#acemoglu

Even more shocking to those who still had faith in the U.S. Constitution to restrain Trump was the unwillingness of the Republican-dominated Senate to so much as hear all of the evidence against the president.

Republican-dominated Senate unwillingness to hear all of the supposed evidence was partly a reaction to Democrat-dominated House unwillingness to show how this evidence was being obtained (Hand-picked investigators in closed-door interviews) to public scrutiny, and improper filing. Moreover, there’s Constitutional grounds for both of these things - the Constitution is quite short, and it lets the House and the Senate both pick how they want to run their affairs.

Acemoglu should stop using “Constitution” as a synecdoche for procedures he likes.

Impeachment and its aftermath were just the beginning. Arguably more consequential for millions of Americans was the Trump administration’s refusal to heed expert warnings about the spread of the novel coronavirus. Instead of replenishing stockpiles of protective equipment or rolling out a national testing strategy, the president downplayed the severity of the pandemic and falsely claimed that the United States was prepared to contain it. Misinformation spread by Trump (and repeated by his allies on Fox News) in the early days of the outbreak appears to have accelerated the spread of the virus, which has now claimed more than 100,000 American lives.

A fair criticism in its own right, but a rather selective one. The experts were fuckups too. ('Masks don’t work. Quarantines don’t work. Closing the borders would be racist. China’s numbers are valid.') The CDC and the FDA fucked up real hard in forbidding people to make their own test kits. When Acemoglu complains about institutions losing public trust, he should mention some of those institutional mistakes. Still, this is probably the best paragraph of the article.

While the pandemic was still raging, yet another tragedy struck: white police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, brutally killed George Floyd, an African American man, touching off mass protests that still continue. A leader who once referred to white supremacists as “very fine people” 

This is a lie.

A reporter brought up to Trump the claim that there were neo-Nazis present at Charlottesville, and Trump responded with: “you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides ... You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.“

To anyone with minimal intellectual integrity, it should be obvious that Trump is referring to the neo-Nazis and white-supremacists as the very bad people, and others as the very fine people.

(I’ve seen some people use a motte-and-bailey strategy of reinterpreting the entire set of protesters at Charlottesville as being so-called “white supremacists”, which makes it technically true that Trump referred to some of those as very fine people, but now you’re instead lying about who was present and what the term “white supremacist” means.)

This lie makes it extra ironic when Acemoglu later in the article writes:

democratic institutions rest on norms—compromise, cooperation, respect for the truth—and are bolstered by an active, self-confident citizenry and a free press.

As I am not a caricaturist, I instead ask the reader to please mentally envision Daren Acemoglu wearing a police uniform and wielding a baton as he shouts “Stop Resisting” at the feminine depiction of Truth that he’s assaulting.

What Putin and Erdogan could get away with at the beginning of their terms in office is nothing compared with what they can get away with now. The United States is currently working through the later chapters of this same authoritarian playbook, which Trump adopted early in his presidency

Bull-fucking-shit.

The communist coronavirus covid-19 handed Trump a golden opportunity to firmly close the borders as a national emergency under quarantine procedures, and he didn’t take it. The man can’t even be authoritarian about his own biggest campaign promise. Acemoglu doesn’t appear to understand the word “authoritarian” as anything but a generic outgroup slur.

Let me give an example of what I might have done if I were an actual authoritarian in Trump’s position:

Upon assuming office, immediately recognize a state of war as existing on the southern US border. Send the Army Corps of Engineers to build the wall and other military units to close the border.

This bypasses the Congressional power to declare war by saying MS-13 and other irregular forces have already invaded America first, and bypasses the Congressional power of the purse by using military spending to pay for the wall. It can be done entirely on presidential authority.

If you think Trump is still too constrained by institutions to do this in his fourth year, you should shut the fuck up about [spongemock face.jpg] late-stage authoritarian 🅱laybook.

Acemoglu continues:

By dismissing concerns about Russian interference in the U.S. election, refusing to disclose his tax returns, openly pursuing policies that serve his family’s financial interests, vilifying Hispanic and Muslim Americans, propagating conspiracy theories, and relentlessly lying to the press, the president has left practically no norm of democratic governance unviolated. These actions not only weakened the institutions that are supposed to restrain the president 

Acemoglue-sniffer continues to not only assault Truth but sodomize her with his metaphorical police baton.

Overall, Acemoglu has just accused Trump of authoritarian playbook, now violating norms of democratic governance, and weakening institutions. Do any of the specifics support this? No.

“Russian interference” was a meme that began life as a hysterical attempt to deny Trump the presidency by claiming Russia rigged the election results, and once this proved entirely unsupported, it backed down to much lamer claims such as Russian intelligence spying on elements of the US government and hiring people to post fake news on Twitter - trivially true, and Trump is correct to dismiss concerns about it.

Vilifying outgroup: every day the mainstream media blood-libels European Americans with talk of ‘institutional white supremacy’ and ‘systematic racism’.

Pursuing financial interest: Allow me to introduce you to “pork” as it is used in politics.

Lying to the press: Staple activity of politicians.

“Conspiracy theory” was half a slur to begin with, and in the mouth of progs is converging on meaning little more than “Theories I don’t believe”.

I conclude Acemoglu has laid a bait and switch in the phrase “norms of democratic governance”. By descriptive (observed) norms of democratic governance, Trump hasn’t violated squat. He’s acting like a clown because he lives in a circus. Trump showed up to a place with bad norms and engaged in bad behavior. By prescriptive (wishful) norms of democratic governance, Trump might be in violation, but so are all the institutions that Acemoglu fears Trump is weakening. So is Acemoglu, for that matter.

In closing, ‘Glu writes:

U.S. institutions were vulnerable to Trump’s attack because public trust had been quietly ebbing away from them for some time. [...] To regain that trust, the next administration must confront endemic racism as well as economic inequality. 

This will not work.

DARON ACEMOGLU is Institute Professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.