Their complaints are contradictory. He is terrible because he is doing terrible things! He is terrible because he is not really doing anything! This presidency is destroying the world! This presidency is all sound and fury and nothing else!
Has the center-left ever been more apoplectic about a presidency? It can’t have been this nuts even during the Nixon presidency. Every day, their publications fill up with articles that are breathless to the point of hysteria about the disgrace that the Trump administration is bringing to the affairs of government. His incessant tweeting, his violations of protocol, his attacks on the press, and even the very existence of this administration has them in permanent meltdown.
Here is an example. I’m leaving the over-the-top language from Charles Blow’s New York Times piece just to provide flavor:
I feel as if we are being conditioned to chaos by a “president” who abhors the stillness of stability. Every day we awake to a new outrage. We now exist in a rolling trauma — exhausting and unrelenting…. This should shock the whole of America out of its numbness. This is outrageous and without precedent… The sheer brazenness of it all is stunning…. It’s all just too much. We need an independent investigator. I don’t trust anything — anything! — coming out of this White House, and I don’t trust this feckless Congress to constrain Trump. This is not about partisanship, but patriotism. We must protect this country from moral corrosion, at best, and actual destruction, at worst. If this doesn’t stink to you, your nose is broken.
Yes, I know you have read something similar a thousand times in the last months. You have seen it on television stations, pretty much 24/7. Or you can turn on National Public Radio and listen to the same all day.
Or consider after Trump fired FBI director James Comey. The headlines by midnight all screamed: Crisis of Democracy! But I woke up the next morning and failed to see the evidence. The banks were open. People were buying chicken biscuits at the convenience store. The kids were getting dressed for school. Everything seemed normal.
It’s remarkable. This frenzy even has a name: Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is an identifying state of mind. It has particular symptoms.
To be sure, I read these pieces and don’t entirely disagree with the particulars of the analysis. In none of our lifetimes have we seen anything like this. The stodgy, serious, protocol-driven attempt to bring high dignity to this office has been a main concern of government. When it came out that Bill Clinton was using his power and office for private pleasures, it rattled the establishment, not because of his sins but because his behavior elicited ridicule from the public.
We had no idea of what was coming!
Agree, Sort Of
But there is something off about this center-left tendency. These commentators are driven to wild apoplexy by Trump, but not for the reasons I would normally cite. I don’t like his trade theories, his views on immigration, his shabby understanding of the problem with American health insurance, his ramping up of the police state, or his foreign policy. I was calling him out on all of this as early as July 2015.
They, on the other hand, seem to object to the very existence of Trump, his every utterance, his actions no matter what they are, and everything related to this new administration.
Their complaints are contradictory. He is terrible because he is doing terrible things! He is terrible because he is not really doing anything! This presidency is destroying the world! This presidency is all sound and fury and nothing else!
The Why
It finally struck me why. For this crowd, all their hopes and dreams are bound up with particular political processes, outcomes, and institutions. The state is their favorite tool for all the good they aspire to do in this world. It must be protected, guarded, defended, celebrated. The illusion that the government is not a taker but a giver and the source of all good things must be maintained. The gloss of the democratic process must be constantly refurbished so that the essential sanctity of the public sector can be constantly cited as the highest calling.
The center-left has at least one hundred years of work and resources invested in the state’s health, well being, reputation, and exalted moral status. Nothing must be allowed to threaten it or take it down a peg or two. Any failures must be deemed as temporary setbacks. The slightest sign of some success must be trumpeted constantly. The population must be subjected to unrelenting homilies on the essential holiness of the public sector.
