Agonistic dreams, Political nightmares

We seem to be in a Schmittian political nightmare at the moment. Republicans and Democrats disagree strongly about the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. Disagree strongly underplays things. We see the world entirely differently. We read the same summary of a transcript and come away either unimpressed (There's no "there" there) or unnerved ("I would like you to do us a favor, though..."). And both sides seem exasperated that the other side doesn't just see it, plain as day: just look at the transcript!

It's a twist on the Emperor's New Clothes, only with half the crowd insisting, What do you mean, he's naked? He's bundled up! Can't you see that? Deciding who in this analogy is who--well, that's another debate. (It seems obvious to me the GOP is insisting on seeing clothes that aren't there. Or half of them are insisting on that while the other half makes a straight-faced argument that Emperors are never naked, that they by definition don't require clothes to be clothed, or at least that Imperial nudity is never call-out-able. But the other side would likely allege that progressives will cry nudity no matter how elaborate the outfit.)

For Carl Schmitt, such disputes are irresolvable. None of the usual means humans rely on work. We can't just go to the tape and check the evidence. The debate concerns fundamentally opposed views of what the evidence says. We can't default to a shared sense of ethics. Both sides deeply doubt ability of the other side to engage in ethical deliberation. We're not even 100% in agreement that this process is legal or constitutional. (See David French on that here.)

We're divided, as Schmitt would say, into friend and enemy camps. There's no way out but direct conflict. For Schmitt's more recent, non-Nazi interlocutors like Chantal Mouffe, such conflict need not devolve into civil war. Mouffe distinguishes antagonism, naked animosity and no-holds-barred aggression between foes, from agonism, intense struggle within a shared understanding of the political parameters. In Mouffe's agonism, there's still friend/enemy struggles. You cannot, should not, attempt to avoid or mitigate conflicts. But agonistic participants recognize and honor the right of their enemies to disagree and struggle against them.

In agonism, I may (hopefully) win a political struggle, but I don't hold it existentially against you that you fought on the other side of the conflict. I do not, after winning, seek to disenfranchise, imprison, expel, or murder you. Neither do I, after losing, declare the entire system corrupt and go to war. I put work and trust into the powers of granted to the political minority, biding my time and adjusting my strategies so that one day I might regain the majority.

The weakness of Mouffe's argument (an argument I largely endorse), however, is the idealized ethos of struggle. She wants the uncompromising bite of Schmittian conflict without the lethal potentials.

So many political struggles today, however, feel existential in their stakes. We can't afford to lose. Or, instead: We can't afford to let them win. If you see the enemy's victory as the destruction of you and your way of life, then the agonistic approach is a sham. You can't just go along with the system if they win. Nor can you simply forgive and forget the enemy's stances even if you win. If the other side holds some version of "you aren't due full civic personhood," then there will be some lingering bad faith for a while that no single political victory will quite dispel.

The problem, though, is that existential stakes can too easily become a trick to make politics impossible. How dare you debate this or question me when doing so undermines my very being? There's also the fact that humans aren't always great assessors of existential threats, nor do we think clearly or behave at our best when we feel threatened.

The real sine qua non for agonism, it seems, is a mutual trust in your enemy (and in your allies) that they will take reasonable steps not to turn agonism into antagonism. That's a depressing thought, though, given the lack of trust in today's politics.

Magic Viral Impeachment Moments

I've been avoiding a live engagement with the public impeachment inquiry hearings ("history being made" declare the news stories). I think the inquiry is immensely important. based on the summary transcript he provided as well as all the corroborating evidence from testimonies so far, I believe the President attempted to strong-arm a foreign government into digging up dirt on his political enemies. I also know, though, from reading a range of right-wing sources that a significant chunk of the country simply believes otherwise. Either Trump did no wrong, or he did something that was wrong but not illegal, or he never intended to do something illegal. In any case, impeachment is a slow coup attempt by disgruntled Democrats who have always wanted to take the President down and overturn the will of the people.

"History is unfolding before us," says Axios, "but due to the splintering of modern media, expect people to walk away with very different impressions of what they're seeing — depending on where they see it." Kevin Drum quotes the Washington Post, which declares that "Democrats need a viral moment" from the hearings, some OMG surprise that's easily communicated and not easily spun. "If it's not viral," Drum gloomily concludes, "it didn't happen."

I'm not sure, in other words, that there's much hope even for the public impeachment inquiry to produce a change of minds in many people. Most have already decided what they think about this situation and aren't especially open to change.

I mean, I'm not especially open to being convinced that Trump is unimpeachable, honestly.

I like to think that, were many of the witnesses so far somehow to be shown to have been lying or fabricating evidence, that'd be a thing. If I were somehow convinced that the multiply debunked conspiracy theories that Ukraine rather than Russia was behind election tampering, then I might rethink. If I were convinced that Trump via Guliani were somehow neutrally interested in quashing corruption abroad everywhere and not merely in countries where his main political rival could be embarrassed, then I'd be more amenable to arguments that his "perfect phone call" had innocent undertones. Heck, if Trump just out and said that this was an imperfect call, that he made a misstep in asking about this, and that thank goodness his trusted staff ensured that Ukraine got the money anyway--well, I'd still be upset, but I could see a way out of impeachment.

None of that seems likely.

I wonder if there's anything that could convince pro-Trumpers that in fact what Trump did was (1) wrong; and (2) illegal.

The "viral moment" the Post article imagines would perhaps provide such a breakthrough. It'd be like the "smoking gun" tape of Nixon that finally flipped Republicans to support impeachment. They just couldn't deny or spin it.

I'm not sure there's any such viral moment or smoking gun that would convince Trump's base to turn against him. I can't imagine anything that isn't spinnable. Whether the spin is denial (It didn't happen), blame the messenger (The whistleblower just hates Trump), tu quoque (You think Obama and Hillary didn't do the same or worse?), or just leaning into it (Yeah, he did it! And he'd do it again!), spin there will be. The incentives for sticking with or against Trump are just too great for those in either group to put the matter up for factual debate.

Again, I think that I'm both in the anti-Trump/never-Trump crowd and that the evidence clearly shows that Trump is guilty as all get-out. But I have no way to convince someone utterly convinced of the opposite that I'm right.

So we're stuck with each other, my Trump-supportive neighbors and I.  I don't think any magic viral impeachment moment can mitigate that situation. What now?