Janet Daley is a senior columnist with the Daily Telegraph in the UK. She is an American but went to Britain as a hard-core Marxist-Leninist. And then the Unions turned out the lights and turned off the heat and closed down the railways. And she became a fan of Margaret Thatcher and a confirmed Tory.
She is also a Brexit supporter and has railed against the deafness of the elite. But she has never reconciled herself to Trump.
In this article she tries to explain to a Euro-Brit audience why Trump supporters are Trump supporters and why they seem to be willing to set aside the Constitution and its Institutions. She fears the consequences.
I am a big fan of her opinions but here I think she is wide of the mark.
Process or Intent.
Which drives you?
My sense is that for many people Intent rules their decision making. They pragmatically decide on a course of action based on their appreciation of the current situation to achieve their intent. The Process, the plan, the mechanism is secondary. I believe that that is true for the vast majority of the population to whom life happens. They have little sense of being in control. They deal with a world of constant change on a daily basis.
The other side of the coin are those people comfortable in Process. Content in their sense that by conforming to, and managing, the Process, then the world is ordered, someone is in control and they, as part of the mechanism, are able to exert control. Some people are content to believe that others know what they are doing, are in control. Some people aspire to be in control themselves. Still others are just content to be professional courtiers and exploit the institutions of Process for their personal benefit.
It is my further belief that the divide between Trump supporters and the Never-Trumpers is the divide between those comfortable with managing chaos through pragmatism and those more comfortable with imposing order through principles and process, between those focused on Intent and those focused on Process.
For those focused on Intent I suggest that the US Constitution is sacred for what it promises, what it intends - to provide a society of free individuals. At the other end of the spectrum are those that accept the Intent but don't believe that you can get there without the Process.
But when does adherence to the Process result in Illiberalism? When does the demand for conformity to the Process, for obeisance to the institutions, for obedience to the people in office become illiberal and threaten those pragmatically inclined free individuals and their ability to achieve their own personal intents?
My belief is that the inevitable tension between those demanding order and focusing on Process and those accepting chaos and focusing on Intent has reached the point it has because those that believe in Process, by establishing themselves in dominant positions and claiming to be the masters of the institutions to which they give credit for managing the situation, have set themselves up as targets for those no longer able to achieve their Intents. Those denied that ability are forced to work harder, with less surety of success and accept that they will struggle to meet Laszlo's hierarchy of needs. And they end up blaming those that were claiming the credit.
Apparently the concept of the "Knowledge Economy" gained popularity in 1969. I'm sure it sounded like a good idea at the time, appealing both to people in universities and to the vanity of Westerners, residents of all those brilliant Western countries. And if their countries were brilliant then Westerners were brilliant too. No problem then to start shipping jobs from Canada, the US, Britain and Germany to Mexico, Spain, Poland and China. Those brilliant Westerners could then enjoy limitless vacations in green and pleasant lands buying cheap goods from prosperous Chinese. If only they had money to buy fuel, food, clothes and shelter.
Getting a ration of fuel, food, clothes, shelter and life from other people, no matter how well Intentioned they are, even if they are sanctioned through membership in an institution, is not a satisfactory answer.
Sooner or later people, individuals, will reassert themselves, pragmatically opting to do that which allows them to achieve their intent.
Democracy, or populism if you prefer, like capitalism, is not something that is imposed. It is a base state, a chaotic state, upon which order struggles to be imposed by Process. But imposing order demands energy and sooner or later people run out of the energy to maintain the order and entropy prevails. Chaos reasserts itself. Democracy, unqualified, unfettered, uncontrolled recurs.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/18/teflon-trump-just-start-wests-post-democratic-apocalypse/