History Lessons

Trump watch: At first, I thought president-elect Donald Trump’s decision to turn to Twitter in the days after his election to attack the New York Times and claim that its coverage of him was “dishonest” and “totally wrong,” was just a continuation of his petulant obsession with buffing up his image in that leading paper. But in the wake of his recent tweets attacking the cast of the Broadway show Hamilton as well as Saturday Night Live, it is clear that more is going on. This is Trump’s Kulturkampf. The Times, Hamilton, and SNL are all expressions of secular, tolerant, multicultural, irreverent First Amendment America. He isn’t tweeting attacks at them because they just happened to piss him off; he is signaling that he wants deference and that strong independent institutions—be they media pillars or cultural icons—must be de-legitimized and undermined.

Writing for the New York Times, our friend and constitutional scholar Zephyr Teachout argues that Trump’s business ties may violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause if he has any dealings with foreign state-controlled entities.

Related: Jeff Hauser, the head of the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s revolving door project, has a brilliant suggestion for the U.S Senate:

He writes:

“The last line of defense against the installation of a kleptocracy is the U.S. Senate, which can insist that President Trump meet the same standards for public disclosure and avoidance of conflict of interest as past presidents and presidential candidates of both political parties… The Senate can do so by refusing to confirm any nominations until Trump takes the following steps to promote faith that a Trump presidency will not enrich himself and his family: 
1. Releases his tax returns; 
2. Releases a detailed and current financial disclosure that includes beneficial ownership information on all “shell companies”* that are part of the Trump Organization;
 3. Follows the advice of the the Wall Street Journal editorial page that “Mr. Trump’s best option is to liquidate his stake in the company” via “a leveraged buyout or an initial public offering”; And these disclosure requirements should be treated as annual requirements….Without these comprehensive actions, Senators have no way to know what conflicts of interest they should be concerned about.”

Writing in Time Magazine, historian David Kaiser recounts his longstanding interest in Neil Howe and William Strauss’ theory of American history, which they believe moves in 80-year-cycles punctuated by great crises that destroy the previous order and create new ones. (Which Sara Robinson wrote about for Civicist last week.) Well, Kaiser writes for Time magazine that none other than Trump strategist Stephen Bannon was very interested in the same theories, and interviewed Kaiser about them (along with Howe) for his 2009 movie Generation Zero. Kaiser writes:

When I was first exposed to Strauss and Howe I began thinking how their ideas explained the histories of other countries as well, and during our interview, I mentioned that crises in countries like France in the 1790s and Russia after 1917 had led to reigns of terror. Bannon included those remarks in the final cut of Generation Zero. A second, more alarming, interaction did not show up in the film. Bannon had clearly thought a long time both about the domestic potential and the foreign policy implications of Strauss and Howe. More than once during our interview, he pointed out that each of the three preceding crises had involved a great war, and those conflicts had increased in scope from the American Revolution through the Civil War to the Second World War. He expected a new and even bigger war as part of the current crisis, and he did not seem at all fazed by the prospect. I did not agree, and said so. But, knowing that the history of international conflict was my own specialty, he repeatedly pressed me to say we could expect a conflict at least as big as the Second World War in the near or medium term. I refused. Apocalyptic rhetoric and apocalyptic thinking flourish during crisis periods. This represents perhaps the biggest danger of the Trump presidency, and one that will bear watching from all concerned citizens in the months and years ahead.

Michael Wolff’s Friday profile of Bannon for the Hollywood Reporter is getting a lot of attention for this quote: “Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they [liberals and the media] get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.” But this quote is equally striking:

Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.

Whose 1930s is Bannon referring to that was so exciting?

Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember, tweets Amy Siskind, president and co-founder of New Agenda. Among the items on her list: “The pace of untraditional, unorthodox acts, and conflicts of interest by Trump are coming so fast and furious, they’re barely getting coverage….a request for tolerance for, and understanding of, white supremacists.”

And Yale historian Timothy Snyder has compiled a list of 20 lessons from the 20th century experience with authoritarianism on how to resist its rise.

Here’s a different lesson from history: Linda Hirschman describes how abolitionists fought back after the passage of the Compromise of 1850 (which ceded territory to pro-slavery forces) and the Fugitive Slave Act, which conscripted Northerners into being slave catchers. The key to their comeback: mass protests and local community organizing.

Speaking of which, a coalition of groups including 350.org and the Working Families Party have developed a call for Emergency Community Meetings that have begun to draw hundreds, even thousands, of participants.

Politico’s Sarah Wheaton reports on vague stirrings among Obama loyalists who are beginning to organize themselves into some kind of movement to defend their president’s legacy and oppose Trump.

Writing for the New York Times, Christine Lagorio-Chafkin profiles the “weaponized autists” of The_Donald, the sub-Reddit page dedicated to all things related to serving the “God Emperor.”

The Trump 2016 website has posted a 29-question survey that asks which policies the president-elect should prioritize.

What is civic tech now? Responding to our Andrew Rasiej’s essay on how civic tech should respond to our new reality, David Fleming says that staying non-partisan is a privilege that harms weaker members of society. He writes, “non-partisanship comes at a real cost to their lives. A Muslim man working in civic tech today in the US would stand to benefit if the tech community rose and said something to the effect of “nobody will build your registry.” If zero coders are willing to put the code together to actually build that monstrosity, it is a concept that will never make it to reality. The only way that happens is if grassroots tech movements – like Civic Tech organizations – start now to organize to oppose it.”

Public Knowledge’s Harold Feld offers The George Washington Pledge.

Vu Le calls for an end to the Nonprofit Hunger Games, along with other good advice about how the nonprofit sector has to adjust to the new reality.

Life in Facebookistan: Clearly concerned about all the criticism mounting about Facebook’s enabling the spread of fake news, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posts a note detailing the ways the company is trying to address the problem. Perhaps the most promising steps: Working with third-party fact-checking organizations and “exploring labeling stories that have been flagged as false by third parties or our community.”

“At Facebook we believe in saying that everyone has a voice, which means we have to give people the impression of having a voice.” So writes someone with a pitch-perfect sense of Mark Zuckerberg’s voice.

New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg insists that Zuckerberg has to defend the truth, not wait for others to flag problems.

Here’s Upworthy founder Eli Pariser’s effort to crowdsource solutions.

While Facebook ponders how to solve its fake news problem, Colby Itkowitz reports for the Washington Post on a group of college students who came up with a working solution in a 36-hour hackathon.

John Borthwick and Jeff Jarvis offer a six-point plan that could help platform companies address the problem.