(no subject)
An old friend I hadn't caught up with in a long time emailed me earlier to say she was worried by the election result, and to ask if I had any reassuring thoughts. This is a lightly edited version of what I sent her:
I should start by saying that I preferred Clinton to Trump, and I am apprehensive. On the other hand, I and most other people were *utterly* wrong about the campaign, and that makes me think we should not be too confident about what will happen next. That said, from what I see on Facebook, I really do think my progressive friends have misunderstood the risks, and are distinctly more alarmed than they ought to be. Having a lot of people tell eachother how upset and frightened they are seems like it can't be a healthy way to react.
I'll take your concerns roughly in order.
Tump is not going to do anything about climate change. But that's not a Trump-specific problem, and not an urgent problem. Any plausible Republican nominee was going to be inclined to ignore the problem, and any plausible Republican Congress was also likely to ignore the problem. The Republicans win about half the elections in this country, and if they hadn't won in 2016, they'd have won in 2020, so I think this ought to have been priced into your expectations. I saw that a carbon tax got 40% of the vote in a referendum in Washington State. You might reasonably hope that with some improvements and more support from the left, similar measures could pass in significant states -- or that state legislatures could do it. I know California has a lot of pro-solar and pro-electric vehicle policies. And a lot of this can be done at the state level and you should be reasonably hopeful there. Also, the technology is going to be getting steadily better; there will be some subtle but important progress in the next few years.
I have no idea what will happen with international relations and the world at large. As near as I can tell, Trump has a lot of contradictory impulses -- back off from protecting our allies, better relations with Russia, but bomb our enemies and "be strong". I have no idea what this will add up to. It might be okay. My sense is that the Clinton/Obama foreign policy wasn't working especially well, either for us or the rest of the world. I feel like we should wait to be really worried until something actually happens.
I don't know what will happen with health care. It might be bad for a few years, it might actually be fine. My sense is that the ACA was working well for some people, and badly for many others. The Trump response is, "we'll replace it with something terrific." There is some possibility that the Republican repeal the ACA in total this year without a replacement. If that happens, I would expect them to have trouble passing any particular replacement, leading to chaos and then huge GOP losses in 2018 and 2020. Given how obvious that risk is, I would expect them *not* to just repeal it, but instead to have some complicated replacement plan. Likely, it will be fairly similar to the ACA but with moderate tweaks. They might actually make things better. Most people have pre-existing conditions of some kind or another -- you are not so unusual -- so I would expect them to have a better answer than "sorry, good luck." The congress may be pigs, but they're pigs who do want to get reelected. So here again I would sit tight and wait to see what happens.
I would be very surprised if anything drastic happens regarding abortion or birth control. Trump is not a religious-right kind of guy, and as one comic put it, has probably spent as much, personally, on abortion and birth control as the total student body of the average women's college. He is probably the *least* interested in that fight of any Republican presidential candidate I can think of.
I left human rights and personal safety for last. I have seen the reports about Trump supporters behaving badly and hurting people. I am upset by them. But I do not expect it to be the new normal. This is a very dispersed country; the police work for your local city and state, not for the President. The courts are mostly *state* courts. I just can't see "having a president who sets a good example" as our only line of defense against misbehavior. You live in one of the least Trumpy places in America. If having a Trump elected president is enough to inspire people near you to be cruel or violent, the problem isn't Trump, the problem is that all that talk about building a tolerant respectful society was utterly hollow. I don't think it was hollow. I think people will push back pretty decisively on that sort of thing.
One last concern that I thought was almost not worth mentioning. We are not going to have a fascist government. Fascism (and authoritarianism generally) happens when a large organized party decides to break decisively with the existing legal rules and follow the leader instead -- when judges, police, etc etc decide that the leader is more important than the law.
Trump is not that kind of leader, the Republicans are not that kind of party, and America is not that kind of country. I can't take seriously that an unpopular septuagenarian, with a short attention span and no impulse control, whose own party barely backs him, is about to set up a fascist regime. It's bad that he is disdainful of law, but that is not actually the main barrier to his becoming Mussolini. Half the Republican party voted against Trump in the primary, and the elites -- the governors, judges, etc etc -- especially don't like him. It would be *very* hard for him to lead those people into anything particularly radical. America is not Germany or Italy; we have extremely powerful institutional restraints that those countries did not.
To step back a level. Trump is not much like any politician I can think of. He doesn't seem to care very much about policy, he doesn't seem to have any very concrete goals. In all seriousness, I don't think he expected to win (and there have been news stories to back this.) Probably he doesn't know what he wants to do, and based on everything we know, he isn't going to think hard about it. My guess is that he lacks the determination or allies to push any very controversial measure. I would expect four years of inept administration, with the occasional scandal. Imagine "California under Schwarzenegger", writ large.This may be disappointing, but it's not going to ruin the country.
The rosy scenario is that Congress passes a few good bills that he signs, and that he has decent people as his subordinates, and leaves them alone to run the country while he plays golf. The pessimistic scenario is that he has thuggish and mercenary subordinates, and engages in policy just enough to start a trade war and spark a recession. This would be bad, but recessions happen from time to time, and we'll just have to get through it and elect better leaders in 2 and 4 years.
I should start by saying that I preferred Clinton to Trump, and I am apprehensive. On the other hand, I and most other people were *utterly* wrong about the campaign, and that makes me think we should not be too confident about what will happen next. That said, from what I see on Facebook, I really do think my progressive friends have misunderstood the risks, and are distinctly more alarmed than they ought to be. Having a lot of people tell eachother how upset and frightened they are seems like it can't be a healthy way to react.
I'll take your concerns roughly in order.
Tump is not going to do anything about climate change. But that's not a Trump-specific problem, and not an urgent problem. Any plausible Republican nominee was going to be inclined to ignore the problem, and any plausible Republican Congress was also likely to ignore the problem. The Republicans win about half the elections in this country, and if they hadn't won in 2016, they'd have won in 2020, so I think this ought to have been priced into your expectations. I saw that a carbon tax got 40% of the vote in a referendum in Washington State. You might reasonably hope that with some improvements and more support from the left, similar measures could pass in significant states -- or that state legislatures could do it. I know California has a lot of pro-solar and pro-electric vehicle policies. And a lot of this can be done at the state level and you should be reasonably hopeful there. Also, the technology is going to be getting steadily better; there will be some subtle but important progress in the next few years.
I have no idea what will happen with international relations and the world at large. As near as I can tell, Trump has a lot of contradictory impulses -- back off from protecting our allies, better relations with Russia, but bomb our enemies and "be strong". I have no idea what this will add up to. It might be okay. My sense is that the Clinton/Obama foreign policy wasn't working especially well, either for us or the rest of the world. I feel like we should wait to be really worried until something actually happens.
I don't know what will happen with health care. It might be bad for a few years, it might actually be fine. My sense is that the ACA was working well for some people, and badly for many others. The Trump response is, "we'll replace it with something terrific." There is some possibility that the Republican repeal the ACA in total this year without a replacement. If that happens, I would expect them to have trouble passing any particular replacement, leading to chaos and then huge GOP losses in 2018 and 2020. Given how obvious that risk is, I would expect them *not* to just repeal it, but instead to have some complicated replacement plan. Likely, it will be fairly similar to the ACA but with moderate tweaks. They might actually make things better. Most people have pre-existing conditions of some kind or another -- you are not so unusual -- so I would expect them to have a better answer than "sorry, good luck." The congress may be pigs, but they're pigs who do want to get reelected. So here again I would sit tight and wait to see what happens.
I would be very surprised if anything drastic happens regarding abortion or birth control. Trump is not a religious-right kind of guy, and as one comic put it, has probably spent as much, personally, on abortion and birth control as the total student body of the average women's college. He is probably the *least* interested in that fight of any Republican presidential candidate I can think of.
I left human rights and personal safety for last. I have seen the reports about Trump supporters behaving badly and hurting people. I am upset by them. But I do not expect it to be the new normal. This is a very dispersed country; the police work for your local city and state, not for the President. The courts are mostly *state* courts. I just can't see "having a president who sets a good example" as our only line of defense against misbehavior. You live in one of the least Trumpy places in America. If having a Trump elected president is enough to inspire people near you to be cruel or violent, the problem isn't Trump, the problem is that all that talk about building a tolerant respectful society was utterly hollow. I don't think it was hollow. I think people will push back pretty decisively on that sort of thing.
One last concern that I thought was almost not worth mentioning. We are not going to have a fascist government. Fascism (and authoritarianism generally) happens when a large organized party decides to break decisively with the existing legal rules and follow the leader instead -- when judges, police, etc etc decide that the leader is more important than the law.
Trump is not that kind of leader, the Republicans are not that kind of party, and America is not that kind of country. I can't take seriously that an unpopular septuagenarian, with a short attention span and no impulse control, whose own party barely backs him, is about to set up a fascist regime. It's bad that he is disdainful of law, but that is not actually the main barrier to his becoming Mussolini. Half the Republican party voted against Trump in the primary, and the elites -- the governors, judges, etc etc -- especially don't like him. It would be *very* hard for him to lead those people into anything particularly radical. America is not Germany or Italy; we have extremely powerful institutional restraints that those countries did not.
To step back a level. Trump is not much like any politician I can think of. He doesn't seem to care very much about policy, he doesn't seem to have any very concrete goals. In all seriousness, I don't think he expected to win (and there have been news stories to back this.) Probably he doesn't know what he wants to do, and based on everything we know, he isn't going to think hard about it. My guess is that he lacks the determination or allies to push any very controversial measure. I would expect four years of inept administration, with the occasional scandal. Imagine "California under Schwarzenegger", writ large.This may be disappointing, but it's not going to ruin the country.
The rosy scenario is that Congress passes a few good bills that he signs, and that he has decent people as his subordinates, and leaves them alone to run the country while he plays golf. The pessimistic scenario is that he has thuggish and mercenary subordinates, and engages in policy just enough to start a trade war and spark a recession. This would be bad, but recessions happen from time to time, and we'll just have to get through it and elect better leaders in 2 and 4 years.