “the other side’s” term, and even if those of us willing to yammer on about it on our side might seem like traitors for doing so. Moreover, it’s likely an efficient division of labor to have some on our side have a bee in their bonnet about consent, annoying the rest of us, while the rest of us, less inclined to this bee ourselves, focus on making our side’s honey in other ways.
I don’t think this division of labor in the moral conversation is limited to sex, either. On any issue, having some Be That Guy keeps our side well-rounded, and if nobody on our side was willing to Be That Guy, I think our side as a whole would be poorer for it.
Yes, as I was typing I was considering that I was going too far into the theoretical territory.
However, I do think that one can opt for either 1 or 2 without buying into the faith/Americanism conflation – simply by declaring that one’s faith prevent’s one from voting for X, or by using one’s faith to pretzel a justification for X – or engage in the full conflation while still steering clear of both witness gambling or abstaining. In that scenario one does still hold one’s nose and vote, but still engages in thinking, practice, and rhetoric that can be seen as an America-worship that still denigrates others as traitors to “Real America”.
We know who the Real American is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lZDgGr1PO0
One sex, two sex, red sex, blue sex; poetry aside, I am fine with some people standing above the fray and pointing toward what our ideals should be. At the same time, I think there should be a little more charity to those who have to join the fray and live in the day to day world where ideal outcomes aren’t always available at the moment.
Another distinction between what a lot of commentators currently do and what you seem to be indicating Regnerus and Fisher do is the offering of a practical way forward toward the goal. Regnerus and Fisher argue for a more robust sexual ethic on the right (i.e. something they think can be put into practice). When I read Mona Charen’s latest post, I ask myself, “What, exactly am I supposed to be doing?” Even if what she says is true (and it isn’t always the most charitable or honest spin on what Trump says or does), am I supposed to just abandon Trump to Bob Mueller to be tormented day and night forever and ever? Install Hillary as the rightful president? What? Maybe if they spent more time pointing me towards someone who is electable and serious as a 2020 primary alternative, I would see the point to all of it. As of now, its all rather tedious.
I mean, I’m open to alternatives. For example, I like the newly woke Lindsey Graham 2.0 as someone who is serious, willing to take people on and be direct without being obnoxious about it, and able to survive a short elevator ride without being visibly rattled. I say this even though I have become less into foreign intervention than him as time goes on.
It’s especially problematic when you realize that from an orthodox, trinitarian perspective, a good amount of the founding fathers may have been heretics.
I think I have a bigger problem with Republicanism being considered necessarily Christian than with being a Democrat being considered non-Christian. Not that there can’t be Christian Democrats, but that seems less and less plausible as the progressive influence in that party grows. The progressive belief in the perfectibility of man through government is at odds with the perfectibility of man through Christ alone.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far…
Good one.
That’s interesting, because we do have a faction on Ricochet that, upon reading one of Charen’s post, seems to think, exactly, of something it should be doing: namely, getting Mona kicked off Ricochet.
Politics, especially national politics, is mostly a spectator sport, even for those who desperately wish it wasn’t. What we can do about a pundit’s column is usually very little, and what we can do is often not doing so much as it is encouraging or discouraging certain kinds of speech.
Do we share — or, as I’ve heard it put these days, “signal boost” — the speech we like while trying to deplatform the speech we dislike? For many people — not just on the left but also on the right — that may be the biggest influence they can realistically have over the politics in their sphere, beating out voting, canvassing, and so on. We’ve heard a lot lately how politics isn’t and shouldn’t be just a debate club. Nonetheless, the matter of who gets to speak and where (whether the speech conforms to the norms of debate or not) keeps on bubbling to the surface.
Even for those who would like to see Charen gone, the problem is presumably not so much Charen the person as it is Speech That Goes Like This, speech which they’re sick of — and sometimes worse than sick, if they’ve reached the point of suspecting it’s actively traitorous. If you agree that deplatforming all Speech That Goes Like This from the discourse on your side is the right thing to do, your agenda is pretty clear. But what if you disagree? If you disagree what do you do?
I guess… try to leave room for Speech That Goes Like This on your side, even if you’re personally sick of it. And, at some point, the snake eats its own tail:
The people producing Speech That Goes Like This probably have pretty strong opinions that Speech That Goes Like This should not be deplatformed from their side’s discourse. And what can they do to ensure it’s not deplatformed? Produce more and more of it, for as long as others let them. The very objection that others are sick of Speech That Goes Like this becomes a spur to produce even more Speech That Goes Like this.
And round and round it goes, till all the sane folks have left the room.
I cannot speak for anyone but the idiot behind this single keyboard but, fancy writing and highfalutin terminology aside, its not that I want this particular character “kicked off” Ricochet as much as I want Ricochet to be the type of place that would be embarrassed to host that kind of twaddle on its bandwidth. I want Ricochet to be better than that. Most of the time it is.
Afternoon Jason,
Perhaps I am interpreting your questions about how should a Christian act with fallen leaders like Trump, but I might ask the question in another way. Am I saying to myself “a good Christian would not vote for Trump” or something like that? If I am, I think I am too ambitious, because I could quickly make that step in which I say “because I am a good Christian I didn’t vote for Trump”. Then we would become like the Pharisees, who in their religious observance, were the most dedicated believers of their time. They began to worship their own purity. So the Trump election was certainly not a surprise to God, and what then should we then attempt to learn. What are the idols that we worship, our own purity, of behavior (at least I did not have an affair with someone named Stormy {what a maroon}), or has our conservative philosophy and knowledge become our idol, (he doesn’t even read Hayek, if he reads at all), our manners (I would never be that crass). Maybe we are in love with the delusion that we run life and not God, and Trump’s election frustrates that delusion. Trump’s election, maybe just Trump’s persona has exposed the hearts of a lot of folks, maybe our own, much of what we see is pride, this time as an ostentatious, public display, I am so much better that he is, and I am so much wiser than the dupes or knaves who support him. So I can not answer the question concerning the moral choice posed by Trump’s candidacy, to vote for or against, but I suggest that his election as all things are under God’s control so his election has a moral purpose. Looking at the folks God chose, like Jacob, the conniver, trickster, or Judah ( hey good looking can I come into you?), or David, (you know, you can never have too many wives, I’ll take his), one wonders couldn’t God find more moral men, who also read Hayek, would a good God pick such weak, fallen men. Of course, the answer is yes, our weakness illuminates His strength.
Even those who are quite proud of Ricochet regretfully acknowledge Ricochet produces a certain amount of embarrassing twaddle. Not everyone agrees, though, on what that embarrassing twaddle is, much less which of the twaddle is so embarrassing it shouldn’t even be here.
The way I figure, because we don’t all agree on what counts as Ricochet’s most embarrassing twaddle, a certain proportion of embarrassing twaddle on Ricochet, no matter what your political perspective, is the price of lively and freewheeling conversation.
Once twaddle starts veering into lizard-people-Illuminati-FEMA-camps territory, it gets shut down, but short of that, we’ll always have to put up with some portion of each other’s twaddle if we want Ricochet to work.
As for me, I know embarrassing twaddle when I see it. (And that is what really matters.)
However, to be a little more diplomatic about it: I suspect that a quick scan of the comments under most Mona Charen offerings would hint at a (approximately) 20 – 2 vote (always the same 2 of course) among paying commenters that she often resides in that domain. I suggest demoting her postings to the member feed and we can see how many earn their way to the Main. Let the “Likes” do the talkin’.
So about the Birchers…
What’s good for the goose? Look, Mona is part of segment of the Conservative Movement spawned by Buckley that is perfectly ok with ejecting entire points of view from the party without debate. Why give her more leniency than she would Pat Buchanan?