by Michael Hoexter, Ph.D. The Presidential election campaign of 2016 has been nauseating in the ugliness of its tone and content as well as how discussion of important issues about government policy has been sidelined in the public debates and the public sphere more generally. The media seem to be encouraging the personalized ugliness in ways that are perhaps predictable as they have for years now reported politics as a horserace and soap opera and not as the conflict of ideas. If we were to choose dominant basic emotions that has been mobilized and triggered by various events, media coverage, and political strategies, those emotions would be primarily disgust and secondarily anger. Each political side has seemed to attempt to evoke reactions of revulsion in relationship to their opponent to better their chances of winning, utilizing when they can the media’s attraction to dramatizing rather than communicating facts and competing realistic visions. With the help of FBI director Jim Comey’s reopening of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in the last week before the election, Trump’s extremely ugly campaign has gained new life. A predominant strain in his campaign is portraying himself as an anti-corruption candidate and also a victim of an Establishment aligned against him and his constituency.
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Michael Hoexter considers the following as important: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Michael Hoexter
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Michael Hoexter, Ph.D.
The Presidential election campaign of 2016 has been nauseating in the ugliness of its tone and content as well as how discussion of important issues about government policy has been sidelined in the public debates and the public sphere more generally. The media seem to be encouraging the personalized ugliness in ways that are perhaps predictable as they have for years now reported politics as a horserace and soap opera and not as the conflict of ideas. If we were to choose dominant basic emotions that has been mobilized and triggered by various events, media coverage, and political strategies, those emotions would be primarily disgust and secondarily anger. Each political side has seemed to attempt to evoke reactions of revulsion in relationship to their opponent to better their chances of winning, utilizing when they can the media’s attraction to dramatizing rather than communicating facts and competing realistic visions.
With the help of FBI director Jim Comey’s reopening of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in the last week before the election, Trump’s extremely ugly campaign has gained new life. A predominant strain in his campaign is portraying himself as an anti-corruption candidate and also a victim of an Establishment aligned against him and his constituency. With his frequent threats of retaliation and violence and appearance of being a (whiny) bully, he attempts to impress credulous voters with a “strong-man” potential to mete out “rough justice” to his “corrupt” opponents or those he stylizes as wrong-doers. ‘Vengeance will be his and the American people’s’, he attempts to communicate, by threatening to “throw Hillary (and who knows who else) in jail” by what legal means or justification is not clear.
The long history of the Clintons in public life and public office as well as their missteps has given Trump’s campaign ammunition. Yet possible Trump voters as well as those sitting out the contest need to look very closely at both the message and the messenger before concluding that Trump and his campaign can ever be a force against corruption and for “good government”.
If potential Trump voters instead just “don’t care” and want to destroy “things” or the perceived happiness of others, they should also come face to face with their own destructive impulses, if they are at all able. Some might say “yes” to wanting to destroy for its own sake, and proceed on towards a fascistic cult of violence but others should or would turn back from that brink, if they were to become aware of the road that they and Trump are traveling.
The answer of whether one should support Trump or allow him to win the Presidency to fight corruption or “Make America Great Again” is definitively “No”: despite those abuses of power or misguided policy ideas in which both Clintons have participated over the years, Trump would, unbelievable as it seems, be much, much more corrupt and destructive. His election to the Presidency threatens the collapse of the American political system and consequently also its economic and social systems. It is within these systems that we all live. While those systems have, particularly as of late, not reliably delivered the desired benefits to many Americans, including many Trump supporters, Trump has no functioning alternative other than childish fantasies of how power and government work and, as mentioned above, wreaking havoc and revenge on opponents and the disfavored. Trump came, bizarrely, into Presidential politics, as a fame-and-glory seeker and, one thing leading to another, if he will be allowed by your votes, an aimless wrecker of the political process that has taken Americans over 240 years to develop.
While complete collapse is not a certainty, US politics is teetering on the verge of a whirlpool or cesspool of political and social destabilization and possible political violence. We now have law enforcement and spy agencies rumored to be “taking sides” in the upcoming political contest, a sign of a “failed state” or banana republic level of functioning of government institutions. While Trump appeals to (mostly white) people’s sense of imminent threat and collapse of their way of life (by blaming the influx and rare criminal threats coming from immigrants), it is he that represents at the moment the biggest threat to stability and social safety. Trump uses a constant barrage of criticisms, some founded criticisms copied from others, some unfounded smears of his opponent to distract from the massive danger that his own candidacy and politicking represents to public safety and the American system of government. While Trump has been distracting his supporters by calling attention to (often hardworking) immigrants as dangers, Donald Trump has invited his followers to commit various acts of violence or violent suppression of opposition. He and some of his core supporters are the most aggressive agents of social decay, while he and they point continually elsewhere for the causes of that decay. He and some of his supporters are actively making America “less great” as they try to blame others or “punch downward” to vainly try to “avenge” what ails them, ails us, and ails our social systems. It is a politics of (fantasied) revenge more than constructive engagement with the real difficulties that we all are or will be facing.
The current crisis of US politics and our social system, is not something that has started with Trump or in the last few years, but has its roots in a decades of neglect of the importance of government and public administration in the maintenance of a decent economy and of prosperity for broad expanses of the population as a whole. This is not a sudden change: the notion of civic duty has been under constant attack from organized “Establishment” factions from both major political parties and the elite opinion-makers that surround them. These are ultimately the fruits of the neoliberal philosophy of government that undermines “deontological” (rule-based) commitment to public morality and puts in its place a “utilitarian” calculus of personal gain and loss for both political leaders and citizens more generally. This is a philosophy that assumes we live in a “dog-eat-dog” world and that everybody, including politicians, are basically “out for themselves”. The attack on the role of government has been more sustained in the United States from the political Right, mostly the Republican Party, but the neoliberal “Left” (and it’s not much of a “Left” at all) that now is dominant in the Democratic Party has joined in and helped, whether intentionally or not, to undermine the footing of American democracy. In a way, the end of the 2016 Presidential campaign consists largely of the prime saboteur of American democracy and civilization of the last few decades, the Republican Party and its current nominee, trying to blame the “junior partner” for the sad and extremely dangerous state of affairs for which these accusers are primarily responsible.
A Personalized Politics
There are many during this election season who see present political conflicts as conflicts between good and bad people, with “good” and “bad” defined in very personalized ways. The theory, it seems now on both sides of the Democrat vs. Republican conflict in this election, to be that “good” originates in good people and “bad” from bad people. Gone from serious political discourse is the idea that we live in social and economic systems that shape us and our possibilities, that in turn can be altered by careful and conscious effort. Systems thinking, in a nuanced and reality-open way, has at least temporarily been thrown out the window (and has been “out the window” for a while now). Instead, we are lead to believe that politics and policymaking are simply dramas between “good” and “bad” individuals, a simple morality play.
US voters however are faced with a very complicated choice that, I feel, must for many go beyond the simple “hero” or “villain” choice with which many public figures and the media are presenting us and towards which our public discourse seems to want to drive us. If you approach this election with the idea that you are choosing a hero over a villain, a considerable and damaging level of reality-distortion is required. We see this reality-distortion on both the Republican and Democratic sides, though it is more extreme on the Republican side, where the candidate and his most avid followers seem to be living in a made-up though very threatening and dangerous political world. The “hero/villain” choice is an example of the psychological defense mechanism called “splitting” which is typical of early childhood (and is contained in many fairy tale “black and white” portrayals of good and evil) but can in adults damage the ability to relate to others or to the world around them.
If you think the election is about anointing a hero or casting a villain down in defeat, the following analysis will probably not interest you. However, if you believe that the adequate, mostly-non-corrupt functioning of government is vital for you, for your children, and for the society as a whole, you might read on. Because of the immanent climate and ecological breakdown with which we are faced, I believe that a functioning, coordinating, and mission-focused government is our only hope for us as a civilized or even living species. Even if one as a “conservative” or “libertarian” has been inculcated with a preference for “limited government”, this need for a coordinating, leading “big” government at this point in history is compulsory and beyond my or your tastes in “size of government”. So I, at least, do not see a lot of room to indulge ourselves by making this election a morality play or “beauty pageant” to satisfy our particular individual sense of justice.
The Clinton vs. Trump Choice
Trump has gained in the polls by playing on both real and imaginary faults of Hillary Clinton, still the frontrunner in the contest. He has been lately helped by the actions of James Comey, the Republican director of the FBI appointed by President Obama, who announced a week ago that there were further Clinton emails that would be examined. Some credit Comey with anticipating the howls of Republicans as he or the FBI would announce the existence of these emails after the election and presumed victory of Clinton. Others think that Comey tried to get ahead of leaks that unhappy pro-Trump or anti-Clinton FBI agents would have offered prior to the election. Comey’s revelation has given Trump’s campaign a boost, even though most still feel that Clinton is favored to win.
Trump’s main criticism of Clinton and one where he is able to summon a mixture of real and inflated faults and mistakes of Clinton, is that she is “crooked Hillary” or a corrupt politician, while he is, in his imagined self-image, an assumedly non-crooked businessman. Trump has, as have “outsider candidates” before him, styled himself as a breath of fresh air in politics vs. the entrenched Washington elite of which Hillary and her former-President husband Bill are viewed to be prime examples. While he has not campaigned as a neoliberal, Trump has been exploiting the assumptions of neoliberalism that assume that people who emerge from business are somehow smarter or more qualified than they are to govern.
And Clinton has delivered much to invite many, many criticisms of her and her husband. There is the appearance and likely reality of influence peddling that has made the Clintons very rich, via the Clinton Foundation among other means. Both Clintons have been steadfast friends and protectors of Wall Street as well as other large corporate interests. Hillary Clinton is an enthusiast of aggressive American intervention in other countries with some disastrous results, including support for the Iraq war and the fiasco in Libya. (Trump by the way also supported the Iraq War until it got ugly but he has lied about his support).
Clinton is, on foreign policy, a “neoconservative”, the military-political ideology that wishes for America to enhance or reassume its role as the world’s gendarme. Neoconservatives take as their primary goals the unipolar and unchallenged overwhelming military superiority of the United States throughout the world and with, in the Middle East, “battleship” Israel as the unchallenged hegemonic power in that region. The primary targets of neoconservative-inspired military push are destabilizing and potential “regime change” in Putin’s Russia and Iran, as well as secular Arab or Shiite-Muslim states in the Middle East. Alarmingly, Clinton and other Democrats lately are pushing a hard anti-Russia/anti-Putin line that threatens to spark global conflicts, continued militarization of foreign policy, and a possible new Cold War or nuclear confrontation. There have been some very “cheap” efforts by partisan Democrats to make the 2016 election be about a choice between “pro-“ and “anti-Russia” candidates.
On the domestic front, Bill Clinton and his politics, from which Hillary has deviated only slightly, mostly abandoned the working class (of all races), identified often as “white” in some media portrayals, including his support of NAFTA and ending of welfare. The Democratic Party has mostly followed Clinton’s lead. The Clintons have been steadfast allies of Wall Street, with Bill Clinton ending Glass Steagall regulations, and, via Chelsea, have “married into” Wall Street and their grandkids’ membership in the .01% (or .001%) tied to its fortunes. As a gift to Wall Street as well as perhaps a product of credulity in it’s merits, Bill Clinton appeared to ready to privatize Social Security before the Monica Lewinsky hearings and impeachment trial sidetracked his ambitions. Hillary Clinton’s likely Treasury Secretary has been advocating a privatization of Social Security. Bill Clinton has had a credulous relationship with so-called deficit hawks, creating in the 1990’s government surpluses which deepened the recession of 2000-2002 after the stock market crashed in 1999-2000. Hillary Clinton has toed the deficit hawk line in the Presidential debates. Hillary Clinton’s well-paid speeches to Wall Street firms display her at ease with these financial “masters of the Universe” and adopting a largely sympathetic ear to their concerns and rationale for their continued dominant role in the American economy and revolving-door relationship to government.
On top of her policy tendencies and philosophy of government, Hillary Clinton is at best a mediocre campaigner and often appears mechanical and unspontaneous. She has made a number of critical judgment errors involving government secrecy which, while not unprecedentedly bad and are mirrored by Republican misdemeanors in power, are of a piece with her and her husband’s attitudes of entitlement to power. These email scandals have been covered ad nauseam in the press.
While Trump is, with good reason, more unpopular than she is, she has a very high unfavorability rating despite her long public service, her experience in government and intelligence. Sexism is clearly at work as she is hated by mostly men but also some women for, not only her missteps and policy orientation but her achievements and manifest competence. But it is hard, given all of the justified criticisms of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, to then dismiss those criticisms as simply the product of the also very real sexist prejudices that Hillary has fought throughout her career. Many Democratic partisans have in this campaign been willing to entirely dismiss criticisms of Hillary as a product of sexism or loyalty to Trump and little else. It is hard to both point out the real sexism directed at Clinton and also the real faults that she and her husband have, beyond the adversity she faces because of being a woman.
And Hillary Clinton’s main liability may not be her own self, her politics, or “instincts” but the groups of uncritical partisans that surround her, demanding absolutely loyalty to her on pain of being ostracized from the inner sanctums of the Democratic Party and mainstream media. These partisans often try to disown their own behavior and enforcement of loyalty as it contradicts their self-images as “liberal” people. Some of the fury with which Hillary is defended by these partisans may have roots in the time of her peak popularity when she was the “wronged woman” during the 1990’s sex scandals involving her husband. Hillary’s stoic loyalty to her husband despite his disloyalty to her won her many fans and those who have remained loyal to her seem to be attached to a similar operatic sense of Clinton’s victimhood and what, to them, must be nefarious evil-doing by any and all critics of her.
Add to this, the stifling dominance of identity politics on what passes for a Left in the United States, has meant that Hillary has, as Obama before her, due to her sex, been credited for being liberal-progressive when some of her actions and attitudes tend towards the conservative or militaristic-destructive. Just as Obama, due to his identity, has been treated as a progressive despite many right-leaning initiatives and policy on his part, Hillary Clinton is viewed through rose-colored glasses by liberals inculcated with identity-politics based views. It is doubtful these followers would feel at all passionately about a white male politician with identical views and a similar resume.
There has also been an alarming undercurrent of classism among Hillary supporters, though not always originating with Clinton herself. Clinton’s supporters are much of society’s elite and they do not seem to have any compunction in showing off their supposed or real advantages and, they hope, merit. Chris Arnade has called this “front-row” kids vs. “back-row” kids, which is not the same as economic class. Arnade’s perceptive distinction is as accurate as any in describing the rift between Hillary supporters and Trump supporters, if not the rift between the Hillary camp and the undecideds which she would like to win over to win the Presidency. Rather than submit plans for a common American future to those from all walks of life, Hillary and perhaps more, her supporters, seem to delight in parading their success or their ability to follow new social rules of conduct (like racial sensitivity, openness to gay/transgender people, conscious anti-sexism) in front of those who struggle with economic issues or with social resentments related to losing status in racial-ethnic cultural “ranking”, being from an economic or cultural backwater or having lowered economic prospects.
Finally, on climate change, the issue of prime importance for the future, Hillary occupies the safe middle of the Democratic Party consensus regarding climate action and appears comfortably in “soft climate denial”. Clinton, as do most Democrats, views climate action as an “add on” to a “business as usual” agenda for government, the corporate sector and for households. Clinton notably is a strong advocate of natural gas and fracking, as Obama has been and attempts to portray this as primarily a substitute for coal. We should expect that Clinton may, under different cover, try to continue Obama’s climate-destroying “all of the above” energy strategy.
However different than 4 or 8 years ago, we have been lucky via the efforts of Bernie Sanders delegates such as Russell Greene to see embedded in the 2016 Democratic Platform the call for a climate emergency summit within the first 100 days of a Clinton Administration. Still, such a summit, without binding commitments by a Clinton Administration to act upon the climate emergency as outcomes, could function as window dressing for continued high levels of emissions via new fossil fuel extraction and high levels of fossil fuel consumption by an America that is “addicted” to fossil fuels.
Trump Would Lead Us Into Still Deeper Corruption
While there is abundant ammunition to criticize Hillary (and Bill) Clinton for the policy goals they have targeted and the methods they have used to try to achieve them, Donald Trump is not the messenger to effectively deliver those criticisms and message. Much of Trump’s campaign has hinged upon his attempts to play on both distorted and realistic perceptions of the corruption or appearance of corruption that has surrounded the Clintons. In his and his supporters’ hands, these criticisms have been simply smears, saying to the Clintons “you’re not perfect” or “you’re evil” rather than offering a solution or a better path for America. For a variety of reasons, his candidacy should not benefit from pointing out these flaws of Clinton and the Hillary and Bill Clinton approach to politics and policy.
Bottom line: Voting for Trump is not the effective way to de-corrupt American government, including that corruption that is due to Hillary and Bill Clinton. In fact, voting for Trump, is a vote for a somewhat different though deeper and more intense form of corruption and devolution of American governance.
As flawed as Hillary Clinton is, Donald Trump, viewed from every public angle, occupies a whole different league of human dysfunction and political danger. Trump’s continual jabs at “crooked Hillary” have had the effect of childish name-calling because of Trump’s lack of deep understanding and respect for the rule of law, as well as substantial personal flaws that go beyond politics. These personal flaws are unacceptable in a leader “with his/her finger on the button” and Trump’s criticisms of Hillary should be falling flat with perceptive voters because of who is saying them and what he is trying to achieve (the Presidency) by saying them.
While no formal diagnoses can be given out without a mental health screening, it appears that Trump suffers (and/or imposes suffering upon those around him) from some form of severe personality disorder, with strong narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies. As Trump is running to run our country, his personal weaknesses, weaknesses the equivalent of which he is happy to point out in others, have, until he retires into private life, very grave consequences for all of our futures. He is making his mental health a public health issue by running for President, perhaps running away from dealing with it himself by imposing his distorted views on the rest of us.
His grandiosity, a trait strongly associated with narcissistic disturbance, has been part and parcel of his businesses where he makes grandiose claims about his buildings, businesses or his own person, often without a basis in reality. People with narcissistic issues constantly confuse their ideal (but de facto non-existent because it is “ideal”) self-image for their real selves, sometimes with grave consequences for them but mostly for those around them. Rarely does Trump utter a sentence without associating a superlative or exaggerated positive to himself or an exaggerated negative to another person. Trump, in one minor instance, has had a tendency to exaggerate the floor-count of the buildings upon which he has put his name. While a small degree of tactical exaggeration is inevitable in entrepreneurs and salespeople, Trump is extreme and seems, when you listen to him talk at long stretches, to occupy his own world of self-enhancing fantasy, preferring that world to the real world. It appears at almost all times that Trump is driven by a need to manage his own self-esteem by self-inflation and belittling others often out of the blue and with little provocation. The status anxieties and fears that drive that self-inflation are very occasionally admitted but it appears that Trump is most often unable to psychologically “contain” or reflect upon those negative emotions from which he is continually running away or projecting onto others.
Due in part to what appears to be a continual flight from negative emotions and views of himself, Trump’s thought processes appear to be nowhere near where a President should be in their ability to think. Trump appears to think in fragments that are driven by various emotional needs he has including his relentless drive to appear to be “the best” or associated with “the best” and to flee or declare others to be the stigmatized “losers”. Linguists have analyzed his speeches and found that he has trouble maintaining parenthetical ideas within a larger sentence or paragraph: he tends to ramble associatively rather than be able to let a main idea have “sub-ideas”. Trump has trouble in expressing and perhaps actually thinking in complex ideas which is alarming in someone who aspires to be President. Trump, at this stage in his life, seems most “effective” when he is trying to tear others down others’ reputations rather than to build up anything positive in the way of a plan. He apparently has a long history of bullying others, of advocating for bullying as a business tactic, and he acts the bully now as in the past.
Trump’s narcissism appears to be so extreme that he often acts like a “white collar” or businessman-sociopath. He has been involved in a long list of scandals related to his businesses and has developed various techniques to minimize the damage to himself both financially and with regard to his reputation. Sociopaths are those who have little regard for social rules and put their own needs above society’s or any other person’s well-being in almost every circumstance. Sociopaths break social rules all the time and often break the law, ending up in jail with higher frequency than almost any other type of personality. While sociopaths from lower socioeconomic strata can become violent criminals, those, like Trump, who come from advantaged backgrounds or those who are moderately adept at using language and other social symbols become various forms of con men (or women). A con man seeks not only personal gain from conning others but also often enjoys humiliating others by fooling them. Trump, while he intersperses truths in what he says, is more likely to utter a falsehood than a truth about reality, in part due to his constant campaign to aggrandize himself and diminish others.
Trump, like a sociopath, has an entirely self-centered relationship to language and truth-telling. Trump is enormously sensitive to others lying and acts outraged when he is lied to but then thinks absolutely nothing about lying continually to others. Donald Trump inserts a few controversial truths that intrigue listeners into a stream of made-up assertions. He has a “one-way” relationship with almost everybody and the world around him: claiming for himself only things he values and fobbing off words that are only meant to have an effect on others (celebratory for him and manipulative for his aims) or are meant to pump out negative feelings onto others.
To those who can easily perceive deceitfulness and are not taken in by him, Trump seems to be running his campaign as a large-scale scam of his followers and the American people. His commitment to becoming an good or effective President seems to be almost non-existent in the way he conducts himself on the campaign trail and in the misconceived or childlike ideas he has about governing and what politicians do and can do legally in the American system. Those who have studied him throughout his life, have documented that he has run some of his businesses as (semi-legal) scams, including the Trump University that is now enmeshed in scandal, another one of Trump’s shady businesses.
Trump’s treatment of women, of business partners, and some of those who happen to run into him are often consistent with the idea that he has strong sociopathic traits. A series of women have come forward detailing incidents of sexual harassment and assault, corroborating Trump’s own confession on tape that he “grabs” women by their private parts as a form of greeting or come-on. Small businesses have claimed that he has failed to pay them and Trump seems to have counseled some participants in the Apprentice to default on their mortgages as a business strategy. Trump seems often to equate “smart” with acting like or talking like a sociopath.
Trump Doesn’t Value or Understand Rule of Law
The theory of politics that Trump has presented in his campaign revolves almost exclusively around his supposed power and greatness as a person. This authoritarian appeal and various rambling accounts he has given about how he will do things, it would seem magically, to improve the lot of Americans indicates that he understands very little about politics or about the machinery of government and laws. Trump has presented himself as a “strongman” that will, by pointing his finger as he does in his speeches, right wrongs and “make America great again”. His ideas about his own capabilities as well as the possible power of any one individual are at times cartoonish and childlike and at the same time alarming in a 70-year-old that may assume great political power because of the political missteps of his opponent and the fascination of the media.
Much of Trump’s campaign, in which he plays on Hillary and Bill Clinton’s corruption or appearance of corruption is opportunistic and predatory as he apparently has little internal conception of how laws govern society and government officials. Trump appears to be so self-centered, so grandiose, and has lived his life in such a self-centered way, that he seems to tend to place himself above all laws and talks as if that will be his modus operandi as President. It appears, if the American public so allows on Election Day, he will assume or try to assume dictatorial powers because he is convinced (or continually tries to convince himself and others) that his own greatness “trumps” any need to follow a rule that is shared with others. He will try to be a “law unto himself” because of what appears from all public angles to be his own extreme narcissism/sociopathy.
Some of the most alarming expressions of Trump’s contempt for rule of law have been the veiled and indirect threats of violence or future prosecution of political opponents that Trump has injected into his campaign. More than once, Trump has insinuated that some of his supporters might attempt to kill Clinton, because of her different interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Trump in debates and elsewhere has also said he would jail his political opponent(s) if elected. Trump seems to have no understanding of how these threats undermine the legal and democratic process that has been set up by 240 years of American jurisprudence and law-making.
Trump has therefore shown no aptitude to help improve American “rule of law”, a key cornerstone of democracy and civilization, because of who he is and the limitations in his own thinking and acting. John Adams expressed a basic tenet of “rule of law” in his 1780 Massachusetts Constitution which established Massachusetts as a “government of laws and not of men”. Trump goes diametrically against Adams’ precept that is enshrined in American law by implying that he is an extraordinary man who Americans will be safer and happier having as a dictatorial ruler than being governed by laws that are impersonal. Trump’s opportunistic attacks on Hillary Clinton’s corruption will not lead to a less corrupt government or society, because he hasn’t internalized the basic ethical orientation that government officials and, for that matter citizens, must have to function in a democracy, i.e. respect for rule of law.
Trump Appears to Rarely Looks Out for Others
Part of the basis for government is to provide public works and to adjudicate between competing interests. To occupy a role in government means that you assume that people in society should be looking out for each other to some degree and that you the government official are taking into account the common good. It takes a degree of discipline that is often only partially at hand in any given individual, for a government official or politician to both represent the common or group good and their own interests as a politician or official (to win and/or maintain their office, to support a family, etc.). In the current American system this balance is particularly difficult because the political system is awash in money, thanks in part to the Citizens United decision and a more general interpretation of the First Amendment that allows corporations personhood.
Corruption is when a government official lapses from executing their public duties by serving their own private interests or the special interests of an individual or corporation with some gain to the official or politician. In the private sector, true corruption doesn’t technically exist because businesspeople are not assumed to be serving the public but their own self-interests. A “corrupt businessman” is technically a misnomer, not at all because businesspeople are morally “better” but because businesses’ primary loyalty is not to the public at large, as are government officials. The equivalent of corruption in the private sector is fraud or other criminal activity by businesses and individuals in their private capacities. Actually “crooked” is one of the better non-technical words to describe the equivalent of corruption in business people and it is ironic to say the least that this is the label that Trump has been ad nauseam trying to apply to Clinton.
Trump, as compared to Clinton, has never occupied a role where he is supposed to look out for the common good or serve the public trust, i.e. he has never been a government official or office-holder. He has lived his life completely in the private sector and caring only for himself, his family perhaps, and his businesses, which are his property or co-owned with investors.
Always occupying (less ethically demanding) roles that do not involve the public trust, Trump has often failed as a businessman when it comes to business ethics, which is an easier standard to meet than maintaining oneself as a public servant in the era of legalized political corruption. As noted he has left a trail of damaged relationships and many allegations of criminal activity when it would have been easier in most cases for him to run his businesses ethically and cleanly.
For those with substantial wealth, it is also falling-over-easy to appear to be “good” by simply donating money to good causes but even in this Trump has often failed. There are stories of his “philanthropy” that has always been fairly meager and often directed directly at promoting his own interests and not even with the pretense that he has helped others. It seems as though Trump really doesn’t know how to help others, which is quite a statement to make about anyone. Trump appears to be a profoundly selfish person far beyond typical norms of self-centeredness or self-interest.
While it is conceivable that someone who is not a lawyer, public servant, or a politician could care deeply enough about other people, about the law and about government to become an excellent political leader, that person is not Donald Trump. Trump is playing on weaknesses in Hillary Clinton’s career to make it seem as though he cares about corruption and public service, when he has shown very little interest in it and will, if he were to become President, with high likelihood increase the dysfunctionality of politics and government, as happens with the take-over of governments by authoritarian leaders. Trump will probably at every turn attempt to undermine rule of law, if not by intention or plan but simply by a lack of understanding of what rule of law is. Rule of law requires that people relativize or suppress the more extreme aspects of their narcissism and self-interest; Trump has shown himself on the campaign trail and in other aspects of his life to not be able to suppress or repress his narcissistic urges and tendencies.
Lately some polls have shown that people think Trump is more honest than Clinton even as fact-checkers have found that about 70% of what Trump says is false. Some people probably see Trump’s tendency to “let it all hang out” by rambling on as “honesty” when it is simply one man valuing himself and his views at the expense of our common reality (and other people allowing him to do so by listening to him and applauding him). Also his unstructured sentence style is typical of some people that people have known in their lives, he is “of a type” that is familiar to some, even though he has extreme views and takes risks with all of our safety with his words as the nominee of a major political party. Trump’s relationship to factual reality is strained which, in the context of him trying to become President of the United States, can be viewed as another expression of his grandiose self-inflation. Trump’s climate change denial, which may or may not be sincere, is just another and probably the most profound expression of him exempting himself from a confrontation with a common factual reality (of a piece with him adding 10 stories to Trump Tower “for effect”).
But Trump is not just “any guy” who you have met, or at least an eccentric and particularly angry guy who you may have met. To vote for Trump means to bestow upon him enormous power that he shows every indication of being extremely likely to abuse. Therefore it is likely that contrary to Trump’s implied claim that he represents honesty and “good government” that Trump will himself be the epitome of corruption and will also corrupt many non-corrupt aspects of American government and life.
Hillary Clinton Comprehends Rule of Law and Helping Others
In this essay, I have not portrayed either the Clintons or Trump in a particularly favorable light. Of the political candidates who ran this year, Bernie Sanders was, for me, the only one that for me evoked positive feeling and a sense of trust. He is a valuable asset to American political life.
But I cannot stand by and let people out of a sense of frustration with the status quo, to “jump into the fire” by allowing Trump to become President without at least trying to warn them that they are “jumping into the fire”. If we are “in the frying pan”, it will make more sense for us to dance around on the hot bottom of the pan rather than just jump off into certain destruction.
While I am almost 99% certain that Trump has absolutely no or very little conception of how a mission- and service-driven organization like government works, I am pretty sure that Hillary Clinton knows what helping people might look like and that she is very aware of how the institutions of government work. That she and her husband have sometimes misused their power and knowledge is without doubt but they seem, many times, to be trying to “help” people and have helped some people. That they, in my view, pick some of the wrong tools to try to help people means that a different conversation or type of political interaction is possible with Hillary Clinton than with Trump. The Democratic Platform itself is the basis for having a meaningful interaction, whether friendly or antagonistic, with a Clinton Administration.
We also, in an era of climate disintegration and the requirement for a rapid transition to a non fossil fuel based economy, need a very competent government that is also accountable to people and to the future. While elements of the private sector will help in that transition, it will be mission-driven governments that lead us off our fossil fuel dependence and meet our climate emergency. Hillary Clinton is highly competent in many regards, while Trump has, contrary to his boasts, almost none of the prerequisites to be competent to lead us all. Michael Hudson, whom I respect in many regards, thinks Clinton is more dangerous than Trump, though tellingly leaves out of his analysis the role of climate change. Unlike Hudson, my analysis shows that we cannot afford a climate denier and rule-of-law incompetent in the White House, despite the many faults of Clinton. Her effectiveness must be oriented towards, by the pressure of social movements, towards the public good, even if she may at times tend to use that effectiveness for questionable, selfish, or destructive ends.
So now, a vote for Trump, abstaining to vote, or a protest vote is a vote for increased corruption and chaos. Some may welcome these things but if you think ahead a little bit, you probably don’t want more corruption and chaos.