The dead hand of the executive order substitutes for a collaborative style of leadership. These orders form a pattern of authoritarian overreach by a President quick to identify domestic enemies.
German academic T. W. Adorno was the lead researcher of the first major analysis of social conditions that give rise to populations overly enamored with authority figures.* The researchers, some of whom had escaped from Europe at the start of World War II, traced the origins of a multitude of personality traits, including anti-Semitism, “susceptibility to antidemocratic propaganda,” ethnocentrism (judging others by one’s own values), and predispositions toward fascism. The rise of the Nazi Party and its wide acceptance even among well-educated Germans was the puzzle they wanted to solve. Are certain kinds of citizens overly susceptible to appeals based on authority, especially “official” sources? Are some types of audiences too willing to ignore the natural ambiguities of everyday life in favor of the rigid ideological certainties of a demagogue (i.e., Hitler’s stereotypes of Jewish “failings”)? And what psychological needs are satisfied when total allegiance is given to such a leader?
One product of their work was a paper and pencil questionnaire called the F-Scale (Fascism) inventory probing for signs of “authoritarian submission” and “uncritical attitudes toward idealized moral authorities.” It consisted of claims, such as the ones listed below, to which a respondent would be asked to agree or disagree.
Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.
Every person should have complete faith in some supernatural power whose decisions will be obeyed without question.
What this country needs most, more than laws and political programs, are a few courageous, tireless, devoted leaders in whom the people can put their faith.
Speer’s proposed arch for Berlin
Authoritarian leaders typically go beyond their formal powers, distrust the press, and incite citizens against alleged internal enemies. Countless acts of hubris are now part of the official record: everything from renaming whole regions to destroying government property under the guise of making it better. The man the seems to love gaudy monumentalism as if he were channeling Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect.
Trump’s proposed arch
The researchers found that anti-Semitism, rigidity, ethnocentrism, undue respect for power, and other traits tended to cluster within many of the same people. They theorized that the clustering was tied to styles of family life. They also learned that authoritarianism can be identified in segments of almost any population. Some people may be psychologically hardwired to seek a “place” in a clearly defined social order led by a dominating leader. It also seems clear that many authoritarians–who can be followers or leaders–want to take ambiguities and uncertainties out of their lives. They prefer simple answers to complex problems. As with Adolph Hitler and many others since, authoritarian leaders typically overreach their formal powers, distrust the press, and incite citizens against alleged internal enemies.
Our current political turmoil is a reminder that many among us also want simple and magical answers to entrenched problems: all the better if the explanations include scapegoating others. We have lived through a seemingly endless number of false alternate narratives told and retold about stolen elections, pedophile Washington elites, dead voters who managed to cast a ballot, and more. Presently, what is left of the MAGA right simmers with fantasies of these fears, as is evident from the compliant silence of his staff. More alarmingly, it is clear that our unexpectedly frail constitution and a supine Supreme Court has made this political nightmare a reality.
Americans need to be smarter about weighing the claims of leaders who are willing to trade accuracy for certainty. We have let down previous generations by allowing American leadership and respectability to be eroded by a criminal president.
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*The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row, 1950.
With the three branches of government impaired, have we ever been further from the goal of establishing “a more perfect union?”
We can get lost in the details of daily politics. But looking at the big picture offers little reassurance. We are used to accusing the President of crippling American democracy by undermining long-held national norms. Attempts to stigmatize and even criminalize diversity programs at universities and elsewhere are only one category of this retrograde behavior. It is now apparent to the nation and most of the world that current our presidential leadership is in dire ruins. Every day Donald Trump provides new examples to lament. Combine this problem with ample evidence that the other two branches of government are also hobbled, and it seems we have drifted further from the goal of establishing “a more perfect union.”
If it is not enough that the Presidency has been shorn of its effectiveness and dignity, the third branch, the United States Supreme Court, has created in its own constitutional crisis. It now regularly yields to an overreaching President who seeks more power and less accountability. As for the second branch of Congress, it has been occupied by a party that has allowed the dismemberment of its formal constitutional powers, including the vital roles of war-making and spending. Passage of a bill for short-term funding of the federal government now counts as a significant legislative achievement.
It is painful to admit, but we are the unhappy recipients of an inverted trifecta that has undermined all three governmental branches. Taking their own paths to ineptness, these frail branches have left us with few chances to further the nation’s collective aspirations. Instead, the branches now function to concentrate power rather than distribute it, reward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans, and accept curbing birthright freedoms. Never has the Constitution looked less relevant as a statement of defined powers as it does now. Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center should spend less time celebrating this increasingly bludgeoned document and more time urgently mobilizing people and ideas to strengthen it. It’s a sad day when we fail to notice that we are honoring what is actually disappearing before our eyes.
To be sure, we have some courageous members of Congress. And there are important lower federal courts that have upheld judicial ideals, at least until the Supreme Court weighs in. But the Supreme Court has now been given powers that alarms even traditional political conservatives. The decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the door for elections to be bought. The court diasasterously ruled that campaign finance is a form of free speech, releasing tsunamis of private money into sometimes tiny congressional races. We may vote this fall, but corporations and others with deep pockets have far more chances to influence outcomes by throwing money at all the modern tools of marketing. Few decisions have done more to harm the idea of one-person-one-vote.
The court has also granted nearly complete presidential immunity from prosecution and total freedom to replace any figure in the myriad federal agencies such as the FCC. No efficient and honest federal bureaucrat is immune from the dead hand of presidential removal. By the end of Trump’s term our agencies will be filled with people who would mostly prefer that their oversight responsibilities be eliminated.
Whether the GOP dominated Congress will be revived by more activist members and Democrats remains to be seen. In the short term our best hope for the recovery of a functioning national government lies with changes in the leadership and competence of the next Congress.
It is painful to admit, but we are the unhappy recipients of an inverted trifecta that has undermined all three governmental branches. Taking their own paths to ineptness, these frail branches have left us with few chances to further the nation’s collective aspirations. Instead, the branches now function to concentrate power rather than distribute it, reward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans, and accept curbing birthright freedoms. Never has the Constitution looked less relevant as a statement of defined powers as it does now. Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center should spend less time celebrating this increasingly bludgeoned document and more time urgently mobilizing people and ideas to strengthen it. It’s a sad day when we fail to notice that we are honoring what is actually disappearing before our eyes.