a bonobo humanity?

Andrew Weissmann, the well-known US lawyer, legal expert and, I believe, MSNBC politico-legal commentator, has presented a talk from his home called ‘Reality Check’. My purpose here isn’t to respond in detail to his critique of the current US situation, but to return to and elaborate upon some of my own critiques of the USA’s social and political systems.

First, the Presidential system, which is way too much like a monarchical system, albeit elected. Weissmann has emphasised, as I have, channelling Benjamin Franklin, that politicians are our servants. If Trump had ever been made to accept that this really was the case, he would never have run for President, or for any political office. When Trump first started making noises about running for President, about a decade ago, many prominent Republicans spoke out strongly against him, knowing not only of his ignorance, but his passion for self-aggrandisement – effectively his only real passion. So Trump quickly realised that he needed to get ‘the people’ behind him, and was successful enough to ‘win’ the 2016 election, though Hilary Clinton was the actual winner (yes gerrymandering and Electoral College-type systems plague many countries, including my own, and  constant reform needs to be advocated). Why did this happen?

It’s complex, but has largely to do with a huge rich-poor divide, much larger than any other WEIRD nation. The poor, many of whom would never bother to vote, in a system they don’t much understand, are generally under-educated, and easily manipulated. The rich, on the other hand, in a system which is all abut money, are happy to donate to a fellow flouter of the tax system. Most WEIRD nations have strict rules about campaign contributions, even the USA, but compliance with those rules is another thing, and while there might be a few law-abiding super-rich people….  haha, I’m joking. Huge amounts of money are shifted during US elections, and money is still flowing swiftly today, into Trump’s coffers.

So that’s how an obvious grifter and ignoramus can get into office today in the US, in a way that couldn’t happen in Australia – to focus on the country I obviously know best, but which I think is similar enough to other English-speaking Westminster-based nations (Britain, Canada and New Zealand) to be representative. It couldn’t happen here because we don’t have a Presidential system. We have a party-based system in which the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) is voted to that position by the elected members of her or his own party, and can be voted out at any time by same. This doesn’t have to be disastrous because we vote for parties and policies, not individuals. Nor do we give our Prime Minister any pardoning powers, or any immunity. We do have a pardoning system, rarely used, which is ultimately in the hands of the federal Attorney-General, usually on the advice of the High Court, the highest court in the land. The monarch in Britain has a similar rarely-used pardoning power, which is only granted on the advice of the government of the day. The contrast with the US President’s freewheeling powers is too horrendous to dwell upon. To mention some others – the Presidential candidate gets to choose her or his running mate, who, if she becomes Vice President, will become the leader of the nation if the Prez becomes incapacitated, or is bumped off, without ever having been personally elected to the position.

And that’s just the beginning. The President gets to select a whole squadron of unelected people to positions of great power and responsibility – positions that, under a party-based system, would be taken up by individuals elected by their local constituents. And this same President gets to stay far from the madding crowd in a White Palace surrounded by courtiers, while our Prime Minister sits in the parliament with her fellow ministers and MPs, defending their government’s policies against the opposition’s jibes and critiques. Moreover, most WEIRD countries have a multi-party system, in which a variety of views and approaches to government can be aired and debated. This can make decision-making more cumbersome, but also more nuanced, as a wider variety of the people’s views are taken into account. Government can be a little more participatory, whereas I would argue that there is no government less participatory, in the WEIRD world, than that of the USA.

Moreover the USA is the most divided nation in the WEIRD world. It may be united in its jingoism, but that’s about it. I’ve mentioned the huge rich-poor divide, and this is exacerbated by that nation’s having, by a long, long way, the highest per capita incarceration rate of any WEIRD nation, and the lowest minimum wage, federally. It also has the lowest federal spending on education, health and welfare. All of this hurts people, especially the poor. You could say that the country is united by all these failings. I certainly can’t think of any other way that it is united.

So Weissmann is worried about the current US political situation becoming normalised, but my view, on learning about the US socio-political system, in place more or less since its inception, is that Trump’s accession to the ‘throne’ is largely the result of the normalisation of that seriously, almost fatally flawed system. In other words the problem is much deeper than Weissmann realises, or seems prepared to admit.

Jingoism, as mentioned, is a big problem in the USA. One can be nationalistic, or patriotic, to use the term preferred by Timothy Snyder, while recognising that all political systems need to be open to reform, as society evolves. But the USA’s system has congealed into a highly combative two-party contest, as if they’re rival football players and their fans. One gets the impression that most of the ‘fans’ have little idea of their party’s policies, as long as they win the game. And any criticism from outside, I’ve learned to my bemusement, meets with a torrent of invective and jingoistic claptrap – and it’s really hard to know whether this is a superiority complex or the opposite.

The advent of Trump, however, and the lack of proper checks and balances within the US federal system, has raised serious international concerns. Trump is an extremely lazy, ignorant and noisy man who is drawn to other big boss figures on the world stage. He’s keen on making big, momentous, much talked-about decisions in which he’s seen as a winner, and damn the details (and the effect upon the losers). I can’t help but feel that Tom Phillips had Trump in mind, when, in his 2017 book Humans: a brief history of how we fucked it all up, he described the attitude toward leadership, and work, of the world’s most notorious mass-murderer:

… it’s worth remembering that Hitler was actually an incompetent, lazy egomaniac and his government was an absolute clown show. In fact, this may have helped his rise to power, as he was consistently underestimated by the German elite. Before he became chancellor, many of his opponents had dismissed him as a joke for his crude speeches and tacky rallies…

Why did the elites of Germany so consistently underestimate Hitler? Possibly because they weren’t actually wrong in their assessment of his competency – they just failed to realise that this wasn’t enough to stand in the way of his ambition. As it would turn out, Hitler was really bad at running a government. As his own press chief Otto Dietrich wrote later in his memoir The Hitler I Knew, ‘In the 12 years of his rule in Germany Hitler produced the biggest confusion in government that has ever existed in a civilised state’.

His government was constantly in chaos, with officials having no idea of what he wanted them to do, and nobody was entirely clear who was in charge of what. He procrastinated wildly when asked to make difficult decisions, and would end up relying on gut feeling, leaving even close allies in the dark about his plans.

There’s a bit of an argument among historians about whether this was a deliberate ploy on Hitler’s part to get his own way, or whether he was just really really bad at being in charge of stuff… But when you look at Hitler’s personal habits, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it was just a natural result of putting a work-shy narcissist in charge of a country.

Tom Phillips, Humans… pp 129 -132

This is Trump to a T – (okay, replacing the obsessive anti-semitism with a more generalised bigotry). In his previous outing as Prez there was much bemused reporting about his ‘down-time’ and his ‘passion’ for playing golf… You just don’t get that kind of ‘leadership’ from someone who has come up through the party ranks via a proven ability to work for her constituents, to bring people together, to effectively articulate and institute policies. As I’ve written before, if there was an effective vetting system for candidates, a system Trump has never been subjected to, he would never have been hired to manage a public toilet, never mind a nation. Nevertheless the US system allows this. They even boast that any of their citizens can become President. But that’s definitely not what you want, and it’s nothing to boast about.

References

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017

Tom Phillips, Humans: a brief history of how we fucked it all up, 2017