How
Republics End
Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman DEC.
19, 2016
Many
people are reacting to the rise of Trumpism and nativist movements in
Europe by reading history — specifically, the history of the 1930s.
And they are right to do so. It takes willful blindness not to see
the parallels between the rise of fascism and our current political
nightmare.
But
the ’30s isn’t the only era with lessons to teach us. Lately I’ve
been reading a lot about the ancient world. Initially, I have to
admit, I was doing it for entertainment and as a refuge from news
that gets worse with each passing day. But I couldn’t help noticing
the contemporary resonances of some Roman history — specifically,
the tale of how the Roman Republic fell.
Here’s
what I learned: Republican institutions don’t protect against
tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms. And
tyranny, when it comes, can flourish even while maintaining a
republican facade.
On
the first point: Roman politics involved fierce competition among
ambitious men. But for centuries that competition was constrained by
some seemingly unbreakable rules. Here’s what Adrian Goldsworthy’s
“In the Name of Rome” says: “However important it was for an
individual to win fame and add to his and his family’s reputation,
this should always be subordinated to the good of the Republic … no
disappointed Roman politician sought the aid of a foreign power.”
America
used to be like that, with prominent senators declaring that we must
stop “partisan politics at the water’s edge.” But now we have a
president-elect who openly asked Russia to help smear his opponent,
and all indications are that the bulk of his party was and is just
fine with that. (A new poll shows that Republican approval of
Vladimir Putin has surged even though — or, more likely, precisely
because — it has become clear that Russian intervention played an
important role in the U.S. election.) Winning domestic political
struggles is all that matters, the good of the republic be damned.
And what happens to
the republic as a result? Famously, on paper the transformation of
Rome from republic to empire never happened. Officially, imperial
Rome was still ruled by a Senate that just happened to defer to the
emperor, whose title originally just meant “commander,” on
everything that mattered. We may not go down exactly the same route —
although are we even sure of that? — but the process of destroying
democratic substance while preserving forms is already underway.
Consider what just
happened in North Carolina. The voters made a clear choice, electing
a Democratic governor. The Republican legislature didn’t openly
overturn the result — not this time, anyway — but it effectively
stripped the governor’s office of power, ensuring that the will of
the voters wouldn’t actually matter.
Combine this sort of
thing with continuing efforts to disenfranchise or at least
discourage voting by minority groups, and you have the potential
making of a de facto one-party state: one that maintains the fiction
of democracy, but has rigged the game so that the other side can
never win.
Why is this
happening? I’m not asking why white working-class voters support
politicians whose policies will hurt them — I’ll be coming back
to that issue in future columns. My question, instead, is why one
party’s politicians and officials no longer seem to care about what
we used to think were essential American values. And let’s be
clear: This is a Republican story, not a case of “both sides do
it.”
So what’s driving
this story? I don’t think it’s truly ideological. Supposedly
free-market politicians are already discovering that crony capitalism
is fine as long as it involves the right cronies. It does have to do
with class warfare — redistribution from the poor and the middle
class to the wealthy is a consistent theme of all modern Republican
policies. But what directly drives the attack on democracy, I’d
argue, is simple careerism on the part of people who are apparatchiks
within a system insulated from outside pressures by gerrymandered
districts, unshakable partisan loyalty, and lots and lots of
plutocratic financial support.
For such people,
toeing the party line and defending the party’s rule are all that
matters. And if they sometimes seem consumed with rage at anyone who
challenges their actions, well, that’s how hacks always respond
when called on their hackery.
One thing all of
this makes clear is that the sickness of American politics didn’t
begin with Donald Trump, any more than the sickness of the Roman
Republic began with Caesar. The erosion of democratic foundations has
been underway for decades, and there’s no guarantee that we will
ever be able to recover.
But if there is any
hope of redemption, it will have to begin with a clear recognition of
how bad things are. American democracy is very much on the edge.
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