The Right to Be

Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship will have a serious impact on the children of immigrants (legal and illegal) in the United States.  The Pew Research Center documents the existence of a substantial population of US-born children living with an unauthorized immigrant parent.  The Trump administration claims that this new understanding of citizenship will only be applied to the children born to unauthorized immigrant parents after the law has been implemented. I do not believe this, but even if it is true, the impact of ending birthright citizenship will undermine the legitimacy of those whose only claim to citizenship is birth.

And that is not all.  As Benjamin Balthaser, a scholar at Indiana University, argues, the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship laid the foundation for a multiracial society, a society in which citizenship, with its duties and rights, does not turn on race.  Thus, rejecting birthright citizenship undermines one of the constitutive principles of our society.  (Of course, Balthaser’s argument assumes that race will be an important determinant of who does and who does not get citizenship at birth.  But let’s be honest with ourselves:  it will.)

But the impact of rejecting birthright citizenship extends further still.  It is crucial for the preservation of human rights of any sort that persons are born with citizenship somewhere, that is to say, the right to be somewhere.  If we do not have the right to be somewhere, it is not clear that we could have a right to be at all.  This undermines the entire notion of human rights.

This is partly a practical problem.  It is generally national governments that are thought to have the primary responsibility for fostering and protecting the rights of their citizens.  If people are born without citizenship anywhere, then there is no one to whom they can appeal for protection and support for the exercise of their rights.

But there is also a conceptual problem here.  Birthright citizenship (jus soli/right of soil) is not the only way to ensure that everyone acquires citizenship at birth. Most countries, whether they accept birthright citizenship or not, grant citizenship on the basis of descent or lineage (jus sanguinis/right of blood).  Under this doctrine, one’s citizenship is grounded on the citizenship of one’s parents in some way.  So, perhaps, the danger of many people being born without citizenship isn’t really such a problem.  Certainly there will be cases of people whose parentage is unknown, or whose citizenship is unclear for other reasons.  But these will be the exception rather than the rule.  

But even a brief reflection on the state of our world reveals the problem with this approach to citizenship.  One of the harshest and most intractable features of our world is the existence of millions of refugees who have fled their homes, likely never to return.  Perhaps they are fleeing wars or natural disasters that have undercut the possibility of a functioning civil society in their countries. Or perhaps it is their own governments that have turned against them and driven them out.  For people in such situations, jus sanguinis is often just an empty promise.  

And, finally, if blood is the source of citizenship, it is also what excludes one from citizenship.  It doesn’t take much imagination to discern the horrors that this line of thought can lead to.  Indeed, it may not take any imagination at all as we watch the development of Trump’s plans to rid the country of those he considers undesirable.  

Knowledge is Cancelled

One of the first things that has to be done to implement fascism (or any other flavor of authoritarianism) is to silence those who have the education and experience and training to know what they are talking about—scientists, scholars, teachers, people with the motivation to educate themselves.  Our own third-rate Mussolini took an important step in that direction with the cancellation of numerous scientific meetings and conferences that are part of the regular work of scientists employed by or working with the federal government.  The disruption of biomedical research in the US that this will cause is detailed in this article.  And there is little doubt that this will cause similar disruptions in other important areas of research, such as climate change or food production or energy.

But these immediate disruptions are only part of the danger.  The production of knowledge is a collective endeavor. This was one of the revolutionary things about the so-called “scientific revolution.”  Knowledge ceased to be seen as the treasure of the solitary scholar, alone in his garret, isolated from the distractions of the world; it became, instead, the prize of people working together in the world.  When scientists and scholars cannot communicate amongst themselves, the entire enterprise is severely undermined.

For fascists and other authoritarians, this is precisely the point.  If people who have some standing to know what they are talking about are allowed to talk—to each other and to the public—there is always the danger that they will say something inconvenient for the ideologues.  And this is a very pressing danger for a fascist regime that relies, as most do, on claims that are empirically false (think Hitler’s calumnies against the Jews or Trump’s against Hispanics) or that contravene science (think RFK, Jr.’s foolishness about vaccines).  

Eventually, of course, this silencing will have to be a bit more aggressive than just making it inconvenient for people to communicate.  Soon, I expect, we will begin to see large scale dismissal of scientists and scholars working with the federal government, cancellation of grant programs and other forms of research support, suppression of unfavorable research, and so on.  (We are already seeing removal of scientific information from government websites.)

And the scope of this suppression will have to be expanded considerably.  The federal government has the power to shape education in profound ways, from kindergarten to graduate school.  And the power it has over teachers, including those at the post-secondary level, gives it the power to suppress even research that it doesn’t fund.   The right has been attacking education at all levels for some time, and it is reasonable to expect that this will get worse.  

This particular feature of fascism finds fertile ground in the United States.  Our country has a long history of anti-intellectualism and the concomitant notion that education is some sort of character flaw that renders people untrustworthy.  As a prophylactic against being overwhelmed by the wave of glorified ignorance that is on the horizon, I recommend reading The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby.  The current paroxysms of our culture may be unusual in their severity; they are certainly the worst I have seen in my life.  But they are not really unusual in any other way.

 

Janus—God of Efficiency

I’m really excited about this new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that Trump is creating to give Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk something to do.  Perhaps we’ll see something done about the egregious waste at the Pentagon.  Or maybe an effort to rectify the economic inefficiency of massive tax breaks and subsidies for the corporate sector.  Or maybe some sort of restrictions on the ability of lobbyists to manipulate Congress.  But probably nothing like this.  How one thinks about the efficiency of a system like government is shaped by what one thinks the output of the system should be.  And most of the people who are calling the shots these days have a rather narrow and self-serving view about this.

One way of assessing the efficiency of a system is simply to look at the total output without much concern for how that output is distributed throughout the system.  In the case of an economic system, this usually means assessing the system against such metrics as the performance of the stock market and the GNP; the standard is simply the total amount of wealth produced by the system, however that wealth is distributed.  It is obvious that this notion of efficiency has a prominent place in the political culture of the US.

Another way of thinking about efficiency is exemplified by economic systems that support a social system designed to preserve the economic (and therefore the political) dominance of an elite class.  Here, the persistence, security, and power of the elite provide the standard for assessing the efficiency of the system.  It is worth noting that these two conceptions of efficiency are not incompatible.  One might argue that such measures as drastic tax reductions and deregulation will increase the total wealth produced by the system and preserve the corporate elite.  Indeed, this belief is almost gospel in the United States.

But a more interesting example of the idea that the purpose of an economic system is to nurture and preserve an elite is found in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.  The discussion of tax policy(1) is most instructive in this regard.  One of the core principles of the Project 2025 tax policy says that “the tax system should minimize its adverse impact on the family and the core institutions of civil society.”(2). And some of the proposals are in fact likely to be beneficial to the working and middle classes.  But others clearly work to preserve the economic dominance of an elite class, for example, substantial reductions in the gift and estate tax rates and a cap on the untaxed benefits (such as medical insurance) that employers can give employees.  (Project 2025 suggests that this cap will result in higher wages which workers can use as they see fit, but there is no reason whatsoever to think that employers will pass this largesse on to employees.)

Project 2025 also suggests that long-term, more fundamental tax reform might include a consumption tax, such as a national sales tax.  The impact of such a tax is inversely proportional to economic status—the less one has, the more it hurts.  If you are interested to know what sort of elite these measures are designed to protect, you can consult the other sections of the document.

Of course, there are many other ways to assess the efficiency of an economic or other social system.  If we wanted to be really radical, we might ask about the extent to which the system produces for the people who live in it the genuine possibility of creating satisfying lives for themselves.  It was precisely this consideration which led Adam Smith to identify carefully designed market-based economic systems as a way both to make societies more productive and to distribute the results of that productivity in a way that enhanced human flourishing.  

One thing is certain:  we can’t really expect two bad boys like Musk and Ramaswamy to give much consideration to human flourishing.  But I am confident that they will provide us with sterling examples of efficiency in the use of their positions to enrich themselves.   

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(1) Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation, pp. 695-698.

(2) ibid., p. 696.

 Vengeance

We’re just over a week from the election, and Trump is beginning to make appointments to his cabinet and staff, and to various agencies.  There is not much  really surprising so far—corporate stooges, bigots of one sort or another, anti-science clowns, and the like.  I think perhaps we are seeing the invisible hand of the Heritage Foundation and its database of suitable candidates to help Trump pursue his agenda.  The immediate future is looking pretty dismal.

Much of the buzz has concerned the question of who Trump will appoint as his Attorney General.  Trump has made it clear that he intends to seek a very harsh vengeance on his political opponents—the Obamas, the Clintons, the Bidens, Jack Smith, Nancy Pelosi…the list goes on and on.  The Department of Justice and the Attorney General will certainly have a crucial role to play in this orgy of vengeance, so we can expect Trump to appoint someone who will be absolutely loyal to him, despite having taken an oath of loyalty to the Constitution.

And, indeed, he has—Matt Gaetz.  Although Gaetz has been critical of the DOJ and various other government agencies in the past, he has not, as I write this, said anything about his plans as AG.  But Trump loyalist Mike Davis (a Republican lawyer, advisor to the GOP on judicial nominations, and likely Trump appointee to some position) has likely set the tone for what is coming with his public pronouncements and threats.  For example, this post on X: 

 Here's my current mood:  I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall.  (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.). 

And there is considerably more of the same and worse here.

This practice of prosecuting politicians for unpopular policies or personal grudges was a prominent feature of the ancient Roman Republic as it collapsed into a civil war that lasted more than a decade.  And after all the slaughter and suffering, the result was a regime in which everyone was subject to the whims of an (often insane) emperor.  The people against whom Trump is seeking vengeance are very popular in the US and many other parts of the world.  His quest for revenge could easily devolve into open political violence, or even a civil war.  Trumpettes make no secret of looking for reasons to use violence against their opponents.  And the antifascist movement is waiting in the wings for an event that will reactivate it.  With this much fuel around, something is bound to spark eventually.

Of course, Trump’s hypocrisy in this matter is no surprise.   He claims immunity, but insists on the right to prosecute anyone who upsets him.  Still, if he actually tries (or manages) to jail Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, this might agitate people enough to trigger violence.  After all, once they are in jail, they might not hang themselves, just like Jeffrey Epstein.

It is possible that the Supreme Court will put a stop to this sort of insanity.  But it is not very likely.  The immunity ruling alone indicates clearly that SCOTUS has become entirely partisan, as have many lower courts.  Will SCOTUS grant the same immunity to Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden?  Will it act to protect others who have earned Trump’s ire merely by carrying out their duties under the Constitution?   I see  little reason to think so.

It looks like the cluster fuck is getting nicely underway.

Would You Believe?

I’ve been following some of the news about Iran’s attacks on Trump—hacking his campaign and allegedly plotting to assassinate the man himself and some of his former aides.  And the news about Russian attacks on the Harris/Walz campaign, e.g., the attempt to smear Walz with a charge of abusing a student.  And I am led to wonder:  why is it that Iran wants to take Trump completely out of the picture, while Russia wants to support the Trump campaign?  If US intelligence agencies are even close to right about the level of interference in our election by these two regimes, I think we should be concerned.  And I also wonder why these two allies appear to be taking opposite sides in the election.

One possible explanation is that all these attacks are just an effort to disrupt US political culture at a time when it is already fragile; perhaps there is no greater purpose than making trouble.  Certainly, both Russia and Iran would “benefit” from disruption in the US, whatever their political relationship might be.   (I’m not sure that “benefit” is an appropriate word for a small but favorable shift in the global balance of power, but I am sure that both these countries would see it that way.). But there is much about the Trump presidency that suggests a different explanation.

It’s not difficult to understand why Russia (or Putin) would favor a Trump presidency.  During his time in the White House, Trump did the Russian autocrat several favors.  Putin wanted NATO destabilized so that it could not effectively oppose the first steps in his effort to rebuild the Soviet empire.  Trump obliged by threatening not to pay, or even to withdraw.  Putin wanted to deploy some of his missiles in a more aggressive posture toward Europe.  Trump withdrew from a treaty, thereby allowing Putin to do so.  Trump even went on international TV with Putin to apologize for how badly the US had treated Russia.  I’m sure Putin could use such a friend in the White House.

It is also not difficult to understand why Iran might despise Trump enough to want him dead.  Things were looking up for Iran before the Trump presidency.  As it became clear that Iran had stopped significant efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, sanctions were being reduced and the economy was improving, which reduced internal dissent.  Iran’s theocrats had every reason to believe that they could reap the benefits of participation in the modern world while still preserving a medieval theocracy at home.  But Trump lost no time in destroying this arrangement.

So maybe Iran and Russia are simply pursuing their individual interests in ways that will not damage their alliance.  Or maybe not.  Since we live in an age of conspiracy theories, let me propose one for your consideration.  My conspiracy theory is a variation on the idea that they are just stirring up trouble, but with an agenda.

Iran is explicitly a theocracy—a nation governed by religious authorities in accordance with the principles of a particular religion.  Russia is not explicitly a theocracy, but the Orthodox Church provides the metaphysical and moral justification for Putin’s political vision.(1)  In both cases, religion grounds the politics of oppression.  Here in the United States, there is a substantial demographic that is actively seeking the same for our country.  Call them what you will—Dominionists, Christian Nationalists, White Christian Supremacists—they are seeking to bring a white, Christian version of theocracy to the US.  Perhaps, just perhaps, our own White Christian Fascists (WCFs) are in cahoots with the Russians and the Iranians.  Perhaps the disruption of our elections is intended to give the WCFs a chance to seize power and implement the practices and policies of Project 2025 or some other such fascist vision.  Perhaps we are seeing the emergence of a new theocratic alliance poised to create major changes in the global power structure.

But what, you might ask, could ground an alliance between US Evangelical Christianity, Russian Orthodox Christianity, and the Shia Islam of Iran?  Well, it has been my experience that only one thing gets religious fanatics more exercised than the existence of other religions, and that is the existence of people or nations who embrace no religion at all.  Such an alliance could stand against the threat of explicitly secular China or increasingly secular Europe.  Perhaps we are at the dawn of a glorious new era of muscular religiosity.

Anyway, this is no more silly than a lot of the tripe that pollutes our political culture these days.  I suspect that the coming election will give us a clearer idea of the extent to which the citizenry of the United States has abandoned evidence-based critical thinking.  And we might get a bit of first-hand experience of what happens to a country governed by that demographic.

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(1) https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/pulpit-propaganda-machine-tracing-russian-orthodox-churchs-role-putins-war