In chapter 6, What's New? What's Next? Threats to the American Constitutional Order, Jennifer Hochschild (Professor of Government, Harvard) gives her view of America's current situation. The chapter is in the 2018 book, Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?, edited by Mark A. Graber, et al. The point of the book is to see how various experts diagnose America's current state of political affairs in light of history, not to offer solutions to problems. The editors write: "We do not, however, spend much energy offering cures, believing at this stage diagnosis is far more important, and not having any ready-made cures to offer."
How the right sees it: Hochschild starts out by listing reasons to think that America's situation under President Trump is very good to excellent. She quotes Nicholas Kristof: "2017 was probably the very best year in the long history of humanity." She lists areas of social progress to illustrate a basis for Kristof's optimism, e.g., decreasing gender pay gap, legalized same-sex marriage and decreased unemployment among essentially all groups and ages.
She describes the deep fears of the right like this: "If western governments can't, or won't, discharge the basic duties of providing physical safety and domestic tranquility, the question becomes whether democracies' citizens will come to regard the attributes that define their societies, such as pluralism, tolerance and civil liberties, as unaffordable luxuries. . . . . Tea Party protesters showed that 'corruption had eaten deeply into constitutional foundations, and that government was slipping beyond control of the governed'. . . . . To these analysts, a Trump presidency is a last-ditch heroic effort to save the republic, not evidence that America died on November 8, 2016."
Data discussed previously pointed to white insecurity and fears arising from social and demographic changes as the most important factor in Trump's election. The vision of America the right sees differs radically from how the left generally sees the situation.
Hochschild identifies two core factors that constitute constitutional rot and could lead to constitutional crisis. The first is the urban-rural divide and the second is hostility toward and degradation of liberalism, which she defines as a cluster of rights, norms and values.
The urban-rural divide: The urban-rural divide is described as about democracy and whether it still enables the two sides to engage to find common interests and resolve problems. She sees the right as being right about threat to the constitutional order, but for the wrong reasons. Her explanation is that "the core problem with democracy is Brexit-like: social and economic opportunities, societal institutions, individual behaviors and political attitudes are all lining up to reinforce one another such that" urban and rural areas are literally and metaphorically moving farther apart. She argues that the differences can harden into belief that one side's win necessarily means the other's loss. America's geographically based electoral order is, according to Hochschild, "poorly equipped to manage" this kind of social division.
Hochschild dives very deep into the data about Trump supporters and finds this: "They are disproportionately conservative religiously and culturally, mistrustful of elites, hostile to intellectuals, reliant on nonmainstream media, economically insecure, and fearful of downward mobility. . . . . Counties with many Trump supporters are disproportionately unhealthy, a pattern that both describes and causes growing economic and behavioral divides. . . . .'death predicts whether people vote for Donald Trump.' . . . . Affective [emotion-driven] polarization has permeated judgments about interpersonal relations, and exceeds polarization based on other prominent social cleavages. . . . . Americans not only mistrust one another, but also deeply mistrust the American national government."
Hostility and degradation challenge liberal governance: Hochschild argues that Trump is challenging liberal norms, practices and institutions. Trump attacks both people or groups of people and organizations and institutions needed for liberal politics. His attacks are grounded in dark free speech,[1] or as Hochschild puts it, "lying, ignoring unpalatable truths, and propounding obviously double standards."[2] The point is to foment unwarranted emotions including unwarranted disrespect, intolerance, distrust, cynicism and disgust.
Destruction of political norms is a major concern and imposes a constitutional risk that is hard or impossible to evaluate with any precision.
Footnotes:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, confuse and demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide corruption, and inconvenient truths and facts, and (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism.
2. Regarding hypocrisy, or Hochschild's "obviously double standard", the most recent outrageous example from congressional republicans comes from Mitch McConnell. He recently said that while he completely refused to consider Obama's Supreme Court nominee in an election year (2016), he would not hesitate to consider and consent to a Trump nominee in 2020, commenting: "We'd fill it," referring to the nomination. This blatant hypocrisy is highly polarizing, to say the least. Nonetheless, McConnell is completely nonchalant about it. That shows his utter contempt for political norms and political opposition, both of which are forms of constitutional rot.
B&B orig: 5/29/19
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