Independence Day in Trump's America

This Independence Day, I am grateful to live in a country led by a strong, fearless, authoritarian figure who can fix everything and solve all our problems. I am grateful that America has finally realized the promise of its founding and elected a reality show entertainer and expert Tweeter to its highest office. I am thankful that instead of conventional politicians, we finally have a man in the White House who understands the common people with the unique perspective that only living in a gilded penthouse can provide.

I weep patriotic tears of joy at the courage our Great Leader displays in taking on the true enemies of our nation: a free press and our country's court system. May multitudes of fireworks spew forth tonight like the torrents of 140-character-truthbombs he targets at the hearts of these un-American swine.

I thank the Great Leader and his Great Collaborators in Congress for fighting dangerous ideas like the separation of church and state. I thank them also for working hard to correct the errors of our Founding Fathers who, let's face it, were pretty cool but could they really be as amazing as the Great Leader? Had John Adams lived under the tyranny of Barack Obama rather than George III, he surely would have appreciated the benefits of a government of men -- succesful, non-loser, high-energy, nonconsenual-female-genitalia-grabbing men -- not laws.

I look skyward, not only at the pyrotechnics (which are awesome, btw!), but also towards a future where our Great Leader will tweet America to realize its true potential as a nation of non-immigrants with massive social programs and expansive government controls that benefit the true Sons and Daughters (but mostly Sons) of Liberty: native-born people who basically look like me and simultaneously think they were born in the greatest country in the world yet have somehow gotten a raw deal.

Why I am concerned about Trump supporters

This is a post about why I am concerned about Trump supporters. Most of my recent political commentary and Facebook activism has been about analyzing and trying to oppose militant pro-Trump people. Why am I spending time doing this? Why do I think it's important? Why is it something I'm uniquely interested in? Here's why.

First, what this isn't: This isn't a post about why I'm concerned about Trump being President. I am concerned about this, to be sure, and I think my main concerns here differ from what most people are concerned about. I may post on that another time, but I'm actually much more concerned about the emergence, behavior and ideology of Trump's supporters and the effects they are likely to have on the country than I am about Trump's occupancy of the Oval Office and the effects it might have (even though, again, I do think some of those are very serious).

Second, a clarification of terms. By 'Trump supporter' I mean 'someone who is enthusiastic about the candidacy or Presidency of Donald Trump.' Not all Trump voters are Trump supporters: many voted for him un-enthusiastically or as the lesser of two evils. I'm talking about the people who actively embrace Trump and view him as being representative of them and their views. That still lumps a broad group of people together who obviously don't share a single, well-defined set of characteristics or views. This post is aiming to get at what I take to be the fundamental nature of Trump support as a movement an what it represents, and I think what I am about to describe captures that essential, even if it isn't literally true of every Trump supporter (or to the same degree).

Now, on to two important things you should know about me and my beliefs that ground this discussion:

First of all, I think two of the major cultural achievements of modern western society -- and of America in particular -- are the recognition of individual rights and secularism. In only western societies, and only for the last several hundred years or so out of the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, has it been possible to live one's life without having to conform to the tenets of some religious doctrine enforced at the point of a gun. And it's only these same societies who have embraced the principle that one's life has value because one is, fundamentally, an individual with inalienable rights, rather than by virtue of being a member of some group (such as a tribe, a religious sect, the aristocracy, etc.). While America has struggled and continues to struggle to fully embrace these principles, we're the first and only country to embody them in our founding, and that, in my opinion, is amazing.

Secondly, I think economic freedom -- in particular freedom from government control over the economy -- is a pretty great thing, as well as a corollary of the individual political freedom described above.

It's not my intent to argue for those beliefs here. Rather, I'm simply noting that 1) Those are my beliefs and 2) I think our country's greatness and success have a lot to do with the extent to which it embraces those principles.

This bring me to this analysis of polling data by Lee Drutman. You can read a summary of the analysis in the second half of this column on Slate. One of the things that Drutman observes is that the traditional left/right political spectrum isn't really helpful in understanding the Trump phenomenon. As an alternative, he uses polling data about different groups of voters' attitudes on various issues to break the single left-right axis into a two axis system. In his model, the x axis represents people's views on economic issues (ranging from 'liberal' on the left side to 'conservative' on the right). The y axis represents people's views on social and moral issues, ranging from 'conservative' at the top to 'liberal' at the bottom. Here's a graphic from Drutman's report that shows how voters in the 2016 Election clustered in this model:

You'll notice that I put Drutman's 'liberal' and 'conservative' terminology in scare quotes in the paragraph above the graphic. I think his terminology is fine for the purposes of his analysis, but I want to talk about what the two axes really mean. When you look at the kinds of questions that go into the economic axis (the x axis), it's stuff like

• How important is the social safety net?
• What is your attitude towards foreign trade?
• What is your attitude towards income inequality?
• To what extent should the government regulate the economy?

This axis represents the degree to which the respondents believe it is the proper role of the government to intervene in the economy: it's a familiar paradigm with socialism, communism and economic facisim at the left, laissez faire capitalism on the right and various degrees of mixed economy in the middle.

The social axis appears like a mixed bag at first, combining questions like

• What is your attitude towards gender roles? Towards black people? Towards Muslims?
• Are your stances on moral issues more or less traditional?
• Do you feel that people 'like you' are in decline in this country?

In fact, I think this axis reduces to a measurement of the respondents' valuing of secularism and individualism (at least with respect to non-economic issues) vs. valuing of non-secular, Christian values and group allegiance.

At any rate, Drutman uses this model to divide the electorate into four segments based on the quadrant they fall into:

• The bottom left segment: the folks who tend to support government intervention in the economy and value secularism. These are liberals. Most factions within the modern Democratic Party fall here and this group made up a plurality of the 2016 electorate (44%)
• The upper right segment: the folks who favor less economic control and don't dig secularism. Traditionally, this was the Republican religious conservative base, however, as Drutman's analysis shows, the GOP base is increasingly being co-opted by folks from the next segment (in fact, in 2016, there were just about as many GOP voters in the next segment as these traditional conservatives).
• The upper left segment: the folks who favor more economic control and don't dig secularism. Drutman calls these folks 'populists', but I'm going to go ahead and call them Trump supporters. These are the folks who favor things like restrictive trade policies and increased government control of healthcare (as long as the name 'Obama' isn't attached to it), hold regressive or traditionally Christian views on social issues, and, in particular, see themselves as members of group that is in decline and getting a raw deal at the hands of other groups. This group has surpassed the traditional religious conservatives and now is the second largest group (28%) behind the liberals.
• The bottom right segment: the folks who want more economic freedom and value secularism: libertarians in popular (and Drutman's) parlance. This is the group I place myself in (though I dislike the term 'libertarian'), and there are so few of us (less than 4% of voters) that we have almost no voice as a popular movement.

I'm used to my views being in the minority. But what's interesting and disheartening this time is that there's now a major political group whose views are, in both key dimensions, the diametric opposite of my own. This group is now ascendant, has become the second largest political faction and is on the verge of becoming the dominant faction within one of the two major parties. And all of this happened more or less in the space of an election cycle.

And this isn't just about a group whose political views differ significantly -- even very significantly -- from my own. It's not about pure disagreement or rival teams. It's about a political movement that's views on both economic freedom and secularism are antithetical to American values. While it's true (as Trump supporters are fond of pointing out) that other political figures have long advocated for and continue to advocate for parts of this worldview (the barely closeted socialism of progressives, the attempts to institute Christian morality by law of religious conservatives, etc.) there's never been a major political group whose very essence on both fronts represents a 180 degree turn away from our founding principles.

This is concerning because there are tens of millions of these folks. Had Trump lost the election, these folks would still be out there and they'll continue to be out there after he leaves office. They can't be ignored. Their most likely home -- the GOP -- certainly isn't ignoring them. How could they? They make up about half the Republican base. Moreover, as I've argued elsewhere, the more traditional Republicans who comprise the party leadership seem to think they are well-served by allying with these folks, even where they differ on concrete policy issues.

And it doesn't matter if (as I suspect) most of the Trump supporters would disagree with this characterization of them (especially, I expect, with the parts about being opposed to capitalism and the idea that their principles are un-American). What matters is what's actually operative for these folks and what their political beliefs lead to, to the extent that they're successful in furthering them. And on those fronts I think it's pretty clear where these folks are headed: more authoritarian government; a more Christian, less secular country; more government interference in the economy in the areas where they like it; and a political apparatus that is increasingly hostile to those who disagree with them.

How to win an argument with a Trump supporter on Facebook

Wait... what? Seriously? What?

Why would you try to win an argument with a Trump supporter on Facebook? Nothing good can possibly come of that.

If you're going to get into an argument with someone -- and I mean argument in the sense of a debate in which the parties share and react to a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition -- or really have any sort of discussion, there has to be some common understanding of the basic rules and goals of the exchange. And here's where you're doomed to failure if you approach the discussion unawares, because the Trump supporter is playing by an entirely different set of rules and with an entirely different goal in mind.

Let's start with the rules. When normal people make arguments, they follow the rules of logic. To condense the entirety of Logic 101 into less than a sentence, this amounts to presenting premises in a valid structure, supported by evidence, that, taken together, give us reason to believe a conclusion is true.

This only works, however, if both parties A) are willing to actually consider the evidence objectively, B) agree on what it means for something to be true and, crucially, C) acknowledge that the truth is important. But the typical Trump supporter, not unlike Trump himself, is determined to dismiss any evidence that conflicts with their preexisting viewpoint. Similarly, most of us outside of Philosophy Departments at major universities hold a view of truth that has something to do with a statement corresponding to what we can observe in reality. But for Trump and his supporters, not so much.

The last issue -- agreement with the principle that the truth is important -- is, however, the most significant consideration. It relates to the other major point of departure the serious arguer has with the Trump supporter: goals. There are lots of potential goals one might have when engaging in a political discussion with someone of a differing viewpoint, on Facebook or otherwise, for example:

• To change the other person's mind (though this is pretty dubious)
• To better understand the other person's position
• To use the process of arguing/discussing as a means to better understand the topic or discover the truth (which may not lie in either party's original position)
• To understand the flaws in one's own (or one's opponent's) reasoning

The thing is, the Trump supporter's actual goal isn't any of those things.

As Matthew Yglesias at Vox persuasively argues, there's something else going on when a Trump supporter repeats one of the president's statements (or one from the right wing media, or constructs an original argument using material from one of those sources):

[The statement] serves... as a signifier of belonging to a mass audience. One chants, “Lock her up,” at a rally not to express a desire or expectation that Hillary Clinton will serve jail time for violating an obscure State Department guideline, but simply because to be a certain kind of member of a certain kind of community these days requires the chant.

The big, beautiful wall that Mexico will allegedly pay for, the war on the “fake news” media, Barack Obama’s forged birth certificate, and now the secret tape recording that will destroy James Comey are not genuine articles of faith meant to be believed in. Their invocation is a formalism or a symbol; a sign of compliance and belonging. The content is bullshit.

I've argued elsewhere, as Yglesias does in his piece, that the essence of Trump-the-utterer-of-falsehoods is not that he is a liar, but that he is a bullshit artist. The difference is that the liar is trying to deceive you about the substance of his statement: he knows something to be true but wants to convince you that what's true is something other than that. The bullshit artist, on the other hand, makes statements without caring whether they are true or not in order to serve some other purpose.

I have long been of the opinion that the defining feature of the Trump supporter is tribalism: putting membership in and allegiance to group above all else. When Yglesias says that Trump supporters repeat statements 'to be a certain kind of member of a certain kind of community,' he is identifying one manifestation of this tribalism.

When you or I post the opinion on Facebook that, say, it was improper of Trump to fire James Comey under the circumstances that he did, we do so because we believe that opinion to be correct. We believe it is true. We believe it is right. We hope that by posting it and by providing arguments and evidence that support it, we will convince others of our opinion's righteousness. We could be forgiven for assuming that a Trump supporter, in posting the opposite opinion, is doing so because he believes he is similarly correct and with similar goals in mind.

But the Trump supporter is not, in fact, concerned with the righteousness of his statement. He neither believes nor disbelieves what he is posting, and his posting of it is in no way impacted by any evaluation of whether the statement is true. Truth is not important. In fact, 'winning' the argument in the conventional sense isn't even important (since the Trump supporter knows he is unlikely to convince his counter-party and can simply take a page from Trump's book and unilaterally declare victory with no apparent basis at any time anyway).

What is important is loyalty. The purpose of making the statement is to demonstrate membership in and loyalty to the tribe. To demonstrate it to other members of the tribe. To those who are not members. To the president. To oneself. It is the Facebook equivalent of wearing a MAGA cap.

And that, in a nutshell, is why you can't hope to win an argument with a Trump supporter on Facebook. For you, winning involves being successful in convincing your Trumpian opponent to come around to your side. It requires him to engage in a specific way, which he may or may not do (but -- let's be real -- probably won't). For him, however, winning requires only that you engage with him at all, which you've already done by entering the argument in the first place. Once you've engaged, he has all the opportunity he needs to achieve his actual goal: articulate a pro-Trump position and thereby demonstrate his loyalty. And the more you continue to engage, the more opportunities you provide for him to do exactly that. #winning.

None of this is to say, by the way, that I think one shouldn't get into arguments with Trump supporters on Facebook (or be politically active there in general). I just think one shouldn't do so with the goal of winning the arguments in mind. There are plenty of good reasons to argue other than trying to win, and some of them are more important now than ever.

But Hillary Clinton...

Whenever some new revelation about a bad thing Donald Trump has done comes to light, his supporters practically trip over themselves racing to remind us of something Hillary Clinton (or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or some other hated liberal) did that is supposed to be similar. The idea seems to be that something about one of those Democrats having done the similar thing is more significant than or mitigates what Donald Trump is alleged to have done.

Having tried to engage with a number of Trump supporters who do this, I am convinced that this tactic is utterly disingenuous. Still, I think it's instructive to examine it. What are these folks trying to accomplish when they do this? I think a few things are going on, and I want to talk about why they are all bullshit.

Trying to appear as if they are calling for justice

On the surface, most of these attempts take the form of a call for overdue justice. For example, when it comes out that Donald Trump shared classified information with the Russian Ambassador and someone demands that he be held accountable, the inevitable response is "but Hillary Clinton was never held accountable for her private email server!" The implication here is that whatever Donald Trump has done, it is a far greater miscarriage of justice that Hillary's email indiscretions went unpunished. An occasional variant of this goes "We know Hillary did something improper with having the private email server whereas the allegations against Trump haven't been proven, yet you're all concerned with nailing Trump while giving Hillary a free pass."

Why this is bullshit: Someone who is truly concerned with the mishandling of classified information should, of course, be concerned both about what Hillary Clinton did and what Trump is alleged to have done. Since it's not as if there's a finite amount of justice to go around, it's possible to think Hillary should be held accountable and that we should investigate credible allegations of the same behavior involving Trump and hold him accountable if they turn out to be substantiated.

If you want to present yourself as a true and consistent champion of justice, you need to demonstrate that you want to see the underlying principle applied in all cases. But of course the Trump supporter never does this. It's always "but Hillary Clinton..." and then a blank out. No mention of what should be done about Trump's indiscretion, and certainly no suggestion that the same principle should be applied in his case.

Even if the Trump supporter is willing to concede that Trump should be held accountable, the level of concern never rises to Hillary email level (or Bill Clinton doing inappropriate things with a cigar tube level). As I've argued elsewhere, this way of thinking is ridiculous. Regardless of how egregious you think Hillary's actions were in the email case, she is not the current President. In fact, she holds no office whatsoever. If Trump is doing something similarly bad -- or even, I would argue, something considerably less bad -- it's appropriate to be much more concerned about his behavior right now, since he is the current President and is thus in a position to potentially harm the country through his active misdeeds. In fact, by identifying and addressing Trump's misdeeds now, we may be able to prevent damage to our country, rather than having to resort, at best, to retrospective justice (as was our only option in the Clinton email case). It seems to me that someone who was genuinely concerned with the country's well being would be all forr that.

Accusing liberals of hypocrisy

This usually takes the form of "Look at how the media / Democrats / the person I'm talking to is all over Donald Trump but gave a free pass to Hillary / Obama / whoever over the similar thing they did. What a bunch of hypocrites!"

Why this is bullshit: Even if the target of this attack is guilty of hypocrisy, the Trump supporter raising the issue entails two significant admissions that undermine his own position. First, because it asserts that the target should have been concerned with the thing that Hillary or whoever did, it means that we ought to be concerned about the essentially similar thing Trump is doing now. Thus, the Trump supporter is conceding the premise that what Donald Trump is alleged to be doing (if true) is cause for concern. Secondly, because the Trump supporter then doesn't go on to demand that Trump be treated the way he believes Hillary (or whoever) should have been treated (see above), he opens himself up to the same charge of hypocrisy he is trying to level against his target.

To obfuscate and distract

Most of the Trump supporters I talk to aren't dumb, so I think they grasp the incoherence of their approach on some level. However, just bringing up Hillary has the effect of changing the subject to something other than the misdeeds of the person they support. As Trump himself has demonstrated, obfuscation and distraction are effective weapons, and Trump supporters like nothing more than to rail against their favorite liberal targets anyway. This tactic is also especially effective against well-meaning interlocutors who assume the Trump supporter is approaching the conversation with the same good faith as they are and attempt to answer the Trumpy's charges against Hillary point-by-point, allowing the Trump supporter to succeed in changing the subject.

Why this is bullshit: It's senseless to argue with someone who isn't approaching the conversation in good faith, and these tactics are prime examples of bad faith. Once it becomes apparent that the Trump supporter has resorted to them, he exposes himself as a partisan sheep who doesn't bring anything to the table intellectually.

To garner sympathy

The Trump supporters often fall into this mode among themselves, but sometimes it bleeds out into discussion with people who don't share their viewpoint. The refrain goes like this "The media / Democrats / whoever are out to get Donald Trump. They never went after Hillary like this. The deck is totally stacked against him. See, unless you're part of the liberal establishment, you can't get a fair shake. Woe is us!"

Why this is bullshit: Even if the media went easy on Hillary, the appropriate response to their going tough on Trump for similar (or worse) misdeeds is thanks (perhaps with a small dose of 'what took you so long?'). But more insidious is the notion that Trump -- and particularly his supporters -- are deserving of sympathy. Trump supporters championed and voted for a man who is, obviously and transparently, the least qualified, most despicable, most pro-authoritarian person ever to hold the office of President. Far from being victimized by those of us who refuse to tolerate this unacceptable state of affairs, Trump's supporters deserve to be held accountable for being complicit in it. A Trump supporter asserting that we, as decent, concerned citizens, are somehow in the wrong for calling the president to task for, e.g., sharing classified material when they themselves participated in enabling him to do so is obscene.

Regardless of the motive, bringing up Hillary Clinton is an attempt by the Trump supporter to switch the topic to one where he believes he holds the moral high ground. But, as noted above, one can only claim to hold such a position if one wants to see the underlying moral principle applied equally and universally. If you don't, it amounts to an admission that you don't believe there is any moral high ground (or principle) at all: just partisanship and allegiance to whatever team you're on. I don't think that's true, and I don't think someone who thinks that deserves to be let off the hook. In the future, my standard response to the 'But Hillary Clinton...' arguments is going to be as follows:

"This isn't about Hillary Clinton. This is about the conduct of the person you put in the White House and continue to support. What he's doing isn't OK, and neither is your supporting someone who does it."

The Arbitrariness Candidate

For those struggling for an explanation of what happened, here's the best I can come up with so far:

Obviously, Trump's election represents a rejection of the Establishment, of which Hillary Clinton is, in many ways, the perfect embodiment. But if that's what the voters of this country have rejected, what, exactly, are they *embracing* by selecting President Trump?

Contrary to many of my liberal friends, I don't think the fundamental is racism or sexism or bigotry or even nationalism or authoritarianism. Those are elements of Trump, to be sure, and they are things to be concerned about, but they don't represent the fundamental of what I see people who were enthusiastic about Trump in my own circles embracing. I don't think the Trump supporters among my friends are motivated primarily by hate (though some are far more tolerant of it than I would prefer).

I think the fundamental thing people are embracing is this: the arbitrary. Trump was the Arbitrariness Candidate. He may well be the Arbitrariness President.

The arbitrary is that which is put forth without any evidence. The putting forth and accepting of claims without evidence (or in contradiction of it) defined Trump's campaign and his supporters. He asserted things (e.g. Mexicans are rapists, Ted Cruz's father participated in the JFK assassination, he alone can fix our problems without articulating any realistic or specific solutions, etc.) and a large number of his supporters accepted them even when no evidence was provided, time and time again. Even the racism and sexism that so many liberals fear are based in the belief in the arbitrary: the belief that one race or gender is superior (a belief for which there is no evidence). It is the essence of the Trumpian 'believe me', which is code for 'take my word for it because I'm not going to give you any reason to actually believe me.'

And among his supporters, there is a widespread attitude of 'we know what Hillary represents: the Establishment'. This is true. But then it is quickly followed up by some version of 'Trump may not be perfect, but at least there is a chance that he will be better.' This belief, too, is rooted in accepting the arbitrary. Donald Trump has been in the public eye for many, many years. There is ample evidence to draw conclusions about what he will do as President. The inferences we might reasonably draw based on that evidence aren't guaranteed to be right, but they are at least reasonable, as contrasted with the belief that he will be consistently pro-freedom, conservative or, indeed, consistently anything, which is pure fantasy.

Pure fantasy is not worthy of the same cognitive consideration as a belief for which there is some evidence, however robust or scant. (This is the answer to the emerging group of non-enthusiastic Trump apologists who are starting to say 'Well, you don't know what he'll do as President. Maybe it will be ok." It's true that we don't know for certain, but just imagining that it might be ok without being aware of any specific reasons to think so doesn't count as a refutation of people's legitimate, evidence-based concerns.)

It is a grave, grave error to entertain the arbitrary in your thinking, even for a second. If someone puts something forth without any real claim at supporting it with evidence, there is no reason to even consider it possible. If one entertains every statement that someone puts forth as possible, even with no evidence, that does not constitute thinking. It constitutes engaging in a flight of fancy that one has mistaken for cognition. It is a recipe for the sort of cognitive fuzziness and paralysis that allow one to fall victim to the next charismatic figure who comes along who is capable of conjuring up those fantasies and evoking the emotions they connect with.

I think a good, day one answer to 'what do we do next?' is this: fight the arbitrary. Both in your own mind and in the public square. Demand of your friends, your leaders, your teachers and yourself that views be supported by evidence. Train yourself, and help train others, to identify when things are asserted arbitrarily and to reject them out of hand until and unless some actual reason to believe them is provided -- whether you are disinclined to agree with the assertion or, especially, if you are inclined to agree with it. Do not accept the common belief that because we can't be certain of something, we must entertain all possibilities. That attitude elevates ignorance to the status of cognitive gold standard and is a direct path to the destruction of the intellect.

Contrary to the prevailing cultural attitude, not all opinions are equally valid. If, as a people, we were as adept at detecting the arbitrary as we are at, say, detecting racism, I don't think we would have President Elect Trump, and I certainly don't think we would be as primed for abdicating our collective responsibility to think and judge and embracing an actual dictator as I fear we are.

The three kinds of Trumpies I meet on Facebook

An extremely unscientific survey based on my newsfeed.

The three types of people I see on Facebook who express support for Trump:

1. Women who are strongly anti-abortion, recognize that Hillary Clinton is an extremely pro-choice candidate and believe that there is at least some chance Donald Trump would do things to reduce or restrict abortions (such as nominating anti-abortion justices).
2. People who hate Hillary Clinton, the Clintons generally and/or the Democratic Party so much that they would vote for a Dark Lord of the Sith if he were running against her. In fact, some acknowledge that this is what they are doing in voting for Trump. Mix of genders.
3. Men who believe the Establishment is destroying America. They see a vote for Trump as falling somewhere on the spectrum between registering a protest against this Establishment and an opportunity to actually burn this motherfucker down.

Attributes shared by members of all three groups:

1. Whiteness;
2. Sense that something is very wrong with this country (e.g. a great injustice being done to the unborn, economy that doesn't work for the people, danger posed by HRC/Establishment/people who don't look like them and don't share American values);
3. Skepticism or rejection of mainstream media or any information presented to them if derived from mainstream sources;
4. Tendency to obtain/post news and opinions from sources that cater exclusively to people who share their ideological viewpoint (e.g. right wing media, Catholic publications, etc.) and being highly credulous when it comes to any information that comes from these sources;
5. Among the 2nd and 3rd groups (less so the 1st), a tendency to see anyone who disagrees with, questions or challenges them as being hopelessly deluded into towing the Establishment line.

The nihilism of Trump's fraud allegations

[reposted from Facebook]

The other thing about Trump refusing to state that he will accept the results of the election is that it is an admission that he has abandoned all hope of actually winning.

It is such an obscene statement that it is going to contribute to getting out the vote for Clinton from people who otherwise wouldn't have come out. It also creates a disincentive for his supporters to come out and vote: if the system is rigged against him and he's bound to lose, why waste your time voting for him? Both of those things increase his likelihood of losing.

It's another reason why I think destabilizing the country, rather than becoming President or even making up excuses for his loss, has become his actual goal. If he was just trying to protect his ego, he could have spun his likely impending defeat in a way that actually might improve his chances of winning ("Crooked Hillary and the liberal media are trying to steal the country from us. If you want to stop them, get out and vote for me!")

It's really borderline nihilism. He no longer thinks he can win. He doesn't care about winning anymore. He doesn't care about his supporters (or that they desperately want him to win). He just wants to pour the gasoline, light the match and watch it all burn.

Hillary Clinton Must Be Elected President

It has been clear to me for a long time that Donald Trump is completely unfit to be President. Though I have known for an equally long time that I would not be voting for Mr. Trump, up until last night's debate, I had not decide how I would be voting. I am undecided no longer.

As a direct consequence of Trump's ongoing strategy of questioning the legitimacy of the election and his specific refusal last night to state that he would accept the results, I will be casting my vote for Hillary Clinton. I think it is vital that every freedom-loving American -- irrespective of their political views or affiliation -- do the same.

The conventional wisdom on Mr. Trump's casting doubt on the election's legitimacy is that he is so psychologically adverse to losing (and to being branded a loser) that he will grasp at any excuse to avoid that characterization. While this may be true, I believe it is insufficient to explain the preemptive attacks on the integrity of the electoral process. 

Trump's baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud began long before it became clear that he was on an irreversible path to losing. Moreover, the allegations of the election being 'stolen' are literally incoherent to a degree beyond even Mr. Trump's baseline level. In order for an election to be stolen from a candidate (due to voter fraud or any other means), that candidate has to be winning or at least competitive. But Mr. Trump is currently trailing Mrs. Clinton by 7 points in the average of national polls with less than three weeks until the election. He has only a 13% chance of victory. If he wins (legitimately or otherwise), it would represent him 'stealing' the election from Mrs. Clinton, but he (and his supporters) should expect him to lose based on the available data.

Under these conditions, if Mr. Trump's primary goal is to avoid the stain of loserism and he's willing to continue to play fast and loose with the facts, why go with this bizarre and unsubstantiated narrative about widespread voter fraud? The traditional (and much more plausible) Republican narrative of liberal media bias ('the polls are rigged', 'the press is out to get me', etc.) maps much better to the facts and would still resonate with a Trump base that is enamored of conspiracy theories.

I believe there is something both simpler and far more sinister going on than Mr. Trump protecting his ego. The danger of the fixed election narrative, as commentator after commentator have pointed out, is that it undermines people's faith in the electoral process. It plays into the narrative that the entire political system is rigged against his supporters. It will probably incite some of them to engage in voter suppression and intimidation tactics, if not outright political violence.

After watching Mr. Trump's performance last night, I don't believe these outcomes are unintended consequences of a thin-skinned misogynist trying to avoid looking like he lost to a girl. They are the intended outcomes of an authoritarian figure trying to undermine a country's longstanding traditions of representative government and peaceful transition of power so that it more closely resembles a system more to his liking.

By running a campaign that involved attacking the political establishment, praising foreign dictators, threatening to jail his political rival and advocating policies that fly in the face of American values and constitutional protections, Donald Trump was trying to transform America into a less free, more statist country through the ballot box. It is now clear that he will not be elected, so, consistent with his political philosophy, he has now switched to openly attempting to erode that system in a far more direct and egregious way than any politician in American history.

There is no longer any question that Donald Trump -- a man who his supporters believe is trying to save the American system of government from a political establishment that has sold out its people -- is actually trying to destroy it. And this is why he must be stopped.

Because he has chosen to pursue his agenda by arbitrarily asserting that he will lose the election due to fraud, it is vital that Trump be defeated in a manner that leaves no doubt that the outcome of the election was legitimate.

I believe this means voting for Hillary Clinton so that her margin of victory over Trump in the popular vote is as wide as it can be. Based on current polling, a Clinton landslide (greater than 10% popular vote victory) is an attainable goal. Such an historic result -- hundreds of thousands of times beyond the margin that any reasonable estimation of the effects that fraud could have on the outcome would support -- would be an emphatic repudiation of the anti-American agenda of Trump and his supporters.

Beyond this, I believe the seriousness of the Trump threat also requires a stern rebuke of the party that has collaborated with him. In my view, this means consistently voting for down-ballot Democratic candidates at the federal, state and local levels over their Republican opponents, irrespective of the relative merits of the individual candidates and irrespective of the Republican candidate's level of support for or endorsement of Trump. To be clear, that last point includes voting against Republican candidates who have specifically renounced Trump and those who have remained neutral towards him, in addition to those who have expressed support for him. The Republican party, its leadership and its base had every opportunity to stop or repudiate Mr. Trump's candidacy. Instead they embraced it. They must be punished for doing this so that it is clear to future members of all American political parties that supporting would-be dictators is a path to nothing but a crushing electoral defeat.

I do not advocate this approach lightly. I do so in full knowledge that, if successful, it would result in Hillary Clinton being elected President with not only a strong popular mandate but potential Democratic control of both houses of Congress. In such a scenario, the Democratic party would be emboldened to pursue the most Progressive parts of its agenda. I strongly disagree with large parts of this agenda and regard the more extreme ones as dangerous and inconsistent with freedom and American values. But, in general, such a scenario would represent a moderate acceleration of an already-in-progress trend towards a more socialist America with greater executive power, bigger government, less recognition of individual rights and continued ineffective foreign policy. But, frankly, this longstanding trend has been abetted by members and administrations of both parties. Its acceleration represents an unfortunate development, but it pales in comparison to how dramatically the trend towards a statist America would accelerate if an avowed proto-dictator who openly advocates undermining our constitutional system by any means possible were to come to power, or, worse, actually undermine that system without coming to power.

It is vital that such a man be stopped. In order to do so, I will be voting for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party in this election. I strongly advocate that you do the same.

Tribalism and Trump Support

A common question among those who are shocked and dismayed by Donald Trump's candidacy is 'How can his supporters continue to support him?' The question is often expressed with increasing alarm and incredulity after some new and more troubling example of Trump being Trump comes to light.

I think a big part of understanding the answer to that question is understanding the concept of tribalism and how essential it is to the nature of Trumpism.

Tribalism is the basis of all the most primitive forms of collectivism such as racism and sexism (though it is broader and more fundamental than any of its specific forms). On the most basic level, it involves elevating allegiance to the group with which one identifies above all else.

Politically, we see this in the various Trumpian stances that attempt to single out and marginalize various groups who aren't on the 'approved' list: deporting illegal immigrants, objectifying women, banning Muslims from entering the country and infringing upon the rights of those who are already here, etc.

But there's a cognitive element to tribalism too: it consists of substituting group allegiance for one's actual thought and judgement.

Trump's supporters view themselves primarily as members of some group of which Trump himself is the standard bearer. How exactly that group is defined differs from supporter to supporter. It might be something like 'people who have gotten a raw deal at the hands of the establishment' or 'real Americans.' But however you define the group, its existence provides a handy cognitive shortcut: on any given issue or topic, you and the other Trumpies are right, and everyone else is wrong.

This substitution of group allegiance for rational, objective, principled thought explains a wide range of Trump supporter behavior -- including behavior that seems weirdly contradictory or hypocritical, for example

• Thinking that 'locker room talk' that objectifies women and even bragging about one's ability to sexually assault women with impunity is fine, yet having a problem if someone talked that way about your wife or daughter;
• Having a major problem with the serial infidelities of the spouse of your political opponent (and her alleged enabling thereof) while simultaneously supporting a candidate who is an open, unapologetic, serial philanderer;
• Being indifferent to Donald Trump's many documented lies and frauds while detesting Hillary Clinton for being 'deceitful';
• Embracing any conspiracy theory that tends to support your group's official line without any regard for standards of proof or evidence while simultaneously demanding evidence from your opponents ('show us your birth certificate!') that you are, in fact, determined to dismiss or ignore ('it's fake!');
• Expressing dismay at President Obama for overstepping his authority and dangerously increasing executive power while simultaneously supporting a man with obvious authoritarian views and tendencies who openly admires actual dictators;
• Heaping scorn upon Republicans who, whether for principled or pragmatic reasons, rescind their support for Trump while simultaneously giving Trump himself a free pass on the actions that caused them to regard continued support as untenable;
• Claiming to be a champion of American values while simultaneously advocating measures that would undermine them.

In all these cases, the sin isn't the actual thing. The actual thing is fine as long as a member of your tribe does it. The sin is not being a member of the tribe. The thing isn't right or wrong. Nothing is actually right or wrong. "Right" and "wrong" are useful rhetorical labels to apply to people and things to show your tribal allegiance.

The tribal mentality also explains the common (maybe the only) retort of Trump supporters when you point out their candidate's faults: the attempt at moral equivalence. 'So what if Donald used nasty language? Hillary tried to intimidate the women her husband had affairs with." 

Do you see what's going on here? Its more than just childish tit-for-tat and playing fast and loose with the facts.

As long as we can pair off one of Trump's alleged failings with one of Hillary's, then they are equivalently bad. And if we can frame them as equivalently bad, then there's no objective basis for picking one over the other. No need to worry about pesky facts or arguments or the (sometimes legitimately tricky task) of wading through it all. We can now take the cognitive shortcut and treat it like a matter of personal preference, which is to say tribal loyalty. It's like rooting for the Yankees over the Red Sox.

It's why Trump supporters (even the tacit ones) don't seem to understand that people could have serious, profound concerns about a Trump presidency that, in their view, disqualify him from office. The thought of someone being disqualified on principle literally doesn't compute for them. They would actually have to believe there are such things as principles we could use to identify disqualifying behavior first. They would have to believe there are standards by which we could judge whether some particular behavior was disqualifying. They would have to believe in the value of evidence that would prove (or disprove) the existence of the disqualifying behavior.

But there are no principles. There are no standards. There is no value to evidence. There is only the tribe.

Good on 'ya, Democrats

[I originally posted this on Facebook but I liked it so here it is for prosperity:]

I think the Democrats -- with whom I have many, many issues -- did an excellent job of articulating the essence of Trumpism in fundamental terms and framing the election as a referendum on it (which it is). That is almost unprecedented in contemporary politics and deserves high praise.

This was particularly true of POTUS' speech and the (sadly too few) good parts of HRC's acceptance speech. Way better stuff than anything the media has done in covering or analyzing Trumpism, where I find them to be at best superficial and at worst enabling of Trump.

I've been thinking about this and railing against Trumpism for a year, yet things they said genuinely helped me crystallize my own thinking. That's saying something. Specifically:

1. Great job (again, esp. by POTUS) referring to 'Trumpism' as a thing: a belief system shared by a group of people. It isn't just Trump coopting the Republican party and his supporters being bamboozled: this is an ideology embraced by his ardent supporters because they believe it.

2. Not only articulating what the core intellectual principles of Trumpism are -- nativist tribalism, protectionism and economic nationalism -- but also making it clear that those principles are unAmerican. Being a Trump supporter *means* you embrace those things. The enthusiastic ones embrace them proudly and the reluctant ones do so tacitly, but *that* is what it means to support or vote for Trump.

3. Recognizing that the nature of those beliefs *requires* totalitarianism. The Trumpies admire Trump's authoritarian tendencies because on some level they understand that bringing their fundamentally unAmerican ideals to this country requires us to abandon American principles -- individual rights, freedom of religion, acceptance of people with different ideas -- and replace them with a strong man who tells us what to do, because those things can't happen in a country where our form of Constitutional government functions. To paraphrase POTUS, these people want to be ruled.

4. They articulated much of this in simple, understandable terms (unlike what I just did), weaving in concrete examples, idealogical content and a sense of contrasting tone/worldview.

If the Democrats can keep this up and the election results in a rejection of the very essence of Trumpism, they will have done this country a great service.

It's closer than you think

It's pretty apparent that the media doesn't know how to cover the 2016 Presidential Election, so here's a little public service announcement: it's closer than you think.

I think I've made my own no-fan-of-Trump views clear, but that aside, I am dumbfounded that the mainstream media (who supposedly are anti-Trump) continue to laugh off his candidacy despite his continually proving them wrong. I don't think this is intentional or the result of some bias on their part: I think it's that they literally have no idea how to make sense of the Trump phenomenon because it is so unprecedented.

I'm not saying Trump is going to win. I am saying, though, that there are completely plausible, realistic scenarios in which he does. From the beginning of his candidacy, in fact, I've been saying that he was the only one in the Republican field who had a shot of beating Hillary due to his ability to mobilize non-traditional Republican voters (sorry John Kasich).

Don't believe me? Try playing around with 538's tool and see how easy it is to flip the map based on the assumption that Trump mobilizes non-college educated white voters who break his way.

Wanna see how close it is? Here's a plausible (as of this writing) path to Trump victory:

• He holds all the red states that Romney took in 2012. I think this is quite plausible. The only competitive red state in 2012 was North Carolina, where Obama lost by just 3% of the popular vote. In every other red state, Romney won by at least 8% (GA) and 10% or more everywhere else.
• He flips Florida, Ohio and Virginia (or, less plausibly, two of those plus PA), which all went to Obama narrowly in 2012. I think this is possible if Trump focuses on mobilizing his base in those states since the latest polling shows a dead heat in OH, PA and FL. All four of those states were decided by 5% or less of the popular vote in 2012.
• He also flips at least one of CO and NV. Both of these were decided by 6% or less of the popular vote in 2012, but it’s interesting given the Hispanic population in both states, who I understand are not Trump's biggest fans.

Per the above, let’s say Trump takes FL, OH, VA and CO — the 4 states from the above scenario that were closest in 2012. If this happens, he wins with 275 electoral votes to Clinton’s 263 (270 needed to win), and it’s All Hail President Trump:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Not saying it’s going to happen, just saying it could…

Supporting Trump is un-American

An open letter to well-meaning Trump supporters everywhere.

Dear Trump Supporter,

You might not know it, but you're keeping company with some folks who believe some pretty disturbing things. Things like banning all Muslims from entering the US. Things like surveilling all American Muslims. Things like outlawing Islam entirely.

I’d like to focus on and draw out the implications of a few of these things:

To advocate a ban on Muslims entering the US or to assume someone is a terrorist (or potential terrorist) solely because they are a Muslim (i.e. absent any specific evidence of terrorist intent or membership in a terrorist organization) is to accept the idea that one should judge people primarily insofar as they are members of groups, rather than as individuals. That is a collectivist premise that is at odds with the principles of individualism and individual rights.

To advocate a ‘Muslim registry’ or the surveillance of Muslims in the absence of reasonable suspicion/probable cause/evidence of illegal activity on the part of specific individuals is at odds with the 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments specifically and the notions of due process and equal protection generally.

To advocate the outlawing of Islam (or any other religion) is at odds with the 1st Amendment specifically and the principle of freedom of religion generally.

To embrace these ideas -- all of which are supported by a majority or plurality of Trump supporters according to recent polling data -- is to reject (at least) these four bedrock principles of our country (individual rights, due process, equal protection, freedom of religion). These principles were held by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in the Constitution, both of which you (rightly) claim to venerate. The equal protection clause (the idea that all people are entitled to the same treatment under the law) is part of the 14th Amendment, which is the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President.

To support such proposals is to stand against these principles.

To stand against these principles is profoundly un-American.

The (by no means exclusively Democratic/Obamian/potentially-Clintonian) failure to deal effectively with terrorism is a serious issue facing our country. But a weak, haphazard and ineffectual foreign policy does not constitute, in its essence, the betrayal of (or the danger to) America that the rejection of our core principles does. Nor, I would add, does a ‘poor' response to the imaginary ‘threat’ posed by Mexican immigrants.

Do you know who you actually stand with if you stand with Trump in rejecting individual rights, due process, equal protection and freedom of religion?

Islamic terrorists.

They see the world as primarily composed of groups (in their case true believers, infidels, apostates, etc.), not individuals, and believe how people should be treated under the ‘law’ is governed primarily by their membership in certain groups, not individual rights. They regularly behead people for the ‘crime’ of not being in their preferred group without any sort of actual legal system or due process. And they certainly don’t think anyone should be free to practice any religion: everyone should subscribe to (their particular, niche variant of) Islam or die.

I’d like to believe that the majority of you are conscientious, sincere individuals who care deeply about the future of our country. To such individuals I say: please understand that you are going down the path of rejecting the very essence of the country you love and of becoming the philosophical allies of the very people that you are concerned with protecting it from.

If, as I suspect, you are horrified by the thought that you share substantial philosophical common ground with folks like ISIS, perhaps it is time to reassess your views, including your support for candidate Trump.

Sincerely,
A patriotic American 

Why you should take the Donald Trump phenomenon seriously

Some of my friends have questioned whether Donald Trump is sincere in the ridiculous things he says. I don’t want to speculate as to whether he is personally sincere or not. I don’t think it matters much.

But I do think it is a mistake to dismiss the Trump phenomenon in this way: i.e. as an (increasingly less) amusing sideshow, or as the ravings of someone who has become ‘unhinged', or as the behavior of an attention-seeking spoiled child or as ‘Trump being Trump.'

Here's why: these two articles provide an overview of polling data. While I disagree with some of the conclusions and interpretations, I think the data contained in these articles persuasively show that a majority or plurality of Trump supporters and, crucially, a plurality of likely Republican voters in certain states and possibly overall, agree with positions as extreme or more extreme than those articulated by Trump. These include:

• Supporting a ban on Muslims entering the US

• Backing the creation of a national database of Muslims

• The idea that government should engage in surveillance to monitor ‘most Muslims’ (i.e. absent specific reasons to suspect specific individuals of illegal activity)

• That Islam should be made illegal in the United States (seriously, a plurality of Trump supporters in North Carolina -- 44%! -- believe this according to that second article)

Again - all of these are supported by a majority or plurality of Trump supporters and/or all Republican voters in various polls. ‘Majority’ means ‘more than half’. ‘Plurality’ means ‘more people support this than not.'

So, yeah, I think Trump should be taken seriously.