Saturday, August 26, 2017
Can we legislate civilization?
In his most recent show, Bill Maher articulated a point for which I've been trying to find the right words. The point is perhaps best summarized in a largely-forgotten axiom which I first heard as a boy:
Civilization depends on the vast majority of people observing rules which can never be legislated.
Obvious example: No law requires you to say "please" and "thank you."
No law stops you from picking your nose and eating the boogers in public. No law prevents you from incessant bragging. No law requires you to lower your voice when someone tells you that you're talking too loudly. No law prevents you from staring with unnerving intensity at the person sitting in the next restaurant booth. No law requires you to love your children or your parents. No law requires you to at least pretend to be happy while interacting with others during the holiday season. No law requires you to give one dime to the indigent. No law requires you to feel guilt or shame or remorse about anything.
You can come up with a thousand other examples. Any society which tried to cover all contingencies with legislation would soon devolve into an oppressive, legalistic nightmare. But suppose everyone suddenly decided to exercise his or her right to break all "rules" unenforced by the police? What would happen then?
The Trump presidency shows us what happens when norms, traditions and unwritten rules are tossed aside. Do we need a Constitutional amendment to require presidential candidates to release tax information? Do we need a new amendment to regulate the use of the pardon power in cases when the president himself is under investigation? Do we need a law to require a president to place his business in a truly blind trust, or to sell his business interests altogether? Do we need a law forbidding the president from firing an FBI head who is investigating the president? Do we need a law requiring the president to hold press conferences? Do we need a law requiring the president to tell the truth?
And even if we passed all of those laws, can we survive another president who seems incapable of guilt or shame or remorse?
Throughout the 1970s-90s -- the period which brought us Donald Trump -- pop psychologists and New Age pseudothinkers tried to tell us that guilt are shame were outdated concepts. How wrong those people were! Guilt and shame are necessary to the survival of our species. Guilt and shame are the "policemen" forcing us to observe the unwritten laws which undergird all civilization.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
That's why I keep asking over and over again; why follow succession of power rule in the event Russians interference is proven. No way the constitution would have anticipated digital machines and hacking by foreign government. The result of the whole election should be thrown. Seriously do we even know if the house and the Senate are legit?
At the risk of revealing my ignorance, but isn't this basically how the UK government works? As in there's no written constitution, and most of the rules about how the government works is based on norms and custom? I'm probably sounding like an idiot, but it's my understanding there's no formal law saying that the Crown has to give full sovereign authority to Parliament and that it is merely an evolution in the custom of what authority the Crown grants to Parliament. It's also my understanding that there's no formal role of Prime Minister and that it is merely a position which was informally created as a result of the evolution of political parties and the changing relationship between the Crown and Parliament.
I'm sure I've butchered the details, but whatever they are, I do know the UK system of government has no written Constitution. Given that fact, I've always been amazed and think it's an underrated admirable quality of the UK that they've never had any civil war or revolution since the 17th century.
Long story short and bringing it back to the US, you're right, and this is why Trump merely winning the party nomination was so dangerous as he trampled so many norms to do so. Government and society at-large cannot function solely by formal rules but must also follow informal norms and customs to function properly. Because in light of both this and the fact that Congress has enabled Trump this far, when I'm in a really dark mood, I fear the country has already been lost.
Guilt and shame are stripped of power on both ends. The underuse and overuse. Kind of like how Sanders cultists have no shame about their charlatan hiding taxes and appealing to mostly white dudes who death threat women. I'm against hounding even racist right wingers out of their jobs when shame has no meaning to the likes of brogressives.
Here I have to respectfully object in principle. Guilt and shame are meaningless concepts if not considered in the light of “about what”. Confederate society was very much held together by codes of guilt and shame, but it knew no guilt or shame about slavery and racism.
Constitutional restraints on presidential power (e.g. in the form of the hypothetical amendments you mention) would certainly not guarantee decent presidential conduct, but they would help a lot. Pardon power American style, unknown in other Western democracies and monarchic in nature, must be abolished.
There is even a bizarre discussion in America whether the president has the right to pardon himself, and whether he has the right to block investigations of his crimes. Say what? As if this were a pro-and-con affair. There is something very seriously wrong with a constitution that makes such claims even plausible.
Guilt and shame are currently being invoked against human decency. Trumpian nationalism wants you to feel guilty and shameful - about failing to assert and defend your White superiority.
-Brumel
Post a Comment