This interesting essay by a Yale history professor, Timothy Snyder, provided useful comparison of Trump’s attempted but failed coup and Hitler’s succeeded power grab. This got me thinking about a seemingly obviously question: Why Trump failed in his coup while Hitler succeeded? On this inauguration day it helps to have a look back in the immediate past, when our collective memories are still fresh.
What Snyder Has Said About the Capitol Coup
Snyder believes Trump has received supports from GOP gamers, led by Mitch McConnel, and GOP breakers, represented by Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. The gamers are all interested in “gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters” while the breakers are “other Republicans (who) saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy.” Both gamers and breakers are at least partially responsible for Trump’s lies to persist and to even grow.
The other labels from Snyder are post-truth and pre-fascism. The two are equivalent or identical, in the sense that Trump is our post-truth president who did things similar to what Hitler did during his early rise in Germany. Trump’s “fake news” is just like Hitler’s “lying press”; they both referred to reporters as “enemies of the people”; finally, Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen from him is similar to Hitler’s big lie that the “Jews stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War.” Snyder however points out that “Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history.”
Some of his words I liked are listed below:
Trump “has no vision that is greater than himself or what his admirers project upon him.”
“His vision never went further than a mirror.”
“It is hard to think of a comparable insurrectionary moment, when a building of great significance was seized, that involved so much milling around.”
“The lies outlast the liar.”
Why Trump Failed His Coup
Although the emphasis is not on explaining Trump’s failure in contrast to Hitler’s (short term) success, Snyder did have words on the issue.
First of all, Trump’s failure in convincing the institutions: “Trump could make some voters believe that he had won the 2020 election, but he was unable to bring institutions along with his big lie.”
Secondly, he has no military support: “He lacked the support of the military, some of whose leaders he had alienated.”
Finally, his lack of vision for a coup to happen: “Trump was unlike other breakers in that he seemed to have no ideology.” “He intended to break the system to serve himself — and this is partly why he has failed.”
My Quick Comments
While I truly enjoyed reading Snyder, I do have a few quick comments.
First of all, within the Republican party I have seen three groups: In addition to the gamers and breakers, there are also high callers who have responded to a higher call than their pure partisan duties and missions. In fact, I have seen a coalition of high callers, with members like the Secretary of State in Georgia, all state election officials (e.g., in Michigan) who refused to do what Trump had asked them to do, and all the judges appointed by Trump but chose to stand by the facts and the law. Of course, the coalition has had the backing of the Dems and people working for the so called “deep state” as well.
I am willing to go further and claim that the high caller coalition should even accept some gamers when the time is right. I will put Mitch McConnell in the coalition when he delivered a speech urging his fellow Republicans not to vote against the electoral college result and when he declared the Capitol riot was “provoked” by Trump.
As Snyder pointed out, Trump did not have the institutions to go with him before, during and after his coup. It is safe to say that the high callers are the ones behind the resisting institutions.
One of the most important reasons, now with the hindsight and the latest moves by Trump, my sense is that Trump is after all still a businessman rather than a military strongman. Throughout his life he has been and will continue to game the system for personal gains, but is unwilling to take too big a risk for anything. Declaring martial law, using presidential power to veto the election result, these things are too risky for him. That’s why he always push others like Mike Pence to do it for him. It’s interesting that some of his followers like the Proud Boys are more radical than him, and are now abandoning him. America is lucky to have such a rapper, not a sniper, as the president, otherwise a real Civil War could have started by now.
I would therefore prefer to work with a framework of three players’ game. Trump and his base is Player 1, nicknamed “Trump Co”, including the breakers as close allies but gamers a distant or opportunistic allies. The Trump resisting “Coalition” is Player 2 and the society acts as a “Social” Player 3. This last group consists of voters who do not respond to, or do not care about, the calls from either the left or right. These social players usually stay low key and not vocal, which explains why they are often ignored in the game. But their ideological neutrality can give them excessive power above and beyond their size, especially with a close rivalry between the left and right. As I will show, it plays a hidden but powerful role, especially during and after the coup.
To a certain extent, Trump has been dealt heavier blows after the coup by Social Player 3 than by his familiar enemies of Coalition Player 2. It is almost like the 2020 election had a second round in 2021, when the general public got a second chance to show their anger, frustration and devastation.
The Social Player 3 also plays a hidden role in forming or shaping the first two players. Without Player 3, we would have a hard time explaining moves by Players 1 & 2.
In terms of why Trump failed, oftentimes Players 2 & 3 joined forces to slow the Trump Co Player 1 down. When that happens, it often works as things that are taken for granted, a widely accepted social norm that preemptively prevents bad moves by Trump Co Player 1.
Here is an example: Certain things that happened in Hitler’s Germany simply can’t occur in the US today. Naming, singling out and attacking any particular ethnic group like the Jews is such a case in point. The Players 2 & 3 would simply not tolerate that — and Player 1 knows that — so they would avoid moves like that in the first place, at least not in public.
This is what I meant in another blog that says the US has “strength from diversity”. As much as Trump wanted, he can never make his lies the only source of “truth” outside his own base, unlike Hitler did in Germany. It’s like a wall of diversity that prevent Trump from being universally or near universally accepted in the US society.
Simply put, diversity has duality: Not only is it a liability that sometimes drags us down, but also an asset that other times lifts us up. China perhaps would have a hard time comprehending this duality.
The Social Player 3 also helps us understand moves by Player 1. In an efficient democracy, politicians always respond to the preferences of their constituents. Therefore, the gamers & breakers all must ultimately reflect divided social preferences of different voters. To that extent I don’t think the breakers really are capable of getting power without democracy. As much as we dislike it, it is only normal and totally expected to see Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley acting the way they did — they were simply responding to the perceived preference of their constituents, and expecting a high personal gain from their calculated moves.
Hypothetically, had nobody made similar pro-Trump moves in the Congress, the efficiency of American democracy would be called into question, because either some voters’ preferences were ignored in the Congress, or voters do not have any strong and diverse preference in the first place. Either way, this country would be closer to Hitler’s Germany than we are now.
Keep in mind that in many developing countries, one big lingering problem that weakens democracy is that many if not most voters are indifferent to whatever governments are doing, as long as their own personal lives are not immediately disturbed (it’s OK to see their neighbors suffering). Having an active citizenry armed with strong actionable preferences that go above and beyond their personal interests is what makes America strong.
Political Parties On Different Sides of History
It is highly likely for political parties to go above politics and for them to take on different sides of history at different periods.
Watching the videos on the Capitol riot taught us one thing: Trump and his base had taken the wrong side of history. Look at the confederation flags they were carrying and their slogan of making America great again, which implies the past is better than today. It is obvious that the best times of this country had — in their minds— were either before the Civil war or, as Trump himself would say, right after the WWII.
Interestingly but perhaps among the least noticed, Trump and his base think just like Confucius of China, who openly admired the Zhou dynasty throughout his lifetime, although he lived in the Spring and Autumn period, long after the heyday of the Zhou dynasty. It is fair to say that Trump, Confucius and Xi, Jinping of China all share a past oriented lost cause rather than a future oriented winning cause.
In that sense, I want to push the thesis further by claiming that the real “American abyss” is between the past oriented Trump Co. and the future oriented Dems coalition. The two sides differ not so much in terms of income or education. After all, we have Harvard graduated Ted Cruz, the worst Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose sense of ethics is as low as Trump. We also have the worst White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who not only lied as much as Trump, but had to make up new lies to cover Trump’s original lies. Finally, we also have the worst trade advisor, an economist, author and a college professor, Peter Navarro who went out of his way to prove Trump’s lies until the last minute of his time in the White House.
The real dividing line is in the cognitive and psychological deficiencies, incapable of or unwilling to process new information, make new requests and ask new questions in the face of new facts and evidences. One can argue that this is the most important survival skills both today and in the future, when new information comes out at the lightening speed in huge amounts. Information itself is no longer in scarce supply, the capability of processing information becomes a scarce resource. It is of monumental importance to maintain an open mind to absorb new knowledge, to learn from diverse sources, to pick up new insights of others, and to update one’s old believes and convictions.
Sadly too many have been staying in personally comfortable zones, hearing what they wants to hear, seeing what they are used to see, talking only to like minded individuals or groups. These things only make one vulnerable to current and future risks. They need to be educated and enlightened to allow spaces in their mind for changes to happen in their lives.
It is in this spirit that I want say these final words to myself: Always reserve a corner in the mind and heart for self-doubt and self criticism, for endless pursuits of new information and insights from others. The more I do that, the better chance I will live a fulfilled, renewed and updated life.
Here is a personal case in point: In my previous blog I thought the coronavirus would be suppressed by the summer temperature. I even used the relatively fewer case in Indian ghettos to illustrate my point. But I was wrong because my mental model missed something important. I only considered the property of virus but ignored its human carriers. It is the humans who can keep the virus alive and grow inside their bodies, and then pass it away to others almost regardless of weather conditions!