A Few Thoughts on the News
It’s hard for anyone that does any sort of social commentary to avoid sharing a perspectives on a former and potentially future President of the United States being convicted of 34 felony counts. So I’ve got a few short thoughts.
First, I didn’t actually think President Trump would be convicted. But I honestly wasn’t paying attention to the case. Like many/most Americans I hit DT fatigue some time ago. So I don’t have an opinion on the case or the verdict. But there’s a few political principles that I think matter to the discussion to help us sort out how we ought to feel about the state of things in American Presidential politics.
First, we have a very low bar for who we will allow to hold the office of President. There are a few hard rules around age and being a natural born citizen and not being convicted of the sort of crime that disqualifies you from the office (none of DT convictions are that). Anyone can do it. It’s part of the American aspiration. This is on purpose and good.
Second, we have historically had a high bar for criminal prosecution of political opposition. We let a lot of things slide especially if people agree to go away once things get made public. This is also on purpose and good. Criminal prosecution of political enemies is often the tools of despots and strongmen.
Third, the first two principles have served us well because the party system and democratic norms have largely policed the most egregious, publicly obvious character issues out of the mix. From Alexander Hamilton to Gary Hart to John Edwards, when you get caught publicly with your pants down, that’s usually the end of the story. I’m aware of the exceptions.
A reasonable criticism of Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2015 was that we were violating the third principle. And in doing so, certainly the second and maybe even the first (if the whole thing fell down) would be at risk. When the Access Hollywood tapes came out, that very likely would have been the end in even the recent past. If not there, an affair with a porn star while your wife was pregnant probably would have done the trick. If the standard weren’t held at that point, we were going to be in for a period where the opposition would grow increasingly unhinged and the Republican Party would struggle to police anything at all within its ranks. Which are both bad things. That would be the cost. And whether or not Candidate Trump was the sort of transcendent leader to be worth it is the question each of us was left with.
And so here we are.
We know what happened. And the question that’s best asked in times like these is what should have happened? And why? And how to apply the answers to those questions to how we think about our political preferences going forward.
Of all the disturbing things about the 2016 election, the fact that some of my fellow citizens were willing to overlook the access hollywood tapes and elect him was the most disturbing to me. And just about everything else has flowed from there. Media craziness, violence, it goes on and on. What SHOULD have happened is all of the checks and balances held in the face of that disaster. And they didn't. Now we have the most dishonest and dysfunctional SCOTUS in history. Because standards don't matter anymore to a portion of the public that's too pissed off to care. DT was kerosene on a social mess that was already there.
In this situation I am continually reminded of 3 things I deem as very important; 2 of which are not much being considered by many if even a few citizens now, I think. Together the following 3 items have helped shape a radical restructuring of public awareness and tolerance, or lack thereof, with regard to politics, civility, and the dignity of many, if not most, public institutions.
1. In his book “The Medium Is the Massage” Marshall McLuhan forecast how electronic media could reshape the minds and attitudes of those who regularly use it as an extension of those natural senses governing their understanding of the world they perceive themselves to be a part of.
2. The abolishment of the Fairness (in media) Doctrine by the Reagan administration in 1987 opened the door to an unfettered, and for all practical purposes unchallenged, “massage” of hyperbole and outright lies to citizens who self-selected the media outlets and the media ‘personalities’ they identified with as the only bearers of the Truth.
3. The SCOTUS Citizens United decision gave corporations “free speech” rights to use massive wealth as a means to influence (buy-off) all manner of publicly elected officials and their appointees, both directly and indirectly.
I’d add the ongoing attack on public education as a 4th major influence; except for the fact that in some school districts the grassroots mobilization of parents to remove politically motivated members of school boards seems to still offer a modicum of self-regulation away from partisan overreach. Yet a very real and present danger continues to lurk there.
All of the above have helped contribute to a significant portion of the voting populace believing a variety of myths which suit a worldview they’ve self-selected by insular attention to the half truths and outright lies promoted by individuals and industries who’ve reaped tremendous wealth over many recent decades, as an indirect result of promulgating those myths as “truths”; most often via mass media and its various manner of ‘personalities’, at least two of whom crossed over into the political realm and were elected to the highest office of government.
If our democratic republic survives this onslaught of manipulative self-serving political hocus pocus, I wonder how future historians might someday characterize it?