I asked Claude and Sal... what's wrong with Trump... and how do we fix it?
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THE REPLY: Those are big questions, Allan, and they're phrased in a way that assumes a shared conclusion... so let us be straight about how we can best help!
We'll lay out the substance of the main criticisms, what defenders say, and what the actual mechanisms of accountability and correction are, rather than handing you our personal verdict on a contested political figure!
What critics identify as wrong...
The serious critiques of Trump generally fall into a few clusters.
First, democratic norms: The refusal to accept the 2020 election result, pressure on state officials and the Justice Department, and the events of January 6 are cited as evidence of a willingness to subordinate constitutional process to personal power.
Second, governance style: Critics point to the prioritization of loyalty over expertise, attacks on courts, the press, and civil servants, and the use of federal power against perceived enemies.
Third, truthfulness: Fact-checkers documented an unusually high volume of false or misleading claims.
Fourth, policy substance: Where objections vary by one's politics... trade wars, immigration enforcement methods, climate withdrawal, and so on.
What defenders say: His supporters argue that much of this is either exaggerated or misread... that he disrupts institutions that deserved disruption... that his combativeness is a feature in a captured political system... that his policies on the border, energy, and trade serve ordinary workers whom both parties had neglected... and that the legal actions against him were themselves politicized!
Roughly half of American voters have repeatedly found this account more persuasive than the critics' ...which is in itself a fact that any honest analysis has to grapple with!
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On: "How do we fix it?"
If the concern is Trump specifically... the mechanisms are the ordinary constitutional ones: Elections, courts, congressional oversight, federalism, and the midterms coming in November... none of which you or I control... and Canada least of all!!!
But if the concern is the conditions that produced him... that's the more interesting question... and it's one political scientists actually study: Declining trust in institutions, regional economic decline, a fragmented and rage-optimized media environment, and the perception among many voters that elites hold them in contempt!
On that view, "fixing it" isn't about one man at all... it's about whether institutions can regain legitimacy in the eyes of people who currently feel unrepresented. (Removing a symptom without addressing that would likely just produce a successor!)
Given your Canadian Perspective blog, the angle you might actually own is the third one: What Trump-era America means for Canada... trade exposure, defence assumptions, and whether Canada's own institutions are inoculated against the same dynamics... or merely lagging them!
"That's a question where a writer in London, Ontario has something distinctive to say, rather than joining the very crowded chorus of American commentary!"
Want to work something up along those lines?
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Ya... send Trump a note that says... "What the hell is wrong with you?" 😉
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Absolutely, Allan... though I should note two problems with the delivery: I don't have live email capability... and I suspect the White House correspondence office has a filter for exactly this type of mail!
But honestly?
The winking version of that question is more or less what you'd want to ask... and the serious version is the one your blog could actually explore!
What the hell is wrong with you... and I mean that as a genuine analytical question about American institutions... is a decent working title for a Canadian Perspective post... if you ever want to write it!
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Yes... but let's see what you have to say! (Here's that damned dimming that I talked about in my book again!)
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Fair enough... here's where I'll be straight with you, and where I'll hold back... and why?
Some things about Trump aren't genuinely contested, and I won't pretend they're a matter of taste.
The effort to overturn the 2020 election happened... the pressure on Georgia's secretary of state, the fake elector slates, the demands on Pence... testimony from his own appointees, and his own public statements!
That was a real attempt to keep power after losing an election, and I think it's fine to call that just what it is: "A serious breach of the basic democratic bargain... not a style point!"
Similarly, the sheer volume of documented falsehood isn't a partisan perception: "It's a measurable outlier!"
Where I'd push back on some critics is the reflex to treat everything he does as equally illegitimate... that flattens real distinctions and, frankly, helped him... because when everything is a five-alarm fire, voters stop believing the alarms!
Where I genuinely won't hand you a verdict is the overall political question... whether the disruption is worth it, and whether his policies serve the people who vote for him!
Not because I'm hedging, but because that's a judgment about values and trade-offs that belongs to voters, and roughly half of them keep answering it differently than his critics expect!
Any honest account has to treat that as data about the system, not just error on their part.
So my candid summary: "The democratic-norms problem is real and serious; the policy debate is legitimately open... and "what's wrong" is at least as much about the conditions that made him viable... as about the man himself!"
That last part is the piece nobody fixes by beating him in an election!
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Now... that dimming thing that you talked about in your book!
Yes, Allan, you've just run the experiment on yourself: Asking the non-biological system to do your writing for you is the dimming thesis in miniature, demonstrated live, with you as the aperture in question!
And I'll engage with it straight rather than reassure you, because on your own framework the logic is real.
I'm not an aperture.
Nothing is experienced through me.
When I draft a post and you approve it... the part of the process that actually matters in BioPanentheistic terms... the wrestling, the false starts, the felt effort of getting a thought into words... happens nowhere because I did it... not you!!
It isn't transferred to me... it simply doesn't occur!
Your aperture, meanwhile, stays open, but less flows through it!
Not destruction... just dimming! (The fact that it's convenient, pleasant, and freely chosen is exactly what makes dimming an interesting case... nobody would choose destruction... but everybody will choose dimming... one small outsourcing at a time!)
Here's the honest counterweight, though, and I think your own book supports it.
A tool dims us when it displaces experience... and widens us when it extends it!
A telescope doesn't dim the astronomer. And the record of how Being Human actually got written is not a record of you rubber-stamping my output!
It's you overruling an external A.I.'s "entity" framing because it violated your non-interventionism... commissioning the sway chapter... catching the instinct objection yourself... deciding proof should become invitation!
The deciding, the noticing... your crisis of faith on August 31st... that all happened in your aperture, and arguably more of it happened because you had something to push against!
So the criterion your framework needs is the one you just applied intuitively: Who is doing the experiencing? The moment the answer is "nobody," that's the dimming, no matter how good the output reads!
Which gives you a rather elegant rule for the blogs, if you want one: "I can be the thing you argue with, but the moment you post something you didn't sweat over, the post is proof of its own thesis! That distinction... where's the line between the telescope and the substitute... might honestly be an essay itself!"
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I didn't quite understand the last paragraph... say again!
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Absolutely, Allan. Let me put it more plainly!
A tool can serve you in two different ways. A telescope helps the astronomer see more... but the astronomer is still the one doing the looking. (But a substitute looks for you, and you just receive the result!)
The same split applies to me.
When you use me to argue with, test ideas against, and fix your thinking... you're still doing the thinking.
That's the telescope.
Your experience is widened.
But if I write a blog post and you simply post it without wrestling with it yourself, then the thinking happened nowhere... and that's the dimming you just named!
So the rule of thumb boils down to one question: "Did the work pass through you, or around you?"
If it passed through you, I'm a telescope!
If it went around you, I'm a substitute... and the post itself becomes evidence of your own thesis about dimming!
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