In various places, I am encountering people who say that one should not say anything positive about Mr. Trump, because doing do will “normalize” him. I am trying to come up with a scenario under which this anti-normalization strategy pays off. How about this:
Suppose that Trump is hell-bent on becoming a tyrant.
Suppose that he will go about the process of dismantling democratic institutions gradually, because to do so suddenly would raise alarms.
Suppose that “normalizing” Mr. Trump helps him to take these gradual steps, because people do not mobilize now, while we still have some democratic institutions in place.
etc.
This is either (a) a reasonable concern or (b) the paranoid fantasy of moral narcissists. I vote for (b).
If I am correct, then the anti-normalization strategy will only serve to marginalize those who live by it. It may preclude Mr. Trump from having any success with bipartisanship, which in turn could make his Presidency more ideologically conservative than it might otherwise be.
In any case, I cannot resist evaluating Mr. Trump as I would any other politician. That is, I am more likely to express myself when I disagree than when I agree. But when he does well, as I believe he has done in his appointments of Price for HHS and DeVos for Education, I am not going to keep my mouth shut for fear of “normalizing” Mr. Trump.
It is the fake news criticisms of him that compel me to his defense. So what are the real criticisms of Trump?
Impetuousness – Not the tweeting. He is going to tend to make a big move and then assess. When it comes to wars this is a bad tendency because wars have a lot of momentum.
Hubris-He is probably going to over-estimate the value of boldness and underestimate the importance details. Will he allow his administration to be hijacked like GW Bush’s? Will the hijackers be people who tell him anything can be done and the people who get fired be the cautious and detail-oriented?
Distraction-Somebody tell him he won. I’m not sure Obama ever really acted like he could stop trolling the opposition attention-seeking, so maybe that doesn’t matter.
Obstructionism Feedback Loop – Trump has to stick the landing between his highly effective antagonistic strategy and what I surmise to be his genuine desire to reform a lot of bad trends. So, we assume that to do this he will eventually have to win cooperation with Republicans and Democrats. He may not be able to change what has worked so well, or maybe nothing will work as the objectives are too disparate.
Couldn’t Donald Trump normalize himself? He going to be President so he could change behavior as well to improve his popularity.
He already has. But to win over detractors he would have to do it in a surprising way jarring enough to move the needle. Otherwise, the more obviously non-(racist, tyrannical, misogynist, etc.) each marginal step is will just be chalked up as that much more insidious of a dog whistle. “See how hard he’s pretending to not be Hitler? That means he is secretly wayyyy Hitler! At least Hitler wasn’t also a sneak!”
So, he can just stay the course and let the haters hate or he could do something surprisingly pluralistic that also doesn’t alienate his base. I thought this move was to express support for Merrick Garland- every one on the right hatest thst idea, which means it passes the suprising move test. I think he would have nominated Mitt Romney had Romney not been so intransigent. He could have a symbolic spat with Paul Ryan where Ryan comes around to a liberal (ish) position that he probably already believes.
From most polls, he is well below other incoming past three Presidents (below which is nicer) and incoming/first 100 days tends to be ‘Honeymoon Period’ before they start setting policy, no sudden change in reality and they can still blame opponent/predecessor. So Bush, Clinton and Obama had ~60% favorable so Trump is starting off low. However, if he calms down a little and no major events in early 2017, he might improve favor ability as the nation is fairly good shape. With his tax cuts, there might even be a coming Boom in the States as lot of money could move back into the US and businesses will be excited. (Of course, I worry when Wall Street sees a big Boom as these tend to go Bust at some point.)
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-popular-poll-231694
I think you’re right on normalizing Trump. And of course, I would expect you to support Betsy DeVos, but as a matter of sheer political good sense, it’s worth remembering that charters and choice are of little interest to Trump supporters, who basically like their schools. DeVos would do well to remember that all the work in choice has only given free private schools to upper income professional whites and allowed a very small number of black and Hispanic kids to escape schools with terribly behaved children that the public schools aren’t allowed to discipline. Charters aren’t required to follow the same laws that publics are. Once an all choice district exists, the hammers will come back down (cf New Orleans https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/charters-the-center-wont-hold/).
Charters benefit parents who want an improved set of peers for their children and can’t afford the usual options (better house, private school). These parents are, as mentioned, poor black/Hispanics with schools overrun by low ability/low engaged students, and white professionals in high diversity districts who can’t afford private school. These are not GOP voters. Pushing choice isn’t designed to benefit GOP voters, but either achieve ideological purity or hurting teachers unions.
But I suggest (https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/letter-to-betsy-1-dance-with-the-ones-who-brung-him/) that education reformers drop any serious push for vouchers and back off on charters. Instead, try finding solutions that will actually benefit Trump voters (that part, I’ll write about later!).
Support for charter school policy and support for Trump seem like uncorrelated preferences. Many Trump supporters do support charter schools, many don’t, many are in between.
My opinion is if you think my education choices hurt you, well, fix it yesterday.
Choice=segregation. Not explicit/intentional racial segregation, but nicer families will segregate to the nicer neighborhoods/schools. A central plank of the Democratic party is reducing segregation, reducing barriers to opportunity, reducing inequality, and ultimately reducing choice. The latter is the part they don’t emphasize in rhetoric.
>Choice=segregation
Could I make the same argument about “housing choice”, i.e. letting people live in whichever city/neighborhood they want (which I believe we already have)?
Yes. People absolutely self-segregate in housing neighborhood by income, class, education, and even race. Various government efforts, notably the Section 8 Housing program and the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development actively promotes and subsidizes desegregation efforts to move low SES (socioeconomic status) families into higher SES neighborhoods.
Yes. Therefore bussing.
“charters and choice are of little interest to Trump supporters, who basically like their schools. ” <<
Where is the data for this? I think most Trump supporters DO think the gov't schools, K-12 plus college, are lousy.
But I also have no data, just anecdotes of those I know who supported Trump, and want change.
I think the Trump supporters who are traditional conservatives like choice, but I’m talking about the base Trump voter. It’s just not a big deal for them–particularly not if they are parents. Trump rarely mentioned choice unless he was talking to black audiences or traditional GOP audiences.
Take a look at the map where charters are (it’s in my link above). it’s all blue territory. Somehow, the south outside of black cities don’t have charters? Despite Republican dominance at the state level? If whites in the South wanted charters to get them away from their kids’ white peers, they’d have them.
As a rule, *parents* like their schools. Charters sell where parents can’t afford to buy their kids a better set of peers.
Nearly all my memories of school center on bad peers and bad teachers.
So, #1 I don’t assume people are racists so I don’t assume anything wrong with picking your peers.
#2 I’m using an option of a school we aren’t zoned for but it is bit of a hike. So, I personally have a 100% correlation. I’d have to dig into your map data and determine for myself whether a key factor is population density.
Before wholesale condemnation of charters, we would do well to remember that it’s the states and/or individual school districts that establish and govern charter schools. (which, IMHO, is as it should be: K-12 education should not be a federal matter, …but I digress.)
In Colorado, charter schools are subject to many if not most of the requirements of mainstream public schools, as well as subject to all the same performance measurements and reporting transparency. And, let’s recall that charters are designed to appeal to DIVERSE educational preferences of parents, which may include classical educational curricula, music and arts emphasis, core knowledge and/or different teaching methods (such as Montessori, etc.), and the like.
I would also respectfully suggest that when reading criticisms of charter schools as a category and not as individually evaluated for performance (and parent satisfaction), we should bear in mind that there may be strong biases against competition and non-union teachers at work in the background.
See here, for example:
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-york-times-continues-mislead-about-school-choice-michigan
Further:
“All in all, a fair review of the record suggests that DeVos stands in the middle of the school accountability mainstream, supporting A-to-F grades, closing poor performers by default and raising authorizer standards. On the more contentious question of whether the task of judging schools should fall more to parents or politicians, she sides more with the parents.
“Now, maybe that’s enough to make some education researchers and reporters consider her an extremist. But we suspect most Americans would see it as a mark of good sense.”
http://the74million.org/article/analysis-what-the-media-has-gotten-wrong-about-betsy-devos-and-detroits-schools
“Before wholesale condemnation of charters, we would do well to remember that it’s the states and/or individual school districts that establish and govern charter schools”
Thanks. Perhaps you’d like to find a grandma and teach her eggsucking. We would also do well to remember that the previous president was a wholesale charter booster, and such support makes a big difference at the edges.
BTW, I didn’t condemn charters one way or another. I merely point out the obvious–they are a strategy for political maneuvering. Look at results, not rhetoric
Totally uninterested in having a debate about charters, so unless you can figure out my point, have a good day teaching grandma.
Where would you start charter schools?
Why you mad bro? Trust me, I can make it ugly real fast. Or we can keep this space civil.
Thanks. Your response was most enlightening.
Puritans of any stripe usually lose in the end, because the absolute demand of purity allows for no deviation, no questioning, and no forgiveness. Progressive Puritans every so often have a run of victories. Then they manage to get the income tax and Prohibition passed.
Masha Gessen makes more or less the argument you describe in her NY Review of Books pieces, arguing for mobilizing now and presuming the worst. She has lived through an actual instance of gradual strangulation of democracy (in Russia), so she has some firsthand experience to bring. She may be wrong, but what makes you think she is a paranoid fantasist and/or moral narcissist? Do you think her description of Putin as a tyrant is hyperbolic, or do you disbelieve her comparisons between Trump and Putin, or…?
I agree, btw, that Price and DeVos are good appointments, but note that these are areas where Trump likely had relatively little to do with the choices: he doesn’t particularly care about these issues and so probably delegated to more established Republican figures. So praise the Republican establishment, if you like, for still having enough libertarianish instincts to get some improvements through when they have the opportunity; but praising Trump seems to me misperceiving the causation.
This logic of saying that Trump will unleash some great terror because of some arbitrary similarities with Putin or Hitler or Pol Pot or Genghis Khan is absurd.
Putin is absolutely a tyrant, and the nascent Trump administration’s burgeoning “alliance of interests” with Russia, as with the three previous administrations attempts at such, will be a folly at best.
But contra Gessen, the U.S. is not post-Soviet Russia circa 1998-1999. That is, it does not have a KGB-Mafia symbiont, of which Putin is the expression, that is actually running things. It’s natural for someone like Gessen to metaphysically retch about Trump’s Putin bromance. I sympathize. But Trump is no tyrant, just a political Elmer Gantry.
Our job is to get along with everyone until we have to demolish them and in the mean-time focus on striking pareto-improving trade deals.
How does that not look like what Trump is trying to do?
As-in, Putin may hurt his own people. What can we do about it?
Answer=trade
Trade within reason (that is, trade that doesn’t unnecessarily aid Russian theft of strategic technologies) is just fine, IMO.
It’s this idea that Putin is a strategic partner against the Jihadists (that’s the spoken component of Trump’s rapprochement) and to contain the Chinese (the unspoken component) that’s a foolish and potentially very dangerous idea. Putin is not a “normal” strongman because he didn’t arise in a “normal” environment, and he isn’t the expression of a “normal” polity, even by authoritarian standards. There’s no deal to be made with him that won’t involve him stabbing you in the back. It’s really a fox-and-scorpion situation.
But what would be asking from him?
I don’t see what Trump is putting at risk.
We try to exert influence right up to his doorstep and we get offended when he balks?
Just assume everyone is pursuing their interests.
Everything makes perfect sense to me except what is in these things for us? What is in it for us on Ukraine? Syria?
On the hacking, my take is we agree to hack each other and your job is to keep me out of your end zone.
“She has lived through an actual instance of gradual strangulation of democracy (in Russia), so she has some firsthand experience to bring.”
“Strangulation of democracy” sounds like a pretty good description of the Democratic Party’s current agenda, which aims at stage-managing political debate to the advantage of the Democrats. E.g. the phony “fake news” scare, the hysteria over Citizens United (which, shudder, said the constitution protects public criticism of politicians during elections) and Obama calling for some sort of “curator” of the news (who? Dan Rather?).
As usual, the Left believes that it isn’t democracy if they don’t win. And the idea that inexperienced, ignorant and lazy Trump would be able to overcome the resistance of the permanent bureaucracy, the courts, the media and most of big business to carry out some sort of coup is just silly paranoia.
The US is in bad shape in many ways, but it is not in the position of Russia in the 1990s. Talk about absurd analogies.
Plus, was there democracy there then? Only in name. It was strangled coming out of the gate.
Exactly.
I would love to get a voucher to send my kids to a charter run by educationrealist.
You might get fewer fads, like how kids are now accusing my in-laws of sexual abuse now that the school helpfully describes sexual abuse to 5 year olds.
The sentiment expressed in this post are the reasons why many serious people supported Trump:
– He made genuinely excellent picks on important issues like health and education. We would have seen the opposite with a Hillary presidency.
– He challenges and maybe shatters this absurd widespread mindset that anything but the most far left ideas are tyranny and fascism.
Sure, criticize Trump when he’s wrong, but so far, Trump seems like a far better outcome than Hillary would have been so far.
I don’t think it’s about facism or what Trump will do, exactly, but more about the ideas Trump represents. If Trump becomes “normalized”, then the ideas Trump campaigned on, like anti-immigration or anti-political correctness, become “normalized” as well.
The people opposing normalizing Trump want to make sure that these ideas remain marginalized. If Trump is legitimate, then these ideas he campaigned on are legitimate as well, and worthy of debate. I think our host sees this as normal, as do most centrist and conservatives. But if you go into very left areas, these ideas are seen as obviously beyond the pale, and not worthy of consideration.
Let’s dispense with hearsay politic. Let’s delegitimize that. He didn’t run on anti-immigration. And that isn’t what got him elected. What got him elected was telling Americans they can’t have a border for 30+ years.
Sheesh, we’ve got how many tens of millions of Mexicans? Where exactly is my Deplorables at? What are we waiting for. Our racism must be just about to kick in any second now.
Good comment by RichardV. Let me add this:
To a lot of Americans, it would seem “normal” to call Donald Trump a “Kenyan socialist” whose actions show his intent to betray the nation and bankrupt the government, whose every legislative effort must be opposed lest the fundamental nature of our society be altered beyond redemption. Does that sound familiar to anyone here?
We’ve had eight years of that Normalcy. Why not go for sixteen? Is there Law that would forbid it? An economic principle? Any sort of moral standard? I see none.
People who refuse to ever say anything positive about Trump are being irrational. I think we agree there. Do you have examples of those people? I guess we have to take you at your word.
That behavior is not the same as normalizing which I believe means lowering expectations for someone when they repeatedly disappoint.
To have an opinion on normalizing you should probably argue that expectations were set correctly or not. I guess your disagreement with the hypothetical people you’re arguing with is that they have unreasonably high expectations for how a President should act. Is that right?
“Suppose that Trump is hell-bent on becoming a tyrant.” I’m supposed to assume this in your argument and emerge pro-normalization?
“This is either (a) a reasonable concern or (b) the paranoid fantasy of moral narcissists. I vote for (b)”. Taking the least charitable view of those who disagree…
“It may preclude Mr. Trump from having any success with bipartisanship” So the hypothetical people you’re writing about are politicians on the left? Or are you saying Trump will change his governing strategy based on criticism from laymen?
For me this blog post is missing a lot of logical connections and detail. Maybe I’m tired, or maybe this wasn’t your best post.
You muse be joking. People were mocked for saying he had a chance.
And narcissism is being charitable. Because otherwise they know they are lying just to move the political football a smidge.
This also part of the narrativing process. Don’t report on that true concerns about a fair trial aren’t racist or anti-foreigner. Report that they symbolize or give aid and comfort to people who have to be on that side because we have a flawed 2-party system.
Laughing and mocking at the b) paranoid narcissists, like Meryl Streep, is also important, if reducing narcissism is a goal. And it should be.
The Democrat elite need a lot more mocking, to help them change. The world, to be a better place for normal folk, need the Dem elite to change.
Re: Meryl Streep
I should have,known to research it, but it is not a slam dunk that Trump was mimicking the reporter. But this is how the mainstream memedia process works. If you report on Streep saying something, that is truth even if what she says is lie.
Re:Racism
More obvious things that never get said. The reason racism is such an issue now is not because minorities are oppressed but because they are empowered.