The grave threat of Donald Trump

The Jewish Passover song "Dayenu" is a whole list of many great things God has done. The word "dayenu" means roughly "It would have been enough". It would have been enough if he had brought us out of Egypt, it would have been enough if he had slain their first-born, it would have been enough if he had parted the waters for us. But he did all those things, and all together he is even more worthy of worship and praise.

I am tempted to use the same format in describing my objections to Donald Trump.

It would have been enough if he was a Republican, which in the last several decades implies a strong conservatism -- notably a sense that a social safety net is a bad thing, and that the government can't possibly be the solution to any problem. While he tossed out a few populist ideas on the campaign trail, in office he has stayed strictly with the Republican agenda.

It would have been enough that he is an unashamed pussy-grabber. It would have been enough that he fuels racial hatred. It would have been enough that he attacks all his opponents viciously. It would have been enough that he lies blatantly and repeatedly and claims that the mainstream press offers nothing but fake news. It would have been enough that he started a pointless trade war. It would have been enough that he let down the Kurds on some sort of personal whim. I have no doubt forgotten many others. It is a frightening thought that by law he can at his sole discretion order a nuclear attack if that is his whim. The only thing that might prevent this is the refusal of his subordinates to carry out the order.

But all those things pale in significance against his assault on the US form of constitutional government. In the clearest case to date, he believes he can withhold aid from a US ally until they undertake an investigation and claim wrongdoing by his domestic political opponent for his own political gain. He can viciously attack the constitutionally mandated investigation of his possible wrongdoing by the Congress. It seems his obstruction is just beginning.

Trump himself would be nothing if a substantial minority of the country hadn't elected him. He would soon become nothing if a significant part of that same substantial minority abandoned him. The combination of malice and ignorance that motivate ardent Trump supporters in various proportions is frightening. In the long term, we should be able to work on the ignorance, though malice is a harder problem. But in the mean time they are still a minority and one that can be thwarted at the ballot box.

It's hard to exaggerate how much has changed in the last few decades. Certainly in 1980, prior to the Reagan revolution, and for some time after that, a president behaving as Trump is would have been impeached and removed from office by a nearly unanimous vote of the Senate. This appears unlikely now because Republicans refuse to abandon him. To what extent that is due to their own firm convictions and to what extent it is fear of getting "primaried" by Trump supporters really doesn't matter. And that means that these Republican officials too are a serious threat to our constitutional form of government. It is a sobering thought that if Trump goes, others will likely rise to take the same approach to undermining the constitution. They likely will not repeat Trump's ineptitude and impulsiveness, and so they might be even more of a threat.

The Republican party itself has become a threat to the constitution. The solution is to vote this party out of office until such time as the party re-invents with respect for the constitution.

I have always thought such sentiments as, "Don't vote, it only encourages them" and "Politicians are all alike", and "Politicians should be changed frequently, like diapers, and for the same reason" were unhelpful and silly. At this point, I feel they are a deadly threat to our democracy. There is nothing more important than protecting our democratic form of government. Within our system partisan gridlock is frustrating, but we can work for its eventual resolution. Occasionally there is bipartisan consensus and things do get done. Without respect for the constitution, all of that is at risk. There is an aversion to comparing anyone to Hitler, but in one particular respect there is an apt analogy here: Hitler came to power largely through free and fair elections. He was only able to cancel further elections because of widespread support. We all know that didn't end well.

To make the seriousness of my position clear, if Trump's opponent in the fall of 2020 was Mitt Romney, I would strongly support Mitt Romney. If it was a modern incarnation of George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, I would strongly support them. If it was Michael Pence as he was in the summer of 2016, I would support him, though I'm not sure if his defense of Trump since then has corrupted his own support for the constitution. I find the politics of all of those people to be repulsive. But if indeed they support and respect the constitution, I would favor them strongly and work for their election.

Needless to say, I will strongly support his actual Democratic opponent, whoever that might be. My view tends to make "electability" a prime concern. Moderation in many Democratic legislators, if not partisan gridlock, is likely to prevent major policy initiatives being passed anyway, but return to respect for the constitution is an achievable goal.

And in November of 2020, I will consider anyone who stays home because it doesn't matter to be a gravely mistaken and morally bankrupt person. Similarly with anyone who votes Republican except out of ignorance.

A role for the language police

My mother felt that any educated person should understand the fine points of grammar, and that those who failed in that regard showed laziness and lack of education. "Irregardless" was worthy of derision because of the double negative. Tom Paxton got a derisive laugh from the "Marvelous Toy" line that his son "loves it just like me", as it necessarily meant that the boy loved the toy in the same way he loved his father. Knowing the conjugations of "lay/laid/laid" (transitive) and "lie/lay/lain" (intransive) was vital. Growing up in Durham, New Hampshire, the town was a mix of those with more standard US accents and the local New England accent. When my English teacher at parents' night said she tried to make sure her students' use of language was "akkuhrat" and "cahful" my mother thought she was not being provincial -- she was wrong.

Then I was introduced in college to the serious scientific study of language and the distinction between prescriptive linguistics (how people should speak or write) and descriptive linguistics (how people actually speak or write). Prescriptive rules were silly, because language is constantly changing. Black English was the example of choice (not the Boston accent) of how different dialects of English had their own rules that weren't those of standard English -- different, but just as sensible.

Not so many years ago older folks were concerned that young people used "like" so much, putting it in places it never would have belonged in the past. I read a linguistics paper describing the phenomenon, and finding four or five specific functions that the word served in that sort of speech, with specific rules governing where and when it could appear.

At the level of descriptive linguistics, language is full of generalizations that hold for everyone -- they are invisible to us because we all agree on them. Compare,

Although he was tired, Bill kept on walking.

*He kept on walking although Bill was tired.

You can sometimes introduce a pronoun before the word it refers to, but not always. The leading asterisk is the linguist's notation for saying it is ungrammatical. No dialect of English on earth is going to allow the second construction, no grammar book is going to bother to tell you it's not allowed, and no one ever gets it wrong. The second sentence makes sense only if Bill is some other person entirely. This is part of descriptive linguistics, finding generalizations that we humans are simply not aware of.

Enlightened linguistics recognizes that language changes, so that yesterday's hard-and-fast rule is relaxed, and yesterday's convention isn't true any more. I myself have been surprised that things I was raised to believe were completely forbidden are now accepted usage. As this view is more generally accepted, it tends to give rise to "anything goes". As long as people can understand what you mean, who cares if it violates some longstanding rule?

I have a slightly different vision. The language police serve the role of slowing down language change. When they tell people they are using language wrong, they make sure people realize when they say things in a new way that in recent history they didn't. It nudges them back into line with past usage if there isn't some good reason to change it. Sometimes language has to change. New technology is an obvious cause. Other times it isn't clear why language has to change, but it does. There is some underlying force that makes it happen. And when that happens the language police will lose. But in the mean time they push back against whimsical language change.

I'm not an avid language policer myself, but it can of course be done different ways. I might be inclined to say, "You know, until recently that would have been considered wrong" rather than, "What you're saying is bad English!" But I'm still open to the idea that that latter formulation might be serving a useful purpose.

Why some beneficiaries do not like redistribution

In a <recent post> I argued that moral responsibility depended on the concept of free will and consciousness. Actually, the same holds not just for moral responsibility but any kind of responsibility at all.

One issue at the center of US political debate is redistribution. To what extent should we tax the wealthy and those with high incomes in order to provide services for those who are poor?

The classic conservative argument is roughly, "I've worked hard to get where I am and I'm proud of it. Those people who want help are lazy. People who try hard can make it and don't need help." As you might expect, you hear this argument more from people who are wealthier and more successful, but you also hear it from those who don't have much but are proud of what they do have and can see how they would have even less if they hadn't worked hard and been prudent.

The liberal argument is roughly, "Those who are successful have made it partly through their hard work, but they have also made it through the advantages that come from a privileged background, maybe even good genes. Some have literally inherited their wealth, for some luck has played a large role, and some got where they are from illegal and unethical dealings. So it's right that they have more money than other people, but it's also perfectly fine to take some of what they have earned by way of taxes."

So, how much responsibility do we have for how our lives go? If we have no free will, then we aren't responsible at all, but as I have argued no one can really live without the idea that they make choices freely. But even if you allow for free will, science would strongly suggest that factors outside of a person's control have a great deal to do with how well they do in life.

It is apparent to even conservatives that some people are not responsible for their ill fortune, including those born with severe intellectual or physical handicaps. And I believe most will support the idea of helping out such people through government action or private charity.

But a key issue is not just how much control we have over our lives but how much control we want to believe we have. Answer: people want to believe they have control. This is one explanation for why so many poorer Americans vote against their own economic interests. It may not be pleasant to think that they are poor because they haven't worked hard and been prudent. But it might be even more unpleasant to think that they really didn't have much control -- they would still be poor even if they had tried harder. The one reflects poorly on them as individuals, the other undermines their whole idea of humans having control over their destiny. This could also explain why some poor people don't want to tax the wealthy more -- they judge that the wealthy made it through their own choices and should be able to enjoy what they made.

The formulation of the liberal view taken to an extreme is, "From each according to his means, to each according to his needs." It is a truly noble idea. We all work for the benefit of all. The problem comes in practice. Most people value the well-being of their own families more than the society at large. If their level of effort has no effect on how well-off their families are, that is lack of control over what they value, and most of them stop working hard. That is an argument for why we should reward those who succeed far more than the share of their success that is due to their own efforts. Suppose for instance that we say that 90% of a person's success is due to factors beyond their control and 10% to their own efforts. That might suggest taxing 90% of everyone's income and redistributing it according to need. But how people respond to incentives suggests that we should actually let successful people keep far more than 10% -- many times more.

It's also worth reflecting that the idea of government safety net programs is quite a modern invention. It depends on having a considerable degree of wealth in a society. In the US it originated in the 1930s with New Deal programs. Before that, the assumption was that those who couldn't find a way to eke out a living would just die -- which is of course the way the entire natural world operates. Safety nets may be a recent invention, but they are a wonderful one.

I favor a considerable degree of economic redistribution -- universal health insurance, subsidized child care, a vastly expanded earned income credit, perhaps a guaranteed basic income, to name a few -- but have sketched out some reasons for why there is resistance to these ideas even among those who would benefit from them.