Every once in a while an article comes along that forces us (or ought to force us) to question our assumptions. I think Andrew Sullivan has accomplished this with his new piece in New York magazine. It took me a while to warm up what he was trying to get across. As a philosophy major, I am a little impatient when folks try to take Plato to the masses. I know only too well how hard it is to use that kind of mechanism to break through and get people to really think.
I also believe that Plato’s ideas on politics are of limited use to us for several reasons, varying from anachronism to a basic lack of shared values. But, it’s true, Plato did kind of describe the rise of Donald Trump and it looks like he pretty much nailed the reasons why someone like Trump would have an appeal to a democracy well along its way to pushing equality to the outer fringes of the possible.
I’ve already begun to question some of this myself. I no longer believe we made a wise trade when we sought to stamp out corruption in state legislatures by moving to the popular election of U.S. senators. In retrospect, we may have cleaned up how senators are elected a little bit, and we certainly provided a system with more direct accountability, but the cost was to make senators as dependent on big money donations as congressmen, and to remove much of the insulation they were supposed to enjoy from the momentary passions of the public. We don’t have any need for a Senate that is just as frightened and knee-jerk as the House but which is dramatically less representative of the population. If we’re going to give Wyoming (with barely over a half a million people) the same representation in the Senate as California (now approaching 40 million souls), there must be something in it for us as a nation. And if there isn’t anything in it for us, then the Senate should be abolished. When we moved to popular elections, the only remaining insulation for senators was their six-year terms. Presumably, they would be willing to cast a difficult vote if they wouldn’t have to face the wrath of the voters for five or six years, and with a third of the body always about that far away from a reelection campaign, the upper body was supposed to be “august” and statesmanlike.
Right now, though, they are so frightened that they can’t even agree to hold a hearing on a Supreme Court Justice.
It may be true that democracy is unstable and prone to takeover by demagogues. The designers of our Republic certainly felt that way. We probably all agree that they were too cautious in not democratic enough, but it is possible to go too far in the other direction. At least, it’s possible to screw up their design by tinkering with it just enough to make it unworkable but not enough to give it newfound legitimacy.
There’s a lot more to say about Sullivan’s piece, but I’ll leave it with this food for thought for now.
To address this on a more practical level, I think Matt Yglesias (another writer that I have an on-off relationship with) touched on this a while ago while he was writing for Thinkprogress. Americans vote for a whole host of positions that might better be served by (dirty word) bureaucracy. Think about it, we elect over 500,000 officials between Federal, State, County, and City governments. That’s insane.
I consider myself relatively informed and I have very little idea of what my city council representatives stand for, never mind “non-partisan” judicial candidates and sheriffs. And since electors select people for these positions there’s really no accountability for those elected, except to the parties that bankroll their candidacies. And that’s the nut of the problem, isn’t it?
I sat down over the weekend and filled in my ballot, then dropped it off at a public library. That’s how we do things here in Oregon. Anyway, I saw a boatload of judges up for election, all unopposed. Ditto for some other nonpartisan posts. I don’t bother voting for these judicial elections because I know squat about these judges. Good Lord, unless one were exposed for graft or corruption, there’s no particular reason that I should have heard of them.
I’m pretty knowledgeable about local govt officials, but we have a good independent news (yes: NEWS) paper that covers local stuff in detail, plus we have to work with the county a lot, so I’m well aware of the penchants, foibles and biases of County reps. But I doubt that most citizens in my area are as aware as I am.
As for judges, I work in the legal system (not a lawyer), so I happen to often know who the judges are and what they’re like on the bench. Again, I’m an outlier, and I doubt that most citizens have that insiders’ knowledge. Once in a while, we have judges who run opposed because of something the judge did that caused the public to look on the incumbent judge with disfavor. Sometimes the incumbent judge is voted out, sometimes not. If there are issues with a particular judge, those do get reported on in various places, so the public is more aware.
I often also know about school boards, but that’s because I make an effort knowing how the GOP gained so much grass roots power via school boards. But once one gets to other offices, it’s a crap shoot. Sometimes I can find info on a particular race, and sometimes I cannot.
I get to vote by mail, and it usually takes me a couple of hours – CA typically has numerous ballot initiatives – to do at home with my PC. It was a huge hassle before absentee ballots came along. I had to take a long piece of paper with me with all of my decisions written down to pull the correct lever. Voting by mail is the only way to go. Also avoids lines.
I suspect that a lot of citizens only vote for certain races & ballot initiatives and leave the rest blank bc they simply don’t know.
That’s what I do in Cook County IL with the judicial ballots. We have a retain yes/no ballot that is an improvement over the old partisan ballot wherein if the Chicago machine put you on the ballot you were automatically in. Still, I usually leave them all blank because I don’t have a clue if they are good or bad. Once in a while I’ll find some to vote “NO” on, such as the judge under judicial supervision from the court of appeals because of excessive absenteeism, or the judge that both prosecutors and defense attorneys called “erratic and abusive”, but usually all 100 or so are non-entities. In rural parts of the state where there are four or five judges it may be different. Most people either automatically vote yes or no to all of them. An appointment system like Federal Judges would be better, but with 10 or 15 year terms, not life.
Even if you read candidate’s statements or attend town hall meetings, it’s hard to learn about school boards. The literature is just flag waving. Everyone is for “quality education”. When I had kids/grandkids in school i would vote for/against incumbents based on the job I felt the schools were doing which isn’t accurate either. I want to see a state wide educational system run by gubernatorial appointments, maybe with state senate confirmation at the highest level. Let the Governor be held responsible for education.
P.S. Our school board President has a degree in education or maybe obfuscation. She had a four page candidate statement with about three sentences per page. Even with my master’s degree, I couldn’t understand what the Hell she was trying to say besides giving us a snow job. voted against her for not being able to write plain English. Truly “Piled Higher and Deeper”.
I agree that school board votes are tricky and can be obscure. Again we have a good NEWS – real news – alternate paper that provides insightful and investigative journalism. Some of the school boards come under scrutiny, so I often have more info at my disposal. If only it could be the same everywhere.
Judicial voting is a joke. Frequently even with time and the internet I can’t find any relevent information on the candidates, and even when I can I don’t have the legal knowledge to evaluate their actions. It’s only purpose is to give the crazies a way to force judges to kowtow to nutty beliefs.
I actually do get it (since I am trained), but the difficulty of finding the opinions unless you are part of a law firm that has subscriptions to Lexis/Westlaw is a crap shoot.
You can access all published legal opinions online for free. Try Findlaw. It’s reliable. You just won’t get the annotations that you get with Lexis and Westlaw. That said, most of the public – and not said in any way to be condescending or obnoxious – won’t understand the value of one legal opinion v. another.
I don’t base my decision – usually – on a judge’s opinions, but more on what I know of their overall performance – or issues that have come up with their work performance.
For trial court judges in CA, some are appointed, and some have to run for “office.” I confess that I don’t remember why some have to be voted on. The ones that are appointed are a done deal. The ones that have to be voted on, have to go through the vote process every so many years (again, forget how often). It’s an odd system.
See if there is a League of Women Voters active in your area.
There is, and I use their website all the time. Definitely worthwhile. Check a number of websites, believe me!
I loved having a Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis account while in school. I thought about private practice after school, but there’s no way I could afford malpractice insurance and an account with either service, which is almost mandatory to be a competent attorney.
I still find it absolutely mind-blowing of how much a subscription costs, never mind hourly use.
There needs to be a free service that can index legal opinions. Not knowing the law isn’t a defense, and yet it’s really fucking expensive to actually know the law, whether hiring an attorney, or attempting to do it yourself.
I don’t think senate elections will be altered anytime soon, but I do think that thatnks to Trump we will see a swing to a less democratic republican presidential nomination system. The repubs. may institute a superdelegate system, for instance, or make at least some primaries merely advisory, allowing most delegates to be chosen by party elites.
Isn’t that the viciously anti-democratic system that the Democratic Party uses?
Yes, the whole point is to enshrine institutional power first and foremost.
I understand but do not necessarily agree with that argument. One could just as well argue that a system sufficiently tilted towards “establishment” power would be unlikely to nominate a neo-fascist.
But very likely to nominate a criminal grafter.
Yes to both your points actually.
I attended a polytechnic and have zero formal education in philosophy (although I did have the teeth-gritting experience of trying to help my daughter understand what in the world Descartes’ “proofs” of the existence of God were all about). But I do remember a thing or two about modern European history and the autocrats who came to power at the ballot box and only then seized dictatorial power. Germany in 1933 is not the only example.
Gah! He is being taken apart in the comments for his vapors.
I rather like the Aristotelian rebuttal that unnatural capitalism is much more dangerous to democracy.
I don’t know how one ignores the connection of ethics to politics that underpinned their viewpoints back then.
Plato would probably be a neoliberal or libertarian technocrat if around these days. Despising democracy’s demands.
He did mention that a large part of this is the fault of late-stage capitalism and late-stage Democracy’s failure to address it properly. But he spends most of the time on democracy.
just fyi, belated reply to you in old thread here.
Ah, missed Sully was just wondering when his return piece was going to happen.
And of course, he resonates with me–elites their system and incrementalism, have failed us, the constitution, its choke points and resistance to change is not enough anymore–and to me thats what requires a revolution.
Also this ties into something I think KDrum said a while ago, even if Trump loses he will only be the first because there are real grievances and power in addressing them so their is going to be realignment but again, the system does not seem capable of handling it.
I agree that Trump is the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. It looks unlikely that he’ll win the general, but I don’t think the emotions that he’s unleashed are going away. What I witness is the GOP attempting to back away from Trump and pretend that they had nothing to do with how this panned out, how the proles are behaving, etc, when, in fact, Trump is the logical outcome of their weird brand of “conservatism” – which really isn’t conservative at all – and endlessly pushing fact-free bigotry, racism, homophobia, sexism, anger, hatred, etc, at their constituents for over 40 years.
The GOP ain’t going to back down from their favorite, very lucrative, MO. Ergo, it seems likely that they’ll do what they’ve always done: double down on the notion that the other GOP contenders simply weren’t “conservative enough.”
It’s so bogus, but I don’t see the anger of the base diminishing, yet I don’t see the PTB actually offering real solutions that will help Main Street.
The dog help us all.
I think that if progressives really want a progressive President, they should start working their assess of now, to retain Sanders voters, and pick up sane-but-naive Trump voters, for a 2024 run.
Trump is doing pretty well, and he’s an awful candidate on paper, and in person. Imagine a younger, better-looking, more dogwhistle-y social dominator.
I think the best thing to do is work on finding the progressive populist who can capture Sanders, Trump, and center-left votes, starting now. Because either the Republican party is totally ineffective in 2020, or a more-appealing Trump will show up – and that’d be bad news.
I feel we’re the only Sullivan readers on this blog.
Although I cared a lot less about his personal insights when I subscribed to his blog. I mostly just miss his superior aggregation of links from all over that I wouldn’t find or see otherwise. And I definitely notice a difference…
Boo, it’s not the voters they’re afraid of. It’s the Republican party machinery (primarily McConnell). Fear of the voters has actually been pushing them to do the right thing – even that Kansas Senator wobbled under the pressure.
If we had indirect election it would be far worse as with 30 states under the absolute control of the Republicans we’d have 60 Senators under the Republican party’s thumb, not 55. In addition, while the division of the US into states gerrymanders the Senate, at least the Senatorial elections can’t be further gerrymandered. If we had indirect election, then the statehouse gerrymanders would affect the Senate and it would be doubly gerrymandered.
Addendum: although Sullivan tries to slip in a dig at such horrors as extending the franchise to non-landowners and women, it’s a misdirection. His real and legitimate criticism is of the media – that the financial benefit from increased traffic drives inaccurate and sensationalistic reporting, to the point that it’s no longer practical for people with a life to live to be well-informed. That has nothing to do with direct election of Senators.
It is always a debate between the republicans and the democrats when it is framed as Andrew Sullivan did, and we know from long experience which side the Washington crowd for whom Andrew Sulivan speaks comes down on. He, unlike the Trump he describes, is at least consistent to a fault. Meanwhile, Warren Buffet says we’ll be Okay regardless of whether Clinton or Trump wins.
What exactly is this “democracy” that Andrew Sullivan is afraid of? Or that lover of military states, Plato, for that matter. Tyranny is built out of democracy on organized and managed mobs and raw power. What Andrew Sullivan might not realized he is saying is that the establishment in trying to preserve and expand its power financed talk radio, financed and managed news media as profit centers, and bought members of Congress to deregulate the media to be tools of corporations without any semblance of public service. Exhibit 1 of this is Don Lemon’s coverage of Black Lives Matter. “Unarmed” never enters the story.
We the People, who are being tarred by Andrew Sullivan’s brush had nothing at all to do with those changes in media. They were made by a plutocracy that sought to bend We the People to their will, their interest, and their profit. If there is tyranny being brought to America, it is the aristocracy, not the democracy that is doing it. In this case, Plato’s model of polity and Greek and Roman experiences do not explain, and given that the demos and plebes of Greece and Rome seldom if ever wrote their own view of the system, it is questionable whether the aristocratic writers of our Western heritage had a full view of the polity they lived in.
Our heritage words abound: anarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, autocracy, aristocracy, democracy, plutocracy, theocracy
And let’s just toss in “despot” for good measure.
The proposition that Sullivan is making is that forms of popular rule are easier to corrupt with illegitimate rule than are establishment oligarchic forms of rule, whether theocratic, plutocratic, or that self-loving form, aristocratic. Interesting how monarchy gets a pass; monarchs are allowed to be tyrannical or despotic as a matter of course without causing writers to get the vapors. Usurpers, however, monarchs ruling without sanction of some oligarchy are a different matter.
Which brings us to the fact that all polity involved individual decision-making (autocracy), small-group decision-making on the basis of financial, religious, or practical competence, and popular consent if not direction.
What ails the American democratic republic is not its structure or process, although there is much work to be done there but the ends for which it is now operating. Diversions of ends is what corruption generally refers to — dirtying the clean purposes of the institutions. Instead of being for governing a self-governing people by their collective will, the institutions of American government have been turned to the profit of a few and the prosecution of endless war. And legal institutions have been punitively treating people who have exposed that diversion of ends and who object on behalf of the people to that diversion of ends. Other institutions have been propagandizing the public with denial and diversion to the point, that having got their way the powers-that-be in government are in gridlock over what way they want to arbitrarily rule.
Where Sullivan is right about Trump is Trump’s promise to end gridlock and git ‘er done in a yuge way. One heroic tyrant slices through the Gordian knot of the squabbling aristocracy in order to rule the world and deliver the tyrant’s promise of what the people want.
And of course all sides–the tyrant monarch aspirant, the established oligarchy-in-fact, the factions of the people themselves are are using emotional appeals to move support for their agenda. Fear, anger, frustration do not promote detached and rational consideration of objective or at least consensual facts.
You can see the irrationality of the establishment in the response of the police forces and in the wars they pursue. And in the reaction of the chain of command of those institutions to challenge. No Andrew Sullivans are worried that the momentum of faceless generals is leading us to nuclear war through the legitimation of tactical nuclear weapons. No, they are scared of those who are in this situation powerless and seeking a last grasp a controlling the events that are affecting their lives.
Why Trump? Sullivan said it. Trump talks like they do. He might have all along for reasons having to do with not being immediately accepted in polite New York City society. He might continue just to piss off the people who have snubbed him. Folks who work for a living can understand that sentiment and enjoy the discomfort that Trump is causing among their “betters”.
What power has become in the 21st century is merely a matter of causing moderate of extreme discomfort. It is no longer the power to accomplish something beneficial. This relationship to power is summed up in Trump’s catch-phrase, “You’re fired!” The two questions of obedience to power now are: Can you kill on command? Can you fire (take away someone’s way of supporting their family) on command? Without question or pushback? For any reason whatsoever?
It is not democracy that is bringing tyranny. It is the establishment demand that their functionaries completely lack compassion. Or seek an independent understanding of events.
I’m with Billmon on this:
and
Michael Kelly
Equally bad, way worse, worst ever?
Take your pick.
Kelly’s been dead for thirteen years and Sully is still alive.
In the 9th circle, if there is a Hell.
Sullivan isn’t truly evil, just easily confused.
I found the piece to be full of the typical Sully-the-Pooh horseshit.
Sully’s always been a third-rate intellect. The guy read three chapters of Burke and thinks he’s figured out the meaning of life and what it is to be serious.
The notion that the guy who to this day refuses to acknowledge that the Bell Curve has been debunked, and still takes pride at having such racist pseudo-science published in that god-forsaken magazine he used to run, has any standing to lecture the world about the narcissism and emotional idiocy of the general public is laughable.
Not to mention, much of it is basically Sully bitching about the culture that goes into People Being Mean on the Internets. And that Mr “The Left Might Mount a Fifth Column” would have the chutzpah to invoke Godwin’s Law is god-damned hilarious.
Discourse wasn’t rational even back in the Founders’ days. Jefferson was going to teach us all Satanism in the schools, remember? And the discourse Trump engages in is, at base, no different from what Sully’s heroes (Reagan, Thatcher, Bush before he became unpopular, etc) weren’t engaging in for decades.
Twenty or so percent of the population anywhere is just flat-out nuts. You see it with the National Front in France, with UKIP and other parties in the UK, the FDP in Austria, etc. Always has been, always will be.
So, sure, it’s all very frightening. Nice of Sully to take notice after making a career of feeding it. It doesn’t mean what he has to say is interesting.
Without even apologizing for the ad hominem criticsm, I’ll point out that Mr. “Fifth Column” is in no position to be lecturing us on the dangers of fascism.
As I said, trying to take Plato to the masses is a thankless endeavor.
The Plato talk is to burnish his wobbly credentials as a Deep Thinker with Sage Opinions. I am not distracted by it.
He is scared of Trump. And just as when he was scared of Muslim retaliation against American violence, he clutches for a reassuring authority figure. This time, with George W. Bush being unavailable, it must be the RNC elites.
I too am scared of Trump, though perhaps less hysterically. But like free speech, I consider restrictions on democratic representation more dangerous than any of the ills they are purported to cure.
Note that he lumps Sanders in with Trump as a “demagogue of the left”.
It appears that Sullivan’s olfactory delicacy when confronted with the stench of the masses overwhelms his critical faculties.
TPM is 95% in agreement with him. KDrum’s guys probably run about 70% in agreement.
Ridiculous claim.
For one of many examples, TPM was one of the most important and effective organizers of the campaign to defeat Social Security reform. Invaluable.
But feel free to lay the portions of Sullivan’s agenda which has been supported by Marshall. There will remain a much longer list of areas where their views have differed.
You know he actually did apologize for that.
You mean this?
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/10/a-response-to-a-roast-a-fifth-column-apology/1
81356/
This is the writing of an authoritarian. Fuck him.
Ahh Andrew Sullivan, garbage person.
An alternative explanation:
Phenomenon Signals an Oligarchy on the Brink of a Civilization-Threatening Collapse
“Scientifically speaking, oligarchies always collapse because they are designed to extract wealth from the lower levels of society, concentrate it at the top, and block adaptation by concentrating oligarchic power as well. Though it may take some time, extraction eventually eviscerates the productive levels of society, and the system becomes increasingly brittle. Internal pressures and the sense of betrayal grow as desperation and despair multiply everywhere except at the top, but effective reform seems impossible because the system seems thoroughly rigged. In the final stages, a raft of upstart leaders emerge, some honest and some fascistic, all seeking to channel pent-up frustration towards their chosen ends. If we are lucky, the public will mobilize behind honest leaders and effective reforms. If we are unlucky, either the establishment will continue to “respond ineffectively” until our economy collapses, or a fascist will take over and create conditions too horrific to contemplate.”
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http://evonomics.com/trump-sanders-phenomenon-is-a-sign-of-oligarchy/
Damn dumbass Sullivan. This is not about some perfect Lilac bush. This is about helping people.
Andrew Sullivan is a hack and long ago lost any credibility he once had.
And as a political science major, having had to work though multiple works of Plato, I have no idea how he came to the conclusion he did.
The designers of the republic believed in a great many things. Some of them were good, others were pretty bad. As an example, they did a horrible job of balancing out the judicial branch of government with the other two.
Sullivan has failed to provide any real evidence of this problem, and trying to give it any intellectual heft is equally lacking.