Losing Faith

In my last post, I discussed Americans’ decreasing faith in democracy, not just “our government,” not just “our democracy,” but also democracy in general.  While these three kinds of loss of faith are obviously related, they are different from one another. 

• If I lack faith in this government, I work within the democratic system to change the government from, say, liberal to conservative.
• If I lack faith in our democracy, I look for ways, perhaps outside of government but still within democratic norms, to change it—eg. the civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter, or the students against gun violence.  I’m fundamentally trying to change how our democracy works—by overturning the power of money in government or making democracy more inclusive—but I’m still trying to create within democracy a more democratic government.
• But if I lack faith in democracy in general, I have to find something to replace it with.  Until recently, most Americans might have agreed with Churchill’s reflection that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried….”  But that agreement is changing. While I haven’t heard anyone propose serious alternatives, we may slide into them unnoticed if we lose faith in democracy.    

The first two kinds of distrust can strengthen democracy, as people seek to correct problems.  At some point, however, if the attempts at correction are unsuccessful, people can turn toward distrust for democracy in general.  And that is dangerous, for what is there to replace it with?  I don’t know and don’t believe there is there is a better system than some form of democracy.  All other forms of government devolve toward either authoritarianism or chaos.

With over three quarters of young people reporting that living in a democracy is “not essential,” we’re at a major crossroads as a country.

What has led us to this point?

Perhaps the most significant change from, say, sixty years ago is that most citizens don’t believe that government is receptive to their needs.  According to several studies, they’re absolutely right.  Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, for instance, studied the American government’s policy on 1779 political issues and compared the influence of the strongly-held positions of four groups:

     1. “average Americans,”

     2. the “wealthy elite,”     
     3. interest groups generally representing the views of elites (such as or the the Business Roundtable or Chambers of Commerce), and 
     4. interest groups generally representing the views of broad swaths of people such as AARP or unions.

They then performed a sophisticated statistical evaluation, comparing the influence of the four groups.

When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

In other words, average Americans have their views represented in policy only if their opinions correspond to the opinions of either wealthy elites or interest groups.  And since interest groups for large, broad-based groups of people have only minimal impact on policy, it’s the elites and their interest groups that determine policy.  (This is a disturbing conclusion, causing a great deal of controversy both in affirmation and in rebuttal ).

A second reason for Americans’ loss of faith in democracy is that the average American is no longer doing very well economically.  In the post-war period until 1979, the increasing productivity of the US economy was widely shared among all economic groups.  Since 1979, however, almost all of the gains in productivity have gone to the wealthy.  So there are almost two generations since then who have seen no economic progress for themselves or hope for their children.  Historically, this is a major cause of revolution of deep change (such as, to take an extreme example, the acceptance of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany).

A third reason is the decreasing homogeneity of the population.  A great deal of research has investigated democracy in a multi-ethnic countries.  At the very least, you can conclude that truly multi-ethic nations, ie without a single dominant majority, have a very difficult time navigating ethnic tensions.  In 1950, 90% of Americans were white.  Today the figure is about 60%. By 2044, whites will be less than 50% of the population.  Although new immigrants are not the primary reason for this change (even President Trump’s most drastic scale-back of immigration would postpone that date by only 1-5 years).  As we saw during the 2016 election, however, fear of other ethnic groups can be a powerful motivator.  If one perceives that one is losing power to a minority group, faith in democracy can nosedive.

Finally, the extreme partisanship of today’s politics tends to demonize the “other side.”  If the other side is demonic, then communication, discussion and compromise are betrayals of “our side.”  And since communication, discussion and compromise are the rock upon which democracy stands, how is one to have faith in it?  People may not consciously acknowledge their own drift toward partisanship but if the “other side’s” partisan influence seems too scary, then we retreat into our own  tribes, too.

None of these conditions is likely to change, at least not in the medium future.  We are left with a society with dangerously low faith in democracy whose remaining faith is under profound attack.

How Important is Democracy to You?

I have been writing about Donald Trump’s attack on American’s trust in our political system.  Unfortunately that trust is already very low.  More concerning, there is a significant percentage of Americans who don’t trust democracy itself. 

Americans’ support for our government, in fact, has reached historic lows.  When polled, less than 19% of Americans say that they “trust government to do the right thing all of the time or most of the time,” an abysmal showing.  True, trust in our government has been declining steadily since the 1960s, when it was well over 75%, but how low can it go before the breaking point?

Lack of faith in one’s own specific government (while jarring at this level) is one thing.  Far more dangerous, it seems to me, is the level of trust people hold for democracy itself, that is, for the entire concept of democratic rule.  Until recently, I would not have worried about societal trust in democracy; democracy, it has always seemed to me, is the only game in town.  As it turns out, however, my opinion has a great deal to do with my advanced age.

The World Values Survey has been collecting enormous amounts of data from around the world since 1981.[1]  May 2017 data shows that when you ask Americans born before World II to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how "essential [it is for them] to live in a democracy,” 72% of them check "10," the highest value. But among Americans born after 1980 (the milennials) less than 30% check the 10.  Furthermore, 

In 2011, 24% of U.S. millennials (then in their late teens or early twenties) considered democracy to be a "bad" or "very bad" way of running the country.  (Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk)

Think of those figures!  Only 30% of young people in the United States feel that living in a democracy is “essential.”  24% think it’s a bad way to run a country![2]

As a person born just as World War II was ending, I find those figures both astonishing and profoundly disturbing.  Worse, that decrease in trust is occurring not just in the United States but across the industrialized world.

Furthermore, the same World Values Study data finds

that explicit support for authoritarian regime forms is also on the rise. In the past three decades, the share of U.S. citizens who think that it would be a “good” or “very good” thing for the “army to rule”—a patently undemocratic stance—has steadily risen. In 1995, just one in sixteen respondents agreed with that position; today, one in six agree.

And, finally, in another poll, people were asked three questions:

• Would you support army rule?
• Do you support a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections?
• Would you support non-democratic rule?

Combining the data, over 50% of all people (not just milennials) expressed support for at least one of the antidemocratic options.  I find this last figure so staggering that I’m leery of taking it on face value, but it comes from a reliable pollster.

If the last paragraphs of statistical information have become a statistical blur, here’s the summary:

  1. Approximately one-third of millennials don’t believe that democracy is essential.
  2. If the US democratic government isn’t working well, over half of Americans would support

•  military rule,
• a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections, or
• some other form of non-democratic rule.·     

Trust has been declining steadily so we certainly can’t blame all this on Donald Trump.  Furthermore, if Americans express these levels of discontent with democratic government, it’s not surprising that significant numbers of people will vote for or still support a president who is undermining government and democracy.

What about the future?  We have already elected a demagogue—“a political leader who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people.”  “Only I can fix” what is wrong with government, he has claimed.  And the governing Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the demagogue’s governance.  Fortunately, President Trump is inexperienced and unfit to be a leader.  He may be a demagogue, but he is an ineffective one, unable to do as much damage as he might.

Here’s one future scenario I consider a realistic possibility: President Trump will continue to erode confidence in our democracy.  We might console ourselves that we’ll probably vote Trump and the Republicans out in the next several years.  But that isn’t much comfort.  Confidence in our democratic institutions has already been deeply damaged.  The next time the country is facing a crisis—economic, political, social or international—a citizenry open to a “strong political leader” could elect a demagogue with much more political savvy who’s empowered by an even more polarized Congress.  At that point it will be only a short step to either some form of authoritarianism or political chaos.

My friends will tell you that I am not ordinarily given to catastrophe-scenarios, but I don’t see too many ways this turns out well.

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[1] As far as I can tell from a limited search, the WVS is considered reliable.  See here for one evaluation.

[2] I can’t find any comparable polls of young people in the 1940s or 1950s, so it’s possible that these statistics are just because millennials are young and young people tend to be more cavalier.  Anecdotally, however, it’s hard to believe that large percentages of young people rejected democracy during WWII or, even less, during the affluence of the fifties.  I was one of those young people in the sixties; many of us certainly questioned government but that was this government (that went to war in Vietnam); belief in and support for democracy was strong.

The Rule of Law

Donald Trump’s sustained attacks on the rule of law undermine this most important pillar of democracy.  I’ve referred in several previous posts to specific threats, most notably to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey, but his attacks, while not always so blatant, are widespread.

Democracy depends upon the people’s trust in government.  As we’re seeing around the world, democracy is extraordinarily fragile.  It depends not only on the assent of the governed but, even more importantly, also on their participation.  To accept governance through democracy, the people must believe that the government

• is responsive to their needs;
• operates on principles of fairness; and  
• puts even itself under the rule of law.

Without faith in it, democracy sinks into chaos: People come to believe that government is no more than powerful people looking out for themselves.  The people seek order in the chaos; the country becomes open to non-democratic sources of order.

The President has attacked the rule of law from many different angles. Here are four of them: his attacks on Hillary Clinton; his ongoing response to the Russia probe; his attempt to change libel laws; and his refusal to release tax returns.

First, and the most serious, in my opinion, is Trump's continual pre- and post-election attacks on “crooked” Hillary Clinton.  In the second election debate, for instance, he threatened to put her in jail if he became president.  Chants of “lock her up” were commonplace at his rallies.  More than a year after he became President, the chants continue, including, most recently in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Caucus (CPAC) in mid-February.  The President made no effort to stop them. In fact, at CPAC, he followed up the chant, with, “Boy, have they committed a lot of atrocities.”  

There is no legal basis on which a President can order someone put in jail.  Moreover, the FBI has found no evidence that Clinton broke any law.  Yet Trump continues to press his point that until Clinton is in jail, the legal system has failed.  Lawrence Tribe, one of the foremost experts on constitutional law, has written:

Making threats or vows to use a nation’s criminal justice system against one’s vanquished political opponent is worse than terrible policy: it’s incompatible with the survival of a stable constitutional republic.

 As Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson writes:

“Lock her up” is more than a call to imprison Hillary Clinton. It is, potentially, a tragic epitaph for the consensus view of our legal system as a disinterested finder of fact and dispenser of justice.

Second, the President’s response to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Russia probe also undercuts faith in the rule of law.  While there is yet no definitive evidence of obstruction of justice, it is clear that Trump—and most of the rest of the Republican Party—are doing everything they can to neutralize the Mueller investigation.  Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey “because of the whole Russia thing.”  He attacked the Mueller probe calling it a “scam” and “Democrat hoax.”  According to aides, in June of 2017, the President actually gave the order to fire Mueller, only backing down after White House counsel, Donald F McGahn II, threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.

Third, after negative media coverage, the President has threatened to “look into” changing libel laws so that it is easier to sue the media.  “Our current libel laws,” he has said, “are a sham and a disgrace and do not represent American values or American fairness.”  Either he does not understand the First Amendment or he has contempt for it.

And finally, the President’s refusal to release his tax forms, his unwillingness to divest himself completely from his many businesses that are unavoidably affected by presidential decisions, and inevitable questions about his breaking the emoluments clause of the Constitution all bring up the issue of how the President is using his position for personal or business gains.

Unfortunately, there’s more.  I’ve written in this blog about Trump’s

• pardoning Sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted of unconstitutionally profiling and detaining citizens,
• attacks on the judiciary for everything from a judgment against his business to the decision not to imprison a soldier convicted of desertion to ruling against his immigration policies, and
• refusal to promise to accept the results of the presidential election if he didn’t win.

Each of these actions and others have individually caused damage to our democracy, but taken as a whole they reveal a stunning contempt for the fundamental rule of law. 

For those who support the President, his actions model an infectious disdain for the law that further endangers democracy.  For those who oppose the President, the inability of our democracy to restrain his contempt for the law is itself an example of democracy’s failure.  Faith in government is now at an all-time low, on both the Right and the Left, not only in the United States but around the world.  It did not start with President Trump, but with him it is entering a new and more dangerous phase.  Political scientists have long believed that “once countries develop democratic institutions, a robust civil society and a certain level of wealth, their democracy is secure,” but events around the world have upended this confidence.  President Trump’s apparent contempt for the rule of law, for democracy itself, is both a dangerous example of our peril and a powerful force further imperiling us.