norm!

May 7, 2018 8:19 PM

Normcore Jedediah Purdy

The proliferating “crisis-of-democracy” literature, like the Fast and the Furious franchise, has only one plot. And, like the crash-up car-chase movies, it has not let this fact slow its growth. How Democracies Die, by Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and The People Versus Democracy, by Harvard instructor Yascha Mounk, are just two of the emblematic titles, along with entries by George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum (Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic), political theorist and Clinton adviser William Galston (Antipluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy), and a three-handed work, One Nation After Trump, by commentators E.J. Dionne, Norman Ornstein, and Thomas Mann. Readers may already have noticed that all these authors are, like your reviewer, white men credentialed by the establishment institutions whose “liberal tears” are jet-fuel in the engines of Trumpism. One of the telling things about the crisis-of-democracy literature is that it presents itself as the voice of the reason, calling the people back to their principles. It isn’t clear who is listening.

Votes of No Confidence, Jed Purdy - "A philosopher argues that only some people should get to elect our leaders"

Corey Robin's Facebook:

In the 1950s, in the face of a seemingly new revanchist formation (McCarthyism), liberal intellectuals like Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Bell, and Seymour Martin Lipset came together with tony conservatives like Peter Viereck to formulate a new theory of the challenge the liberal order was facing. It was not from the traditional or familiar right; it was from something new, something scarier, something...populist. That populism had little to do with the right itself; if anything, it had more in common with the populism of the left. It transcended the familiar left/right divide. It was a thing unto itself, this populist style.

"Trump is terrible so we have to work hard to preserve the system and norms that gave us Trump" seems like an inherently absurd argument. - Jeet Heer

posted by the man of twists and turns (24 comments total)

I resent this slight against the Fast And Furious franchise. Well, at least 4-6.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:05 PM on May 7, 2018 [7 favorites]

The first article is really great! You can tell the author was having a lot of fun sharpening his pen into a sword.

The thing that really defined Trump’s political language was its nihilism about politics itself, the appetite it stoked for political bullshit that doesn’t even pretend to hold together, but just staggers from one emotional trigger to another. Trump essentially short-sold the high-minded political style of the late Cold War, betting that it would prove weaker than it looked under pressure — that people neither expected much from government nor thought it important enough to be well run; that a lot of voters despised their political class and the cultural and financial elites around it; and that recreational cruelty and you-can’t-bullshit-a-bullshitter snark would feel more authentic than any respectably sanctioned appeal to better angels. We are, he intimated, the barbarians we’ve been waiting for.

The second link goes to a paywalled site. Is there an unblocked substitute?
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:10 PM on May 7, 2018 [15 favorites]

I resent this slight against the Fast And Furious franchise.

I participate in democracy a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters. For those ten seconds or less, I'm free.
posted by compartment at 9:36 PM on May 7, 2018 [12 favorites]

I resent this slight against the Fast And Furious franchise.

You know how Trump runs his administration like a fambly?
posted by Merus at 9:48 PM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

> Harvey Kilobit:
"The second link goes to a paywalled site. Is there an unblocked substitute?"

The BookForum article is free to read if you register.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 10:37 PM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

Jedediah Purdy, I believe, originally became famous as the young gen Xer who argued that irony was awful, just awful.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:37 PM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

Before I spend a lot of time following links, are these basically the same old "all of those people actually getting involved in politics are breaking democracy" pablum - basically taking Trump's description of who he's for or who voted for him at his word ('cause politicians always use words so accurately - like that time GWB and co brought democracy to Iraq and invaded Afghanistan because they were so concerned about women's rights) while ignoring the actual demographics of Trump voters, structural and extra-legal obstacles to democratic participation for many people in the US, and after-effects of the Citizens United ruling and increasing (and increasingly legalized) financial corruption in US politics? Or do some of the links actually address these issues and make a different argument?
posted by eviemath at 3:26 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

I participate in democracy a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters. For those ten seconds or less, I'm free.

Running dog liberal, one of these can wipe your ten seconds at any collective meetup.

(omg, has there been a russian truck mega post? that would be some funny obsessive research)
posted by sammyo at 3:58 AM on May 8, 2018

eviemath, I only read the main link but it's pretty much the opposite of that.
posted by enn at 4:19 AM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

The idea that anyone affiliated with Harvard, the most corrupt and corrupting institution in America, would have the nerve to lecture about what the rest of us slobs are doing to "break democracy" is exceedingly rich. If you want to improve American democracy then knocking Harvard down would be an excellent start.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:25 AM on May 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

Great articles. The one thing that strikes me about most of these "end of democracy"/"destruction of the global world order" arguments is how much they tend to equate democracy, at least in the west, with its "traditional" i.e. white, male, middle/upper-middle class leadership.

Who knows, maybe letting some other folks have a go at running things their way, according to their needs, might not be the end of the world after all?
posted by rpfields at 5:30 AM on May 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

If you want to improve American democracy then knocking Harvard down would be an excellent start.

Boola Boola.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:01 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

The idea that anyone affiliated with Harvard, the most corrupt and corrupting institution in America, would have the nerve to lecture about what the rest of us slobs are doing to "break democracy" is exceedingly rich. If you want to improve American democracy then knocking Harvard down would be an excellent start.

Yeah but are Levitsky and Ziblatt wrong?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:19 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Luke Savage's review of Trumpocracy is excellent:

David Frum's new book promises a searing indictment of Donald Trump. What it delivers is an elite-friendly defense of the rotten system that produced him.
...
Ultimately, Frum’s anguished account is one you will only endorse or find engaging if you believe, as he so clearly does, that the fundamentals of American society were basically sound prior to November 2016. Sure, in his telling, there was partisanship and lack of compromise between Republican and Democrats. Sure, sometimes people broke the law or transgressed against the rules and norms of liberal governance. Sure, Trump merely took advantage of preexisting conditions latent in American institutions and culture. And sure, Republicans worked hard to deprive marginalized communities of the franchise (perhaps surprisingly, several pages end up being devoted to this phenomenon, though any ensuing moral outrage the author’s part seems muted to nonexistent).

But, for Frum, Trumpism is still ultimately a point of rupture rather than one of continuity — a corruption of a fundamentally decent consensus, not an outgrowth of a depraved, immoral, and dysfunctional one.

posted by Space Coyote at 7:26 AM on May 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

fundamentals of American society were basically sound prior to November 2016

Yeah, this. Idk about the book, but I did an hour long talk of Levitsky/Ziblatt and they offhandedly mentioned campaign finance towards the very end.

It's obvious why the things people want aren't getting legislated.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 9:25 AM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

their theory would be used, in time, not as an argument against the right but as an argument against the left. Which it was...
posted by doctornemo at 10:12 AM on May 8, 2018

From his Wikipedia page:
"He has been a fellow at the New America Foundation,[5] a think tank that has been described as radical centrist in orientation.[6]"

Lol. That's wild. I thought Radical Centrism was purely an invention of those galaxy-brain memes, but someone's actually trying that, huh?

I thought the article was pretty good, though. The article critiques the "threat to democratic norms" genre of thinkpiece by exposing how much the authors have invested in maintaining a system that hands them privileges, but also points out that norms can be stultifying, and that breaking away from them could result in leftward-leaning policies as much as the right-leaning ones we're getting right now.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:26 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Also, basically the elite intellectual arm of the right wing is raking in liberal bucks bemoaning all this norm-breaking and divisive, tribal politics they foisted upon us.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:41 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

The BookForum article is free to read if you register. posted by cichlid ceilidh

Your idea of free is different to mine.
posted by bigZLiLk at 4:22 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Free as in beer.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 5:41 PM on May 8, 2018

Okay, it's true that our "democratic norms" and "rule-of-law norms" have privileged the powerful, but would we mostly agree tearing them up privileges the powerful even more?

Would I be willing to work with Harvard white guys who want the old norms back, or do I hold out for a movement that foregrounds the less privileged and holds out for nothing less than radical transformation. Well, it depends on what odds I think that movement has, but right now, sorry, I'd sign on the dotted line for those old norms back and work it from there. Not while backing off on what needs to be done around here, not playing "cool it on your identity politics so we can attract mainstream people", and I know this gets fuzzy, but yes, I'll give up some leverage that would lie in holding out for all that.

For me there's a lot at stake, and for some people there's less to be lost. If you're someone who wouldn't feel much on your life if we go down Hungary's path for example, I'd listen if you'd tell me about why.
posted by away for regrooving at 2:32 AM on May 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Well, Purdy has this to say:
"What is missing from these works, and the commentariat that they represent, is a genuine reckoning with twenty-first-century questions: whether we have ever been democratic, and whether the versions of capitalism that have emerged in the last forty years are compatible with democracy. . . . Answering basic questions about the relationship between democracy and capitalism is the only credible response to the present crisis."

So the norms he's seeing argued for in these crisis narratives are norms that preserve the system and those who currently wield power. Norms that serve our existing class structure are the ones that the authors he's critiquing are calling for the defense of. "One problem with identifying the protection of political norms with the defense of democracy is that such norms are intrinsically conservative (in a small-c sense) because they achieve stability by maintaining unspoken habits—which institutions you defer to, which policies you do not question, and so on." These crisis narratives are mainly concerned with tamping down dissent and returning the populace to a state of unquestioning acceptance of the system. A lot of the narratives take a neoliberal approach and use the possibility of further rightward political movement to motivate their audience that any questioning of any norms inevitably leads to fascism. This group rejects the overt racism, nationalism, and know-nothing-ism of Trumpdom not because of some concern over the marginalized, but because the orderly restoration of unrestrained free-market capitalism is the goal. Purdy points out that what we're seeing as a dangerous surge in hard-right anti-democratic nationalism is not alien or unusual in America.

But he identifies capitalism explicitly as the cause of the present moment when so many citizens appear willing to burn down the system rather than tinker around the edges. A lukewarm solution like "Third Way" Liberalism that mostly allows inequality to continue growing--perhaps with a few minor, means-tested, market-solution social programs that help mitigate a few of the side-effects--is about preserving norms over confronting the real problems. Since capitalism inevitably creates boom-bust cycles, there must be periodic reckonings. After yet another economic crisis, leaders must cope with norm-breaking situations. For example, the 2008 bust. The pro-capitalist solutions enacted set the stage for the mass dissatisfaction with the political system we see now. The solutions were inadequate because they sought to restore norms rather than undertake radical reshaping of the system: "If you started out by supporting strong egalitarian democracy rather than “norms,” you would have a clearer compass."

This is the main takeaway for me: "While these books acknowledge “inequality” and “insecurity,” and even sometimes the ways liberalized trade and finance can undercut democracy, they don’t grasp the thought that capitalism and democracy might be in deep tension. Maybe for the world to be safe for democracy, it needs to be less safe for at least some versions of capitalism."
posted by Kitty Stardust at 11:19 AM on May 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Would I be willing to work with Harvard white guys who want the old norms back, or do I hold out for a movement that foregrounds the less privileged and holds out for nothing less than radical transformation.

I'm a bit confused about the "hold out for" part, given that such a movement is already in existence?
posted by eviemath at 4:16 AM on May 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Hmm, although the movements with such values that I see don't take an all-or-nothing approach. Many folks involved in groups like Black Lives Matter, the revival of MLK's Poor People's Campaign that grew out of the North Carolina Moral Mondays protests, teachers' strikes in various states, pipeline resistance, and various groups that grew out of the Occupy movement all accept more incremental changes as potentially useful to protect people from greater harm, or as steps in accomplishing their more radical goals. In that sense, the movement groups I'm thinking of are not accurately described by the "hold[ing] out for nothing less than radical transformation" part of your comment, even though their goals are radical transformation.
posted by eviemath at 4:24 AM on May 11, 2018 [1 favorite]