Bright Line Watch has put out it's newest report on American democracy, and I make this with my usual caveat-- I am part of the sample in the "expert" survey, so it can't really be that "expert," can it?
The timing for the last round was after the midterm election, but before the release of the Mueller report, and the results were interesting and perplexing. The short takeaway is that assessments got more optimistic because respondents, Trump opponents in particular, decided that checks and balances were working again.
Um... excuse me?! You can probably guess that this is not how I answered the questions. As the authors note in their write-up, the timing of responses meant that respondents could not factor in things like Trump stonewalling on subpoenas, but... dude. Was this not completely predictable?
My responses to the questions about the legislature checking the executive and the judiciary checking the executive have been exactly what you'd expect, given what I write here. The 2018 midterms didn't change a thing. Why not? a) The Senate, and b) Trump's ability to stonewall, and the predictable inability of the courts to stop him from stonewalling.
We do not have checks or balances. I have no idea what those respondents were smoking. The stonewalling going on right now? Completely predictable.
And that brings me to my post-Fourth of July musings. The state of American democracy-- a theme on which I muse regularly. Let's start, though, with physics. Quantum mechanics, specifically, just to fuck with ole' Al Einstein. Let's roll them bones!
So, you know how you can't be in two places at once? That's because you aren't a subatomic particle. According to the equations of quantum mechanics, a subatomic particle does not exist in a single location at one time. Its location is governed by a probabilistic function. There is a set of locations in which it can exist, with each location associated with a probability. Its location remains indeterminate until observed, although "observed" has a slightly different meaning in physics than what new age mystics and other hucksters who attempt to adopt quantum mechanics for pseudo-science would tell you. Long story.
Regardless, this is the set-up for the famous thought experiment that launched a thousand cat jokes in what used to be the realm of the pretentious geek, but is now a common reference that most educated people know. In fact, there was a great scene in Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland's The Rise & Fall of D.O.D.O. in which a character with a background in physics (Tristan) goes on an oblivious rant explaining Schrodinger's cat to a Linguistics Ph.D. (Melisande), ignoring the latter's protestations that she already knows about it because everyone knows about it, but clueless Tristan can't grasp that it just isn't that obscure anymore.
With that in mind, let me now play the role of Tristan, and explain Schrodinger's cat, because while you probably get that, you might not have any familiarity with superposition, which is where I'm going with this.
Take
Now, remember that subatomic particles flying off of your decaying radioactive isotope don't exist in any one location at any one time. They exist simultaneously across multiple locations, probabilistically. A subatomic particle isn't either here or there. It is both here and there, with some probability that it is here, and some probability that it is there, until "observed." It exists in multiple locations at once.
So extrapolate. At any given point in time, according to this model, a bunch of particles have hit the Geiger counter, and those same particles have not. That means the Geiger counter has registered the pre-determined level of radioactivity, and has not registered it. That means the hammer has been triggered, and has not. That means the vial has been broken, and the vial has not. That means the gas has been released, and the gas has not. That means the cat is dead, and the cat is alive. To the same degree that a subatomic particle is in location A and location B, the cat is alive and dead. Whether it is alive or dead is governed by the same mathematics. The point of the thought experiment is that as long as the box is closed and there is no observation, a macro-level event is tied to quantum-level mathematics. If a subatomic particle can exist in multiple locations at once because its location is governed by probability and exists as a "wave form," then the thought experiment is based on making the cat's life contingent on the locations of subatomic particles, whose locations are probabilistic, making the cat's state-- live or dead-- probabilistic in the same way. The cat is both alive and dead until you open the box, just as a subatomic particle can exist in multiple locations, governed by a probabilistic function, until observed.
How the hell can this happen?
Lack of regulation of experimentation on animals, obviously.
Beyond that, here's one of the more popular explanations. Superposition and multiple universes. Basically, in any one universe, stuff makes sense in a way that would make sense to Einstein and his dice-hating brain. In any one universe, the subatomic particle is either here or there. However, without observation, the universes in which the particle is here and the universes in which the particle is there are superimposed on each other. And you don't know which universe you inhabit.
If those particles are flying off of a decaying isotope and into Schrodinger's device, there's a universe with a live cat and a universe with a dead cat superimposed on each other. It's not that the cat is both dead and alive-- it's that you don't know which universe you're in until you open the box, and the universes cease to be superimposed on each other. Once you open that box, you observe the state of the cat, and you find out where you are.
Schrodinger's Democracy: Or, As I Use The Most Over-Used Analogy In The History Of Physics
What are the boundaries of American democracy? You don't know until someone tests them.
Think about the idea of a Senate simply refusing to hold hearings on any nominee for the Supreme Court, just because they want to leave a vacancy in the hope that they win the next presidential election. That's pretty extreme, and once upon a time, totally unthinkable. Until Mitch McConnell did it. And... the country just moved on as it happened.
Now think about before that decision. Right before that decision. Like, as Scalia lay dying. (My Supreme Court Justice is a fish.)** Was the country, at that point, so dysfunctional that such an action was possible? That was an indeterminate question. Two universes, superimposed on each other. McConnell's stunt might not have worked. But... it did, and now most of the political system just accepts that the GOP gets away with it. And, basically whatever McConnell wants. But, the only way to find out was to do it. We didn't find out until he did it. The country had to be broken already for that stunt to work. The GOP had to be sufficiently unified around the destruction of all governing norms, the media had to be complicit through an inability to convey the gravity of the offense, the public had to be unable to respond, and the 2016 gambit had to pay off. The conditions for success were not in McConnell's hands. He couldn't know whether or not the nation's democracy was sufficiently broken for his stunt to work until he did it because the universe in which democracy still functioned enough to stop him was superimposed on the universe in which he got away with it.
The wave form collapsed in November, along with all of the other things that collapsed. However, the conditions needed to exist for McConnell's stunt to work. He just couldn't know whether or not those conditions existed because he didn't know which universe he inhabited.
Consider, now, where we stand on July 6, 2019. Donald Trump declared a phony national emergency in order to steal Article I powers because Congress wouldn't fund his ridiculous border wall, which he promised during the campaign that Mexico would fund (and he's too stupid to understand that tariffs are paid by Americans, just as he's too stupid to understand that there were no airplanes during the Revolutionary War, monumental simpleton that he is). The idea of a president responding to Congress's refusal to fund a vanity project by declaring a phony emergency and stealing funds from elsewhere in the budget...
Nobody ever would have tried this until Trump, whose view of executive power and constitutional principle is that Donald Trump rules over all. There is, as I type, a partial injunction against some of the funding, and predicting the future of the various challenges is difficult, but as of now, this is happening. Could it have happened before? The conditions required are a total breakdown of the Republican Party's belief in constitutional governance, which... Remember McConnell?
The question, prior to Trump's phony emergency declaration, was how far that extended. Now we know that basically the entire House GOP will go along with him (and Justin Amash is out of the conference), and while more Senate Republicans objected than I expected, it wasn't enough to do anything. Trump effectively has the backing of his party. This was unthinkable.
Until it happened. Until we observed it.
So let's get uncomfortable. 2020. What will happen? I don't know. Most incumbent presidents are re-elected, particularly when the economy is strong. What is happening with the economy? The latest jobs report notwithstanding, if you are paying attention to the business news, the interest rates on long and short term bonds flipped. In investment jargon, the "yield curve inverted."
As recession predictors go, that's a pretty good one. Do I think a recession is coming? I have no clue. We haven't had one for a long time, but I'm not going to fall prey to the gambler's fallacy. An inverted yield curve, as a recession predictor, requires us to think that either the bond market can cause a recession, or that bond investors have magical, recession-predicting powers, and... no.
Empirically, though, there is a relationship, and as an empiricist, I can't ignore it. There is a relatively high likelihood of a recession in the relatively near future. Meaning...
I don't know what the hell that means. It means I'm being squirrely. Watch me flick my tail.
Anyway, what do I keep telling you about presidential elections? Look at the forecasting models from political science, like the Abramowitz model. It is very difficult for an incumbent to win reelection amid a recession. I won't say impossible, but difficult.
Now, do you seriously think that if INSERT DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE'S NAME HERE wins the general election next year, that Trump will concede in anything like a normal fashion and leave office voluntarily without fighting a post-election fight to the bitter end in every way that he thinks he can?
Let's say the economy tanks. The inverted yield curve correctly predicts that a recession is about to start, the economy tanks, and Trump gets his ass handed to him. Do you seriously think he'd concede? Hell no. First, he'd look at the polls before the election, and try to get Republican governors to do as much as possible to rig their states. (Well, he'd do that second. His first call will be to Putin.) He'll make a bunch of speeches about how the polls are all fake, and the media are all out to get him, and massive, unprecedented voter fraud. That'll set the pretext for whatever he asks the governors to do. He'd muse about trying to cancel the election.
Could he do that? It's... unthinkable, right? But if he gets the entire GOP to go along with the idea of a massive conspiracy based on voter fraud and rigged polls, while telling everyone about the 2016 polls being wrong, and it's all a conspiracy, and blah, blah, blah... would they go along with him?
I'd bet against it right now, but I can't put the odds at zero. There are universes superimposed on each other, and we could be in a universe in which that's the eventuality. We wouldn't be able to tell if the conditions make it possible unless Trump actually does it.
More likely under the recession scenario, Trump loses and demands that Republican governors and the courts overturn the election results. Over some loony conspiracy theory about voter fraud, for which he'd present no evidence, because it would be fraud on his part. Could he get them to go along with it?
I can't put the odds at zero, partially because we have seen other unthinkable scenarios become the reality that we all accept. I don't think it is debatable at this point that Donald Trump does not believe in anything approaching democracy. He wants to be a dictator for life. He idolizes Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saddam Hussein, and other psychopathic dictators, while showing open hostility to any democratically elected leader of a western-style democracy. He is only constrained by the willingness of his own party to accept his own excesses.
Where these scenarios are unlikely-- and they are-- is that they require the GOP to abandon even the pretense to democracy, purely for the sake of Donald Trump's personal vanity. Democratic backsliding, in the Levitsky & Ziblatt sense, is largely about maintaining the pretense and trappings of democracy while eliminating the fundamental operations. If Trump actually loses in 2020, the GOP can't do that. Trump would try, but the GOP would have a choice to make. Eliminate even the pretense, or hang Trump out to dry.
The thing is... it would be a hard choice for them. It would divide the party. There is a base of electoral support for Trump strong enough that they'd follow him. Fox News, and the rest of conservative media?
It could get very ugly.
Of course, returning to the superposition issue, we don't find any of this out if a recession doesn't happen. If the bond markets are wrong, we don't enter a recession. Trump wins. The box doesn't get opened, and we don't find out precisely how dysfunctional the system is. Are we at a point so divorced from the actual practice of democracy that the current president wouldn't step down if he lost?
Given his behavior in 2016, and his words today, we have to ask. He refused to say, in 2016, that he would accept the legitimacy of a loss, and he refuses to say today. Instead, he spreads insane lies about voter fraud, while idolizing totalitarian dictators and openly musing about making himself ruler for life.
If the GOP lets him, he would.
The question, which we cannot answer without the observational scenario, is: how far gone is the Republican Party?
Schrodinger's democracy. We don't know until we observe, and Trump is the one who keeps opening boxes. McConnell too. It was sufficiently far gone for them to blockade a Supreme Court seat for a year, but that didn't violate formal rules. Just norms. And... decency and democracy.
Trump, though? He violates constitutional principles on a regular basis. See, for example, the phony emergency declaration, which is currently only under partial injunction. Most of the party is backing him.
The state of democracy is based on the parties' mutual acceptance of the norms and rules of constitutional governance, and the Republican Party keeps showing its willingness to ignore those norms and rules. However, learning that requires observation as the rules are broken by someone willing to open Schrodinger's box. At that point, we find out which universe we inhabit-- a universe in which the GOP still has a shred of principle left, or a universe in which the GOP had already lost the principle being tested in that particular Schrodinger's box. Once McConnell, or Trump crosses a previously un-crossable line, another wave form collapses, and we find out where we are.
So far, most of the answers have been troubling. The Supreme Court told Trump to stick his citizenship question up his ass. Yay, right? Well, it looks like he's still going to try. I have no idea how that plays out, and even when it comes to gross violations of the Article I/Article II boundaries, Trump has shown a blatant unwillingness to respect any constitutional limits on his authority, and his party has gone along with him.
We can't know how far is too far without opening the box. If the bond market is right, Trump probably loses in 2016. And we find out what kind of stunt he tries to fight the result, and how far his party follows him. He will not go quietly, though, I absolutely guarantee that.
And if he tries something so fundamentally anti-democratic as the scenarios mentioned above-- unlikely though they are-- then we find out if the GOP, and hence American democracy are already so irreparably broken that the conditions exist for these scenarios to work. These scenarios depend on conditions that either do or don't exist now. The wave form doesn't collapse, though, unless Trump actually does lose, and tries one of these scenarios.
If there's no recession? Trump wins, the wave form remains in tact, and you can keep telling yourself that we're still a functioning democracy. How much food do you put in a Schrodinger's box? Asymptotically, that's a dead cat.
I hereby declare this post to be the last acceptable use of Schrodinger's cat. The metaphor is now so overused that no one else may ever use it again. Gee, I'm glad I got this one in under the wire...
I do country on Saturdays, but here are a couple of bonus blues tracks. Bob Brozman's "Dead Cat On The Line," from Blues Reflex, and John Lisi's title cut from Dead Cat Bounce.
*Remember when a president saying something this stupid would have been a major story? Hawai'i is one of our strongest allies in the Pacific! There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe! I could keep going, but oh, what's the point? We still remember the individual cases of past presidents saying things this stupid because they stand out. For Trump, it's just a day ending in -y.
** Look it up, people. Motherfucking FAULKNER!
