In Part IV, I set up the basic problem of competing values for those who enable corruption by allowing those like Trump to attain and retain positions of power. In order to remove them, you have to be willing to sacrifice something. Non-corruption is a value. If you don't actually value it, you won't sacrifice anything to achieve it, so you will tolerate any level of corruption on your own side, while decrying even the most minor violations by anyone with whom you have competing interests.
The basic principle I have set up, then, is that there are things that enablers are unwilling to lose. When those goals are on the line, enablers will tolerate any and all corruption.
What is the most important issue to you? Abortion? Guns? Water Fluoridation?
Climate change? Nuclear weapons?
What makes it so important? Number of lives at stake? When I tried to look at Roy Moore from a social conservative's perspective, that was essentially my point. If you treat abortion as a number-of-lives-at-stake issue because you have a theological belief that life begins at conception, then a lot of lives are at stake, and you can justify voting for even a reprehensible shitbag like Moore. If you are reading a Trump-bashing political scientist's blog, even a contrarian one like mine, you probably aren't a bible-thumping right-winger, but substitute your favorite issue, and you might make the same choice. If you're honest with yourself, you know it.
The enablers are those who basically just have a broad set of issues on which they won't accept a loss. This is where we get to Levitsky & Ziblatt's How Democracies Die. Ideological collusion. It isn't just the psychopath at the top who kills democracy. The problem? Those who enable him in exchange for the policies that they get along the way.
The enablers are those who look at the corruption evident in someone like Trump and accept it because to do otherwise would be to accept policy loss. I have regularly made a somewhat different argument than Levitsky & Ziblatt, focusing on the electoral consequences for the GOP if Trump were ever impeached, but the basic logic of accepting corruption in exchange for policy is compatible. Once those electoral losses occur, they are followed by policy loss, so at the core, we're still in Levitsky & Ziblatt territory. Ideological collusion. No collusion, my ass.
Trump may very well shut down the Mueller investigation and destroy the independence of the DoJ to save himself, which would be a tragic blow to democracy. And if that happens, the GOP will stand by and let it happen, and in many cases, cheer him on.
Why? Because while some would say, in the abstract, that they value an independent DoJ, they care so much more about tax cuts and Supreme Court seats that there is no level of corruption that could possibly outweigh the value of even a tiny tax increase, or a single Supreme Court seat given the weights they ascribe to each within their utility functions.
That is what it is to be an enabler of corruption. To say, you may lie, cheat and steal to your heart's content and destroy any democratic norm you want because I would rather have you do that than permit taxes to go up one penny on those whom I choose to protect. (Note the selectivity within the 2018 tax bill).
How does one come up with such a weighting? What are the consequences? More to come...
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