Author Archives: Sheila

Those Trump Supporters

I frequently refer to the recurring discussions among sane Americans–the ones that begin with incomprehension: what do Trump’s supporters see in him that they find attractive? What evidence can they cite to suggest that he is even minimally competent? How do they explain away the copious, constantly-growing evidence of his corruption, his ignorance, his childish and unhinged behaviors?

Clearly, the ability of voters in the age of the internet to rely on sources of “information” that confirm their desired “facts” has played a major part.

A recent post by a friend of mine suggests that the purveyors of cyber-disinformation rely on the civic ignorance of their audience; he posted a copy of a story from a Trump site about four Democratic Senators who have announced they were switching parties in response to impeachment. There were pictures of the Senators, and they were identified by name. One small problem: None of them were real. They don’t exist.

Presumably, those who created the site were confident that visitors wouldn’t know that there are no Senators with those names (or faces).

That’s what my people call chutzpah, and Kellyanne Conway would call “alternate reality.”

I’ve seen a number of articles either penned by or interviews of psychiatrists, and in most of them, like this article from Raw Story, the professionals identify traits common to Trump supporters: authoritarian personality syndrome, social dominance orientation, and a connected group of diagnoses that revolve around bigotry. Studies following the 2016 election found a significant relationship between racial resentment and support for Trump; studies also found that Trump voters have fewer interactions with people of different races or religions, and are more likely to exhibit “relative deprivation.”

Relative deprivation refers to the experience of being deprived of something to which one believes they are entitled. It is the discontent felt when one compares their position in life to others who they feel are equal or inferior but have unfairly had more success than them.

I was intrigued by an article focusing on the opinion of a long-time conservative named Tom Nichols (full disclosure, I have no idea who he is–hadn’t previously come across him). Nichols says that “being nuts” is Trump’s “superpower.”

If Trump were not able to convince his cult that reality isn’t real, we’d be arguing about who’s really doing well and who isn’t – just as we did under Obama and every other president. Farmers would be up in arms,” Nichols said in a Twitter thread. “When Trumpers say they’re better off, there’s no evidence for it other than that they *feel* better off. Factories aren’t reopening. Dead small towns are not being reborn. The cities? Doing fine, thank you. But Trump says: ‘This isn’t true,’ and being *nuts* is what sells it.”

Nichols noted that Trump’s ridiculous behavior was on full display in the bizarre letter he sent to Nancy Pelosi. He pointed out that the tone and absurdist quality of the letter —not just Trump’s usual lies and numerous exclamation points —have led many observers to genuinely question Trump’s mental health.

I don’t question it. I have long been of the opinion that Trump is significantly mentally ill. Others are finally coming to that same conclusion.

“I’m only 2 1/2 paragraphs in to Trump’s letter and it’s clear to me that our President is unwell, unfit and very uninformed about our government & our legal system. And that fills me with a profound sadness that we’re at this point. It’s time to fix this,” wrote legal analyst Joyce Vance.

Lawfare Executive Editor Susan Hennessey wrote: “This is not a letter authored by someone of sound mind or in full command of his mental faculties. The implications of that are obviously immense and quite scary but how long can we really continue to ignore it?”

As Nichols pointed out, Trump’s supporters celebrated that letter. (“He tells it like it is…”)

How much do people have to lie to themselves, and for how long, before we can conclude that they aren’t just uninformed, but mentally unwell? How much do people have to hate and resent various “Others” in order to reject the evidence of their own eyes and ears?

And most important of all, as we approach November of 2020, how many of these people are there?

Comments

When Should The Majority Rule?

In the wake of Boris Johnson’s victory in the election in the UK, a distinguished scholar of comparative constitutionalism posted a lengthy analysis to a listserv in which I participate. Much of that analysis is technical and of interest mainly to other academics, but I was struck by her opening observation:

Calling the Johnson victory a landslide assumes that the results of nationwide first-past-the-post constituency elections adequately capture public sentiment. Yes, Johnson got an overwhelming majority of seats but he didn’t win even a simple majority of the vote. In fact, it turns out that the Tories were up a mere 1.2% in vote totals over their disastrous 2017 election results – in which they lost their parliamentary majority and had to enter a confidence-and-supply agreement with the DUP. Labour is now being called down and out with the worst election results (measured in seats) since the 1930s because they were 7.8% down from 2017. Compared with the 2015 election, they were only 2% down, hardly the stuff of grand tragedy…

The UK first-past-the-post electoral system is fiendishly sensitive to small vote shifts which can produce seismic effects depending on how they are distributed across constituencies.

Sound like another electoral system with which you’re familiar?

Politicians and pundits will continue their ongoing arguments for and against the Electoral College, and the British are evidently embroiled in similar discussions about the operation of their system, but there is an underlying issue with which we very rarely engage: what sorts of social and legal arrangements ought to be decided by popular majorities, and what sorts ought to be protected from the passions of those same majorities?

Defenders of the Electoral College point to the Founders’ well-documented concerns about those “passions of the majority,” and to their initial reluctance to remit even the choice of Senators to popular vote. Opponents point to evidence that the Electoral College was a concession to Southern states– they would have been severely disadvantaged in a system where the popular vote prevailed, because their slaves wouldn’t count.

Whatever side of that argument you find most persuasive, the question remains: in the 21st Century, which decisions should be made by popular vote, and which should not?

A fair reading of the Founders’ basic approach–buttressed by political philosophers from the Enlightenment to modern times–suggests that they favored some form of majority rule for issues of governance, and protection from the “passions of the majority” for issues of human and/or individual rights.

If we look at the Constitution, we see that laws are to be made by representatives of the people (the reason we call ourselves a representative democracy). Although it is certainly true that those representatives were supposed to vote for legislation based upon their presumed knowledge and personal beliefs, if those votes proved to be inconsistent with the desires of their constituents, the constituents could vote them out. (It’s also worth noting that legislation was supposed to be passed by a simple majority vote of those legislators–something that seems quaint in an era where overuse of the filibuster means we need super-majorities in the Senate to pass pretty much anything.)

If we look at the Bill of Rights, we see a very different standard. Because the Founders believed in “natural rights”–that is, they believed that humans (okay, white male humans) are born with certain “unalienable rights”–they protected the exercise of those rights against the sentiments of popular majorities.

When you think about it, it’s a striking dichotomy.

It is supposed to take a majority of American voters (or states) to choose the people who will run our government. It is supposed to take a majority of lawmakers to pass legislation. But individual citizens are supposed to be protected against the disapproval of those same popular majorities when they are exercising their fundamental rights.

We can–and do–argue about how to define “fundamental rights” and how to ensure that vote totals accurately reflect majority sentiment. But I think it is fair to say that when electoral systems operate to privilege minority parties and candidates over those preferred by majorities, those systems are neither democratically nor constitutionally legitimate.

Comments

Saving The Courts

Yesterday’s post focused on the unending stream of ideologues being elevated to the federal bench under Trump.

Assuming–as even the least optimistic among us must–that massive turnout in  2020 rids us of this ignorant, corrupt and malevolent administration and enough of its feckless enablers to change control of the Senate, how might a new administration rescue the federal courts from the partisanship that is tarnishing both their operations and reputations?

My graduate students have some suggestions.

In the take-home final examination I gave my graduate Law and Public Policy class, the following question was one of three from which they could choose to submit a concluding essay:

Over the past several years, the federal courts, and especially the Supreme Court, have come to be viewed by both political parties as political prizes. Rather than choosing nominees with sterling legal credentials, appointments to the courts have increasingly been based upon the nominee’s perceived political ideology. You have been elected President, and your party controls both houses of Congress. You want to return the courts to their status as respected impartial arbiters of the law. What changes would you make to the composition of the courts, the nomination process or otherwise in order to accomplish this?

I was surprised by the number of students who chose this question, and impressed by the thoughtfulness with which they approached it.

A number advocated Increasing the number of Supreme Court Justices, noting that their number is not mandated by the Constitution and has been changed previously. Most suggested a panel somewhere between 12 and 20.

Another popular proposal was the creation of a nonpartisan advisory committee composed of legal scholars, sitting judges and representatives of the ABA, who would be charged with coming up with–and thoroughly vetting– a slate of candidates from which the President would choose his nominee.Some students suggested analogous processes for the lower courts.

In recognition of the fact that people live far longer these days, several suggested limiting the terms of Supreme Court Justices–making their tenures long enough to remove the threat of political pressure that prompted the Founders to prescribe lifetime terms, but short enough to ensure more frequent turnover.

One student supported implementation of the “Supreme Court Lottery”  advocated by legal scholars Epps and Sitaraman. Under this proposal, “each judge on the federal courts of appeals would also be appointed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.  When cases are heard, an appropriate number of these judges would be chosen at random to sit on the Supreme Court panel.”

Several students noted the need for a process to increase what one called “demographic accountability”–a judiciary that more closely reflects the composition of the population, and suggested ways this might be accomplished.

All in all, the number of students who chose to answer this question and the various suggestions contained in those responses suggests the existence of widespread agreement on at least two things: 1) the courts are in danger of losing legitimacy (perhaps it would be more accurate to say “in danger of continuing to lose legitimacy–a loss that really began to gather steam with the decision in Bush v. Gore) and 2) partisanship and extreme partisan polarization are to blame.

My students are not lawyers. I teach in a school of public affairs, not a law school, so some of the suggested “reforms” were impractical or otherwise fanciful. But the students in my graduate class tend to be older, employed, with families, and they are generally thoughtful and civically-engaged. During the semester, virtually all of them demonstrated deep concerns with the dysfunction, chosen ignorance, and theatrics that have replaced  working governance.

Of course, if the people who didn’t bother to vote in 2016 stay home again in 2020– if the electorate does not come out en masse to evict the criminals, buffoons and fellow-travelers who are running roughshod over America’s ideals and Constitution–  suggestions for reforms will continue to be beside the point.

Comments

Another Stomach-Turning Appointment

While we are all transfixed by the Impeachment process, and by Republicans’ bizarre antics during the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee proceedings, their Senate counterparts have been busy defiling the federal bench and giving a middle finger to the rule of law by confirming judicial nominees who are demonstrably unfit.

Ed Brayton recently reported on the confirmation of one such specimen: a creationist named Lawrence Van Dyke. Van Dyke is yet another Trump nominee rated “unfit” by the American Bar Association–ratings to which the Administration has responded by discontinuing the practice of asking the ABA for its evaluation of potential nominees.

When you don’t get the answers you want, just stop asking the questions…

In addition to being considered unfit by his legal peers, however, Van Dyke is apparently a real piece of work:

After conducting 60 interviews, the ABA found that VanDyke has a reputation as “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules.” Video of VanDyke lecturing, scolding, and interrupting judges during oral argument while serving as Nevada solicitor general lends credence to that assessment…

VanDyke has a long record as an anti-LGBTQ activist. He wrote in 2004 that marriage equality “will hurt families, and consequentially children and society.” As the solicitor general of Montana, he advocated for the state to join two briefs alleging that legal recognition of same-sex relationships would harm children. The first claimed that prohibiting same-sex marriage promoted “optimal childrearing” because same-sex couples “cannot provide” the optimal “family structure.” And the second asserted that states “may rationally conclude” that “it is better” for parents to have a “biological” connection to their children…

How would you like to be an LGBTQ litigant whose claim was being adjudicated by this gem? As Brayton writes,

Only Trump would have even considered appointing this ignorant dolt to the federal bench. And since the Senate Republicans would confirm a ham sandwich if Trump nominated one, we’re now stuck with this mushhead for a lifetime.

A regular reader of this blog recently sent me an email asking whether Bill Barr could be impeached. As I told her, he could be–and he should be. But so long as Mitch McConnell is in charge of the Senate, he won’t be.

The New York Bar Association recently issued a statement to the effect that, if Barr refuses to recuse himself from the Ukraine investigation, he should resign or, failing that, “be subject to sanctions, including possible removal, by Congress.” It is certainly foreseeable that other bar associations, responding to inappropriate behavior by one of Trump’s questionable judicial appointments, might also call on Congress to issue sanctions– although doing so would raise a very real possibility of judicial retaliation against lawyers with suits pending in that courtroom.

More to the point, calling out judicial misbehavior is useless if the Senate remains in the hands of the same no-integrity Republicans who confirmed these specimens in the first place.

As important as it is to defeat Donald Trump in November, it is every bit as important–actually, it is even more important–to remove Mitch McConnell (aka the most evil man in America) and the Republican majority that has enabled him.

Comments

The Disinformation Industry

A couple of days ago, the Washington Post published a review of “Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos” by Peter Bergen.The review was very positive; while the reviewer acknowledged that Bergen hadn’t told us anything that hadn’t previously been reported, he was impressed with the book’s readability and clarity.

From the moment Trump strutted into the Oval Office, we have been buried by an avalanche of jaw-dropping revelations about what happens when an unhinged, cynical and impulsive commander in chief bumps up against professionalism, decency and the rule of law. So when opening a new book promising still more inside stories of Trump’s foreign policy, it is hard to expect an author to say anything new — especially when the book was written before the impeachment drama started. Perhaps the best one can hope for is something that helps put this craziness in perspective and lays out the stakes for the future.

The book is another addition to the reams of credible reporting and a veritable avalanche of previous books of widely varying quality, accuracy and readability. It’s hard to conceive how even the most politically disinterested American could fail to hear about the frenzied, ungrammatical tweets, the cozying up to autocrats, the insults to our allies, the threats to the environment…

Sane citizens are left to wonder why his supporters don’t seem to care. The answer is evidently that they don’t believe any of it. It’s all “fake news,” fostered by a cottage industry of disinformation and propaganda.

As the House Judiciary Committee convened Friday to approve articles of impeachment against President Trump, a watch party got underway in a private Facebook group that rallies its more than 75,000 members around the banner, “THE TRUMP DEPLORABLES.”

The comments that streamed forth in the group illustrate how Trump’s most ardent supporters have fashioned alternative realities for themselves — as well as for Republican lawmakers aiming to turn the charge of corruption back on those investigating the president.

The feed — from Fox News, a major source of news for the president’s supporters — showed the same scene available to viewers tuning in on various networks all over the country. But in the online enclave where the self-described “deplorables” had gathered to watch the committee vote, Democrats are the lawbreakers who “should be impeached,” as one viewer wrote. Trump’s word is truth. And the federal employees who question his version of events are not just mistaken, they are “scum,” as Trump labeled members of the intelligence community at a rally this week in Hershey, Pa.

The antics of the Republicans during the committee deliberations were off-putting and clownish to reasonable viewers, but they made perfect sense to Trumpers following live on social media,” in groups sealed off from general scrutiny, where facts are established by volume, and confirmation comes from likes.”

The effect of social media is to jack up the tenor of everything,” said Carl Cameron, who spent more than two decades as a reporter for Fox News before leaving in 2017. This year, he helped found Front Page Live, a liberal news aggregation site. “There’s a statement made by a witness, or an interaction with a lawmaker, and users are able to put together a counternarrative in real time.”

Cameron described the live comment streams as laboratories of right-wing talking points, most likely to attract viewers who already share a certain bias. These viewers are unlikely to change their minds, and thus shift opinion polling on impeachment, which has remained relatively stable.

But the talking points are then exported through other channels, he added, and eventually reach persuadable voters. Social media, he said, does not just echo but serves as an “amplifier, with powerful cross-pollination on the different platforms, until the talk eventually reaches the office water cooler or coffee machine, or the Thanksgiving table.”

I keep coming back to the incredible danger posed by a media environment that no longer produces a shared reality–a fragmented environment enabled by the Internet where partisans and lunatics alike can live in bubbles of their own creation, detached from those pesky things we used to call “facts.”

I lay awake worrying about the size of the alternate reality population, because when reality bites, it will bite us all.

Comments