Why your alarmism over Trump is dangerous for democracy

We live in an era of alarmism. Everyone, or at least Trump opponents, seems alarmed nearly all the time. Even when we can’t quite summon the energy, we’re expected to be outraged. Our outrage is then presented as a badge of honor, evidence of virtue at a time of historic challenge to the Republic. But the nature of the outrage – overwrought before even Trump took office – has taken a new turn.

We are confronted daily not simply with outrage, but a kind of end-of-worldism: America is on the brink of dictatorship; Trump is going start World War III; the president’s access to the nuclear codes might actually destroy the universe; if he manages to control his impulses, then his withdrawal from the Paris climate change accords will still destroy the universe, just a bit more slowly.

As someone who works on the Middle East, I find myself, oddly enough, in a near constant state of relief. Nine months into Trump’s tenure, it could have been better, but it could just as well have been worse, perhaps much worse.

Every new day, though, seems to bring new cause for panic. Republican Senator Bob Corker’s biting remark that “the White House has become an adult day care center,” and that “someone obviously missed their shift” was tailor made for liberal fantasies. Vanity Fair correspondent Gabriel Sherman, parrying the thin line dividing news and gossip, reported on the “speculations” of an unnamed former official. According to the official, there was the open question of whether White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis would “tackle” Trump, presumably to prevent him from ordering a nuclear strike.

Before Trump even had a chance to prove just how unfit for office he was, liberals and Democrats were already preemptively tossing around the word “impeachment.” The vigor for the Russia investigation is driven, in part, by the hope that clear evidence of criminal activity will emerge, thereby justifying the introduction of articles of impeachment. Yet despite no smoking gun, 40 percent of Americans – and more worryingly 72 percent of Democrats – say they would support impeachment, according to one recent poll.

If unimpeachable evidence does, in fact, emerge, then fine. Since some are realizing how unlikely this is, the conversation is now moving onto the 25th amendment, with mainstream outlets covering it as a serious possibility. It’s almost as if the goal is to find a reason to get rid of Trump, by any means, or amendment, possible. The very eagerness with which some on the left (and the never-Trump right) are raising such drastic measures is, itself, cause for concern.

A plain reading of 25th amendment makes clear that it doesn’t apply to our current situation. Section 4 allows a majority of cabinet members or Congress to submit a written declaration that “the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” President Trump is able to discharge the powers of the presidency; the problem is how he discharges them, and the fact that many Americans believe (rightly) that he is discharging them rather badly. This is primarily a political, and therefore a subjective, judgment. To state the obvious, Americans, like all citizens of a democracy, have the right to elect bad, even very bad, politicians.

Yet someone as well regarded as legal scholar Eric Posner has made the argument, shared by apparently millions, that Americans should consider new ways, however unprecedented, to remove a president who reaches a certain level of subjective badness. Posner is explicit about this, writing that the president “can be removed, under the conventional understanding of the 25th Amendment, if he is incapacitated by mental or physical illness. But there is no obvious solution for a president who has not committed a crime or been disabled by illness, but has lost the confidence of the public because of a failure of temperament, ideology or ability.”

The argument amounts to something more simple and sinister: that presidents who express ideologies that we find outside the bounds of acceptability can be removed, despite being democratically elected by voters. Posner is also quite explicit that he is talking about political, not mental, incompetence. The entirely subjective criteria, which could easily be applied to any president going forward, include: “[His] values fall outside the mainstream… he lacks the interest or attention span to inform himself about issues; or he lacks management abilities and is unable to govern effectively.” Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen makes a similarly ideological argument for impeachment that bears no relation to anything the constitution says: “If the president can’t recognize the difference between these domestic terrorists and the people who oppose their anti-American attitudes, then he cannot defend us.”

Ironically, the arguments made by the likes of Posner and Cohen represent a greater long-term threat to American democracy than anything Trump has done so far. With the exception of some tweets that have raised the possibility of de-licensing certain networks or challenging judicial independence, Trump’s actual policies have been a number of things: damaging, dishonorable, illiberal, and racist, but they have not been undemocratic. Making this distinction – difficult for Americans since constitutional liberalism and democracy have gone hand in hand – has never been more important.

To take one example, modified versions of the January “Muslim ban” were bigoted and mean-spirited and counterproductive, but there was nothing intrinsically undemocratic about them. In other words, the president, like heads of government in any other country, has considerable leeway in deciding which non-citizens are permitted to enter the country. The rescinding of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows minors who entered the country illegally to stay, is cruel, but it is not undemocratic (particularly considering Trump campaigned explicitly on reversing it on “day one.”) To take this one step further, after reviewing Trump’s most controversial policy ideas – the ones that have been implemented and not merely mentioned in passing in unscripted campaign speeches – none of them can be deemed, strictly-speaking, undemocratic.

In effect, what many Democrats would like, whether explicitly declared or privately hoped for, is the criminalization of behavior that the “smarter” or “rational” among us deem unacceptable, racist, or evil. But, the great thing, and sometimes the scariest thing, about democracy is that it explicitly allows people to be, well, evil, as long their “evil” is expressed within the the law. Democracy is not meant to protect us from other Americans we don’t like.

Perceiving our fellow citizens, endowed with the same rights as the rest of us, as fundamentally “irrational” in a way that, in effect, excommunicates them from society, leads us toward other dangers. If they are deemed irredeemable, then we must search for explanations of how they became this way. As Alan Jacobs, author of “How to Think,” tells Emma Green here in The Atlantic: “Conspiracy theories tend to arise when you can’t think of any rational explanation for people believing or acting in a certain way. The more absurd you think your political or moral or spiritual opponents’ views are, the more likely you are to look for some explanation other than the simplest one, which is that they believe it’s true.”

Jacobs continues: “One category that’s gone away in America is ‘wrong’.” It just happens to be that the right to be wrong is at the core of the democratic idea. Without it, there isn’t much left. We might not be able to control Donald Trump, nor should we expect to, but America will survive Trump. It is less clear whether we will find a way past some of our own darker impulses, however well intentioned they might be. Once the door to the criminalization of political and ideological disagreement is opened, it may be near impossible to close it.

Is this a warning for the leftist zealots to tone it down before the mid term next year?

That’s what I’m picking up.

They’re so out of control it would probably take about a year to simmer down.

The author is a Muzzie rabblerouser pretending to soothe Leftist fears. But what he’s really doing to stoking the fires of hatred. PBS has stooped to a new low by featuring this Brookings Institute anarchist. The Leftists seem to have become more desperate.

He decries the “alarmism” in the our world as if nothing alarming is going on:

- Beheadings by ISIS
- Shooting up a concert in Las Vegas.
- A lawless Obama government moving us to globalist control against the People’s will.
- Open borders.
- Hollywood stench polluting our culture.
- Iran and North Korea threatening nuclear strikes.

You’re damn straight we’re alarmed!

He also seems to be attacking Democracy and the Constitution saying it can’t prevent evil acts being done by one group against another.

So according to this anarchist, the next step is for the Caliphate to overthrow democracy.

This is a very dangerous individual — a wolf in a sheep’s costume. He’s trying to stir the Leftists into active revolt.

Thanks, 2ndDiv.

Articles like this need to posted to show who our enemy is.

The Brookings Institute is the think tank of the Deep State. Wouldn’t be surprised if this guy was hired by ValJar or the Chief Usurper.

there is no obvious solution for a president who has not committed a crime or been disabled by illness, but has lost the confidence of the public because of a failure of temperament, ideology or ability

He's talking about Zero here, right?

If the president can’t recognize the difference between these domestic terrorists and the people who oppose their anti-American attitudes, then he cannot defend us.

Again - is this about Barky, or Trump?

And just who are these exalted individuals, O Great One?

...”The USA isn’t a ‘Democracy’ as they state, it is a Constitutional Republic...”...

I highly recommend that everyone get a copy of the book, “Scalia Speaks,” which is a collection of Antonin Scalia’s speeches, put together and edited by Christopher Scalia and Edward Whelan. Judge Scalia was one of the great intellects of our time and, interestingly, had a close friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, though they were worlds apart in their political views. His speech on Civic Education, pages 64-75, clearly show why our nation is breaking apart. People who do not know anything about their history, both good and bad, are doomed to lose everything, for they have no roots and therefore no logical way forward into the future. When they use models of other nations not nearly so free as their own, to be mimicked, they write their own epitaph. I hope many will read the words of this fine man, so human, so cheerful, so brilliant and so successful on the Supreme Court. I lament that he is gone. May his insights and understanding of the law and human nature infect our young so that some of them can rise up to change the destructive path we are on.

>>what he’s really doing to stoking the fires of hatred.

Exactly. Virtue signalling while recounting every nasty thing the left says about Trump and explaining that all those opinions are absolute truth. It’s just that nothing has yet risen to the level of being unconstitutional. So sad. But there’s always hope that some far fetched fantasy will actually come to pass. And how enjoyable, while waiting, to have an opportunity to list all the ways they hate him.

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