Deep Dive with Shawn C. Fettig
Welcome to Deep Dive, the podcast where politics, history, and queer lives intersect in engaging, in-depth conversations. I'm Dr. Shawn C. Fettig, a political scientist, and I've crafted this show to go beyond the headlines, diving into the heart of critical issues with authors, researchers, activists, and politicians. Forget surface-level analysis; we're here for the real stories, the hidden layers, and the nuanced discussions that matter.
Join me as we explore the intricate world of governance, democracy, and the challenges facing the LGBTQ+ community. Expect empathy, unique perspectives, and thought-provoking dialogue—no punditry, just genuine insights.
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Deep Dive with Shawn C. Fettig
State of the Union: 2024 (w/ Drs. Sara Benesh, Edward Watts, & James Hawdon)
It's the end of the year, and that means our annual State of the Union episode is here! In this episode, I'm joined by judicial scholar Dr. Sara Benesh, historian and expert on the fall of Rome, Dr. Edward Watts, and scholar of political violence, Dr. James Hawdon. We draw striking parallels between Rome's transition from a republic to an autocracy and the current state of American politics, and we discuss the erosion of institutional integrity, the rise of political violence, and the unsettling warning sign found in events like the January 6th Capitol attack. We question whether America's democratic foundations might be at risk of crumbling under similar pressures of corruption and strongman politics.
As Donald Trump makes his return to the presidency, the dynamics of the U.S. Supreme Court face intense scrutiny. So, we discuss how the current Court might behave under a second Trump presidency, and how the Court's legitimacy may further erode amidst mounting partisan divides. Historical unpredictability among justices is a focal point, as we examine how their decisions could serve as both checks on presidential power and potential avenues for self-aggrandizement. The stakes are raised by provocative statements from Trump's vice president, J.D. Vance, about ignoring Supreme Court decisions, posing a significant challenge to the court's future authority.
The path forward for American democracy is fraught with challenges. Our discussion underscores the collective responsibility to defend democratic institutions, emphasizing that this duty extends beyond judges and politicians to each and every citizen. With the world watching, we weigh the potential consequences of ignoring warning signs of political decay, urging listeners to consider their stance in this pivotal moment. How will history judge our actions during this critical time for democracy?
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But what is equally bad is when the system is slowly eroded through corruption, when the Roman state actually collapses. The collapse is actually just. It lasts just 25 years because you have a state that is so powerful in 1181 that it stretches from Croatia to Syria. It's a very, very powerful state, probably among, if not the most powerful state in Europe and certainly in the region it occupies. 25 years later it's gone, and it's gone because the institutions and the ways that the state worked had been hollowed out over the preceding hundred years and Rome had the benefit of good leadership until 1181. And then, as soon as you got bad leadership in, the whole thing just came apart very, very quickly.
Shawn:Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig, and welcome to our final episode of the year, our third annual State of the Union. So, as is tradition, we're bringing back three friends of the pod judicial scholar, dr Sara Benesh, to discuss the state of the American judiciary and Supreme Court. Researcher of ancient Rome and its fall, dr Edward Watts, to discuss how the fall of Rome can inform the current state of our American Union and what we might expect. And expert on political violence, dr James H. As Dr Watts explained in his book the Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome, the Roman system didn't collapse in a single dramatic moment. It eroded gradually as democratic norms gave way to strongman politics, as the Senate became a rubber stamp for executive power and as political violence became an accepted tool for achieving political ends.
Shawn:Like Rome in its later years, we're witnessing the slow-motion degradation of institutions that we once thought were secure and stable and unimpeachable. Rome's transformation from republic to autocracy wasn't marked by the abolition of democratic institutions, but by their hollow preservation as facades for concentrated power. Today, we're seeing similar attempts to maintain the appearance of democratic process while simultaneously gutting its substance, from efforts to create alternate slates of electors in 2020 to the systematic targeting of election officials who refused to find additional votes. The January 6th attack on the Capitol wasn't just an assault on a building. It was, like Sola's March on Rome, a signal that political violence had become a legitimate tool in the eyes of many.
Shawn:Trump's proposed nominees to key and critical federal posts are determined to undo government, not administer it, and some conservative justices on the Supreme Court openly flout judicial norms and ethics while ceding more and more power to the executive. So today's guests are going to intern and, in each of their respective fields of expertise, discuss what's gone wrong. What's going wrong and how it might all play out as Donald Trump prepares to return to office. All right, if you like this episode, or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive, dr Benesh. Welcome back. How are you?
Dr. Benesh:You know, Shawn, I'm just great.
Shawn:Oh, that feels a little tinged with cynicism, sarcasm.
Dr. Benesh:You read into it what you will.
Shawn:Fair enough. So I think this is our third State of the Union. Is that correct?
Dr. Benesh:I'm not sure I've lost track. I've been on your show so many times.
Shawn:That is true. That could also speed up exponentially next year.
Dr. Benesh:Oh no, Poor everyone who listens.
Shawn:But OK, let's do this. So, as of January 20th, trump will once again have the presidency. He has pretty much bitch slapped Congress into acquiescence, and that leaves us with the independent judiciary to save the country to save our democracy. What say you about that? You know we've talked about the court before.
Dr. Benesh:Shawn, a couple times Rings a bell, and we've talked about my concern about the court in its capacity to save democracy, especially given its recent proclivities to engage in political decision making. So I'm not sure what to expect from our quote unquote independent judiciary.
Shawn:I've been thinking a lot about the justices and I've been thinking about historical examples of when justices have surprised us and I really feel like maybe I'm just flailing at this point and wish casting, but there is a part of me that feels like, given what we know about Trump, given you know, he's kind of tipped his hand a little bit in so much as he's affirmed for us that he is going to do what he says he was going to do, and he's tipped his hand in the form of his nominees for federal positions. And that makes me wonder if that might push a couple of conservative justices closer to the center, because it's become more real and I, in that scenario, if that were to happen, I wonder if those two justices might be Roberts and Barrett.
Dr. Benesh:Yeah, I think that's a. You know, I mean, I think if we are going to wish cast, those would be two of my I don't know how to continue with this analogy or whatever we're doing. Um, those would be targets. I think that that has been kagan's uh focus, especially barrett, and you know, it seems to be the case that kagan is focusing a lot of her oral argument attention on Barrett and attempting to get her to see things the way Kagan sees them. You know, I think there are times when we see the conservative justices behaving in ways that are perhaps more restrained than we might expect them to in particular areas of the law. You know. So Gorsuch behaves differently when it comes to Native rights. He also, you know, interpreted the Civil Rights Act textually, but in a way that, in a way that protected gays and lesbians in a way that we maybe didn't expect. So you know, I mean, I think there's there's room for some potential issues, but I'm not sure about the, you know, placing the onus on the Supreme Court to guard against potential excesses of the Trump administration, given that we know the position in which the Supreme Court finds itself in terms of power and influence and the degree to which we rely on goodwill, public support, legitimacy for the court to have power and the extent to which the Trump administration, if history is any guide and if words have any meaning to you know, sort of countenance, outright rejection of Supreme Court decisions, right. So I don't know where that leaves us, you know in general.
Dr. Benesh:So I mean I read an interesting paper lately about the Supreme Court and presidential power. It was Brown and Epstein, so Lee Epstein with another USC law professor, I think, where they show that you know, in terms of presidential wins Trump actually didn't get very many. So when he was in office last time he had one of the lowest win rates of any modern president. But the Roberts court is fairly stingy in terms of wins for presidents compared with previous courts. And so what the two do in their paper is kind of dig into that question of like what drives the justices votes in cases involving presidential or administrative power. So they kind of they look at all of the cases where the federal government is is coming to the court, which you know has its own issues, but the patterns stay the same if they get rid of the administrative cases, blah, blah, blah, whatever, but one of the things that they come away from that analysis with is is yes, the court will provide a check on presidential power, but the court maybe does so by aggrandizing itself and maybe that's not also what we want.
Dr. Benesh:And they also show that there's, like this, really strong partisan effect, and so the individual justices, when they vote for or against a president, are very strongly affected by partisan, uh, coincidence. So, like you know, co-partisanship and loyalty to the president that appointed them, and that's you know. So that's kind of hidden in the raw data of this sort of less than friendly court to the presidents. So, like you know, because of like this polarization in our country and the fact that we know the justices are polarized in a partisan way, in a way they've never been before, as is the public, as is the Senate, as is, you know, everything, hyper polarized, right, hyper partisan, you know, even if the court were sort of predisposed to check presidential power, you know what are we going to get instead? You know, are we going to just get the court sort of trying to take over things, and is that what we want?
Shawn:I mean this is an interesting point as it relates to you know this must be something that the court en masse, but like particularly Roberts, don't envy him right now, but must be considering is beyond just making decisions and having some type of a constitutional and legal justification for it. You know they are weighing the political environment as well and right now about to take office is Trump, with a vice president in Vance who voted I believe it was Andrew Jackson that if you know that Trump should just ignore Supreme Court decisions he doesn't like, and if the court doesn't like that, well then they can find a way to enforce it, and I take that pretty seriously. So I imagine that, if nothing else, that serves as a warning to the court to restrain itself to some degree when it comes to orders against Trump, and I think that does worry me a little bit.
Dr. Benesh:Yeah, yeah. So if we take, you know, the paper's finding in tandem with that comment by Vance, so we know that those justices are those three justices that Trump appointed, are, you know, more inclined to defer to him? Plus this, we know that Justice Chief Justice Roberts is concerned with legitimacy.
Shawn:Chief Justice, Roberts is concerned with legitimacy. Those things could work together to make the court, you know, more deferential, or at least avoidant right of some conflicts that they you can see on the court or or related to this term, this upcoming term or the term. I suppose that that, uh, that we're in the middle of or at the beginning of already, that makes you think that you know the court could play a role that might make all of this okay, or or or maybe not.
Dr. Benesh:Um well.
Dr. Benesh:I mean, I guess.
Dr. Benesh:So you know, some people have talked about a little bit about the, you know. So, contrary, I guess, to the paper I was talking about, some people have talked a little bit about the weakening of the administrative state and the, the, the potential that that weakening, which is actually something that obviously Trump is in favor of and that Republicans and conservatives generally are in favor of, might actually work to sort of limit the impact that some of the things that Trump wants to do might have. Right, so if he wants to do some of these things that would require administrative agency decision-making or executive branch implementation, they might not be able to do it because of the weakening of the executive branch. I don't know if I I don't know if I've given it enough thought to come out on one side or the other, but maybe that's right, maybe that's a lining of some sort that maybe resembles silver, but you know, on the other hand, there's some cases before the court this term where I would expect that the Trump solicitor general will come in and switch positions that involve regulation and that will then seek to deregulate. Right, and I think you know administrative law. I always joke, you know. I had a student who was studying administrative law for her PhD and I always teased her that it was, you know, so boring and, oh my God, why are you studying administrative law? Shout out to Kimberly if she's listening. But I mean, really, if we really think about the impact that these administrative agencies have on everyday life, you know, tinkering around with some of the things that these agencies can and can't do, and the people that run them and the powers that they have in the regulations that we allow them to make, especially in light of a Congress that isn't necessarily interested in rulemaking at a specific level. So there's lots of gaps to fill in, in other words, by agencies who are experts on these things.
Dr. Benesh:When we start to really think about those things, I think we really underestimate the importance of some about those things.
Dr. Benesh:I think we really underestimate the importance of some of those things.
Dr. Benesh:So if you just think about, like Medicare or something, for example, or Medicaid right, you know, I mean as you, you know I was going to just use bad words as you say, weaken the bureaucracy.
Dr. Benesh:Healthcare decisions that are already difficult, you know, through the agencies that administer Medicaid are going to get worse, which is going to lengthen the amount of time that people have to wait for decisions to be made, which means that at least people's health will be at stake and probably also people's lives will be at stake, right? So these are not tiny things to the people who are waiting for government administrations to make decisions about whether or not certain procedures or tests are going to be covered. Right? So you know to the degree that we have limited power or we're continuing to limit power in these federal agencies, you know that that matters, and so these, these cases matter in the position that the federal government takes in these cases is going to matter, and not just, to, you know, eggheads that like to read Supreme Court decisions or that get interested in administrative law but like you know actual people, sean.
Shawn:You know there's this other side or something else. That's particularly interesting. Not necessarily a silver lining here, but we are definitely going to get a sense of maybe where Republicans but definitely where conservatives on the court stand when it comes to states' rights over the next four years as states, particularly blue states, are really gearing up to inoculate themselves from some of Trump's proposed worst excesses and policies, and those are all going to play out in the judiciary. So that might help formulate for the Republican Party that is reconstituting itself in Trump's image where they stand on that issue.
Dr. Benesh:Yeah, and I think we'll you know, see very clearly that that states rights nomenclature is not actual reality.
Shawn:Well, much like the Civil War was not about states rights, it was about slavery.
Dr. Benesh:Right, yeah, I mean it's. It's showing itself already with the abortion issue, right, I mean?
Shawn:I've heard often like well, you know they can't have their cake and eat it too, meaning you know if it's either states rights or it's not. But I do fear a reality in which it's blue states versus red states when it comes to states rights, and you know that decision. Somehow, you know, they thread a needle in such a way that it's harmful to blue states in ways that it isn't to red states.
Dr. Benesh:How do you do that?
Shawn:I don't know, but something tells me. Thomas and Alito can figure it out.
Dr. Benesh:I'll have to look and see what the Heritage Foundation is up to.
Shawn:Yeah, well it's Project 2026. That's what, anyway. Ok, let me ask you are you looking forward to anything in the in the new year? I feel like this is a loaded question this year, but do you have any vacations planned?
Dr. Benesh:I'm going to puerto rico. I heard it's a really nice place then you've been living in a bubble oh my gosh, I don't know.
Shawn:Are you going to Puerto Rico?
Dr. Benesh:I am, yeah, the. The annual meeting of the Southern political science association is down there, so I thought that'd be a great opportunity to go and contribute to their economy.
Shawn:Yeah, yeah, ma'am, ma'am, why is your your luggage filled with paper towel?
Dr. Benesh:Come on, give me a little credit. My goodness, I don't know. I mean yeah, I mean I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to focus on kindness and joy well, I mean, those are, those are not minor things. So I mean, it turns out they might be the only thing that matters all right.
Shawn:Thanks for stopping by.
Dr. Benesh:You are welcome Anytime.
Shawn:Okay, dr Watts, thanks for being here. How are you Good? How are you? I'm well as well. No-transcript Correct. Yeah, yeah, you're almost as far south as you can go in the States and I'm almost as far north, so I'm assuming our weather is quite different.
Shawn:72 and sunny yeah 50 and rainy, okay, anyway. So since we last talked for After America, a lot's changed. It feels to me like a lifetime ago, but really it was just like six months, six months or so ago, I think, and at that time we talked about the state of American democracy, the importance of this election and its outcome, which we didn't know, obviously. But we do now, and I asked then of you if you thought we were past the Rubicon which kind of, in retrospect and in the context of that conversation, assumed that Trump solely would be responsible for the demise, or the context of that conversation assumed that Trump solely would be responsible for the demise or the future of American democracy. But the more I think about it, it really took decades of bad actors and norm-breaking and rule-breaking erosion to bring us to this present point of I don't know how you want to characterize our politics rot, decay, chaos, whatever.
Shawn:So it won't be fixed in one election cycle either. It won't go away in the absence of just one figure. It'll take a long time, and the first step I would think is to either acknowledge the situation or, out of the ashes of complete collapse, collectively agree that we need to do something different to fix this, but that's not where we are. We're not even close to that. There's a lot going on, but one of those things is that one of the major parties, the Republican Party, is kind of fully abdicated responsibility for governing, and I think that that would continue under a Harris presidency as much as I kind of expect it to under a Trump presidency. So I guess I'd like to take the opportunity to ask you, given the outcome of the election, that we now know, the state of our American politics and your research, or overlaid with your research and expertise, in the events precipitating the fall of Rome, through that lens of history, how do you see the American experiment playing out right now?
Dr. Watts:I think, the idea of how things play out in America after this election. It's really, on one level, not surprising at all, and then another level, I think, quite surprising. So for a very long time we've been talking about the challenges to American democracy. We've been talking about this really directly. You know, a lot of people have been talking about this for the past eight years or so, but people have been talking about it more generally since the 1990s and these challenges from the Gingrich era. So we knew that that's a risk, and we know that it still is a risk.
Dr. Watts:In a strange way, though, the election of Trump with a majority of the vote actually, in a way, reinforces the democratic institutions that we have, because he did win Right, there's no question. Nobody is saying that this was a stolen election. Nobody's marching on the Capitol. I mean he won. But I think the other side of this that we're beginning to realize is there's a different sort of challenge to American life that is reflected in the question of why he won there, I think, is a deep, deep alienation about how American life functions and about the systems that make American life functional, and this is something where, in the last year, I just finished a history of the Roman state from beginning to end, and what is remarkable about this is the Roman state lasts for 2000 years because it has institutions and systems that Romans value enough that, for the most part, they decide to reform and allow those institutions to adapt to new realities instead of blowing them up and trying to replace them with something else, and that's actually even more than democratic institutions. That's what makes a state survive and that's what makes a system of living and a set of understandings about what your world produces for you. That's what makes it endure. You have these baseline systems that guarantee that every Roman in the third century or in the sixth century understands more or less. If I do this, I will get this result, and what's challenging right now with the Trump election, but also the number of people voting explicitly with an understanding that Trump was going to challenge or destroy some of those systems is Americans have lost the faith that Romans had that these institutions can actually govern their lives in an effective fashion, and we didn't know that this was a real risk. But when we look in the long term, I think we can see that there are a lot of people responsible for getting us to that point who we didn't realize were responsible for causing problems. You know, the person who jumps out at me from talking to my students is Bill Clinton. A lot of my students blame Clinton for in one of their words they think he's stupid. Not because he's intellectually stupid, but because he's incredibly short-sighted.
Dr. Watts:No-transcript. Early November I don't think we appreciated how deep and sincere the desire to just scrap things in the United States actually is, and that's a challenge we're really going to have to face moving forward, because states can move to be more or less democratic and the rules that govern life and education and the payment of pensions and the way that vaccines are distributed don't necessarily change very much. But right now all of those things are really going to be challenged and we have to really decide. If we do feel that aspects of the American system can work better but don't need to be fully replaced, we need to argue and fight for that, because there's a real risk that that decision is going to be taken away from us.
Shawn:So I want to look at this from another angle, which is maybe less gracious on the part of the American public, which is or maybe it's just an extension that concerns me which is there's this first ring I don't know what's a good metaphor here like a stone in a lake, I don't know what the ripples, but like the first ring is essentially the attack on the system, right? But then there are ripples that you know it's a second and third ring and those are the impacts that that has. And then what you do as replacements, and I feel my fear is that so much emphasis is on dismantling or destroying the system and no emphasis is given. I mean, I think to some degree, reporters ask Trump and his acolytes Obamacare is a perfect example, ok, you want to replace it with what? And there's just no answer, right.
Shawn:And I think people maybe have this false hope or faith that there will, of course, be a replacement, because to some degree, our system maybe for a couple of decades now was so stable and it was built in such an enduring way that we have been able to skate by on fumes while we're slowly dismantling it. But I have a fear that there will be a day at which people that are not experts are administering Social Security or Medicaid and checks are not arriving Right Right, and that feels like a much bigger threat than just the dismantling of the system if there's nothing to replace it with. That's what I'm afraid of.
Dr. Watts:Yeah, I am too. I think what the Roman example shows is you know, if you try to replace something, you might get something better, but you probably won't, because you've had a very long time to figure out how to address problems in the system that you have. And the system might not be perfect and it might not even be working very well. But if you design something completely new, it's very unlikely to work perfectly. It might, everything is possible, right, it might. But if you try to replace the way that things have always worked with something completely different, there will be unforeseen consequences and there will be problems. And if you take people who are experienced in running those institutions and you throw them out and you replace them with people who do not know how those institutions work, even if you're being charitable and assume that those people are intelligent and capable, they do not have the institutional knowledge to be sure that your Social Security check arrives on time, and that's going to be a real problem, real problem. I think some of the Roman examples that you see are it's rare for Romans to take an entirely functional system and scrap it, but when they do, it doesn't work very well and there's their real struggles and real, real problems with creating something new that will actually meet the needs of citizens. But what is equally bad is when the system is slowly eroded through corruption.
Dr. Watts:When the Roman state actually collapses, the collapse is actually just.
Dr. Watts:It lasts just 25 years because you have a state that is so powerful in 1181 that it stretches from Croatia to Syria.
Dr. Watts:It's a very, very powerful state, probably among, if not the most powerful state in Europe and certainly in the region it occupies. 25 years later it's gone, and it's gone because the institutions and the ways that the state worked had been hollowed out over the preceding 100 years and Rome had the benefit of good leadership until 1181. And then, as soon as you got bad leadership in, the whole thing just came apart very, very quickly. And that, I think, is the real risk. If you have good leadership that functions within institutional frameworks, that leadership can guide the state very well, even if the institutions are not working super well. But as soon as someone who is bad comes in charge, a strong system can still function with a bad leader. But a weak system and a bad leader is just a recipe for disaster and, I think, the wholesale replacement of a system when you're unsure about the direction of the politics in society is absolutely a recipe for catastrophe, because nothing will work.
Shawn:So I guess I want to follow this train of thought a little bit and maybe put a finer point on it, make this a little more tangible. So, as much as we can, knowing what we know and expecting what we expect as a result of this election you know, and if it in any way tracks with the collapse of Rome, what to you does this election portend? What do you expect to happen maybe over the next couple of years, or what could happen?
Dr. Watts:Well, so I think there's two parts of me.
Dr. Watts:There's one part that is extremely pessimistic, that says that it is pretty clear, I think, what voters wanted.
Dr. Watts:You know, they are unhappy with how things have been working for a very long time and I think it's quite remarkable that this sort of Obama-Bernie-Trump vote it is remaining really, I think, pretty enduring and pretty strong because these but they are unhappy with how things work, and that's a very strong constituency and it seems to be a pretty stable constituency, and so what would be ideal is for somehow, government to get together and to figure out how you address the concerns of those voters in a fashion that is tangible and that does actually make a system seem like it's more fair and responsive to their needs, especially the needs of young people.
Dr. Watts:What I'm afraid of is looking at the rhetoric and looking and we're talking on December 20th, so we're talking right when a budget deal fell apart because of, more or less, elon Musk it doesn't look like there is going to be a deliberate, well-considered, evidence-based process for making things work better so that the Obama-Bernie Trump voters feel like they are getting a fair shake. It looks instead like we're going to be playing kind of chaos ball in a really significant way with like just about everything, and will that blow things up in a fashion that expresses the anger that people feel about a society where it doesn't feel like most people are being taken care of? Yeah, I mean, it will definitely be a nice catharsis, but will it make things better? I have very strong doubts about that.
Shawn:Let me ask you this because I'm I'm a pessimist and the more I think about this you know I've spent quite a bit of time and I think a lot of people have the framing of the current predicament we're in is is the United States as a global superpower, as a quote unquote empire, as the world's longest and strongest democracy, in danger of decline? And I'm starting to wonder if the question is is the United States, as this package, already and has been in decline for a while?
Dr. Watts:Yeah, this is a really challenging question. I think, in some fashion, yes, the United States has been in decline for quite a while I mean, I think, you know, going back to 1973, when the economics of the oil shock really changed the way that our society was functioning. But I think that decline, the question about decline, is always what are you measuring? You know, the Romans were very, you know, because they always looked back to the institutions that they inherited and they valued those institutions. They were always looking back and finding things about their society that they felt manifested a type of decline in Rome. Decline means sort of change in a particular way where you put a value on it Manufacturing capacity, to a degree, kind of defense capacity. Yeah, the United States has certainly declined since 1973. In other ways, though, it has definitely changed in fashions that some Americans certainly believe are progress.
Dr. Watts:I think the long-term question about the United States, especially in this moment, is if it can stabilize, if our policies can stabilize, if our political life can stabilize, if we can get people in government who represent that vast middle of the country that basically just wants to know. If I do this, in five years my life will be better because I followed these rules and I did what I needed. That, I think, is the majority of the country. That is not what either political party is speaking to, and I think that if we can get to the point where we are again having conversations that relate to the expectations of that vast sort of political middle ground where people just want to know how their life is going to be better and what rules to follow so that they can make their life better, I think we can stabilize things. You know, and I think what the future will look like is, you know, decline in some aspects, but progress in others.
Dr. Watts:What I worry about is that the blow it all up mentality doesn't really stop right. It starts a chain reaction. And so if you blow up the Department of Education well, I mean, most education is actually funded and determined on the state level. So the Federal Department of Education, I suppose you could blow it up and it would make a change in American life, but it wouldn't dramatically disrupt American life. But I think it could start a chain reaction that sweeps through uncontrollably to the point where who knows who knows how that stops right.
Dr. Watts:Does California suddenly decide we're not going to actually observe Supreme Court decisions because the Supreme Court is not legitimate. You know, does Texas decide? Well, there's electric vehicle mandates, but we don't want to observe that because it's bad for the oil industry. You know, there is a point where disruption becomes uncontrollable, because all of the institutions suddenly become subject to this idea of radical change or like let's blow it up and scrap it and replace it with something else. That's my worry is if you, if you start scrapping things without really thinking about what might replace them, um, and without having a plan, what you're doing is is basically just gutting systems and kind of hoping that things will get better without actually being accountable for producing anything that's better. It becomes very easy to just scrap thing after thing after thing.
Shawn:Have you ever seen that meme? There's different variations of it, but of like somebody coming off onto land from a boat and they're like smiling and whistling and behind them the boat is exploding. I haven't seen that. The reason I even mentioned this is because I feel like my final question, my next question for you. This puts people in this position, but what's something you're looking forward to in the new year?
Dr. Watts:I'm trying really hard to be optimistic. I really am, you know. I do think that one very important thing that I think everybody who has studied pretty much anything related to the political world or the historical world we have realized that the models that we have and the frame of reference that we use is not big enough to actually capture the moment we're living in. We really have to think in new ways because, again, it's not just the United States. Institutions and countries around the world are experiencing this same thing. If you look in Europe, the German government just fell. It's quite possible that AFD is going to take power. The French government the prime minister was just forced to resign. It's quite possible that the National Front or Melenchon on the left is going to take power.
Dr. Watts:Institutions everywhere are really struggling. We have lived in this remarkable historical moment after World War II where there have been international rules and norms, there have been domestic rules and norms, there have been basic kind of human rules and norms that have been built up over the past 150 years that we assume matter and they don't seem to matter anymore. Right, the International Criminal Court drops indictments on leading figures around the world, like leaders of countries and people just sort of assume. Yeah, well, that's not actually going to be enforced on Putin or Netanyahu or anyone else. The institutions are struggling, putin or Netanyahu or anyone else. The institutions are struggling and we as thinkers, as historians, as political scientists, we don't have models for that. So if we are able to step outside of that and think creatively, there are a lot of new things that we are going to learn.
Dr. Watts:I don't really like the realities attached to learning those things. I'm very pessimistic about what those might look like, but we are going to learn a lot and at the end of this there's going to be political thought, historical thought and, I think, artistic expression unlike anything we've seen in a very long time, because new experiences drive creativity, new experiences drive new realizations. We're going to understand the world a lot better at the end of this, and when that happens also, artists are going to be unshackled in really remarkable ways. Whenever this ends, I think humanity is going to have a whole lot of really interesting things that come out of it. That is no way of saying that I'm happy that we're in this situation, but looking forward, you know, I do think that there's going to be some really remarkable things discovered about how humans work, about how societies work and about how one represents that, and so does that obviate all of the problems that I think are coming? Not really, but I think it is something that we can look forward to.
Shawn:Dr Watts thanks for taking the time, and here's to raising a glass to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Dr. Watts:For sure, thanks, s.
Shawn:Dr Hawdon, welcome back. How are you?
Dr. Hawdon:I'm doing well. How are you?
Shawn:I'm doing well as well.
Dr. Hawdon:Thank you for having me.
Shawn:Yeah, absolutely. What a year. Huh, yeah, it's been interesting. I think a lot of discussion and conversation and hand-wringing about violence and political violence, especially related to the election, and the outcome of election was framed in the context of a Trump loss. So like what happens if Trump loses. You know the space between the election and inauguration and then you know, given what we saw with January 6th and kind of the emboldening of a far-right, but also you know militia groups, how that would unfold over the next four years or so. But Trump won and I think it would be a mistake and it's a mistake that people I think are making, which is that at least we averted political violence. But before we get to whether or not we have, I guess I'm wondering what type of violence you were anticipating had Trump actually lost.
Dr. Hawdon:Yeah, well, I think, I think there would have been the kind of protests that would have erupted around the country and it is very likely that, had he lost the narrative of that, the election was stolen and you know there's this deep state that is just trying to keep him out because he's an enemy of the deep state.
Dr. Hawdon:So there would have been some protests, I think, you know, immediately following the election, as soon as it was called in Harris's favor.
Dr. Hawdon:I think there would have been these protests and the likelihood of those turning violent, I think, would be very high because, of course, when the narrative is, there is this evil deep state is the cause of this.
Dr. Hawdon:Any attempt to control that protest, any attempt to keep it from becoming violent, is just, of course, further evidence of the existence of a deep state trying to repress the will of the people, right, so it becomes a feedback loop that increases it significantly, increases the likelihood of any one protest becoming violent. So I think it would have started like that, but then I think the more serious acts of violence would have come around the whole certification process and this both at the state level and then, you know, similar to January 6th, I think there would have been kind of a replay of that event and then after you know, assuming that that violence wasn't successful in stopping Harris from being inaugurated, I think the violence then would have would have acts of domestic terrorism with. You know the extent to which probably, or at least hopefully, would not have been a lot of it, but I think there would have been some of it.
Shawn:So Trump didn't lose, he did win. And, like I said, you know, I think there's a tendency at this point to think well, at least the violence was averted. And I don't know that that's true, because I think that violence, particularly political violence, is kind of baked into the MAGA movement and, to some degree, the Trumpist equation and you touched on this right Like, the enemy is the deep state. Well, even given the fact that Trump has won, I think that he will always have an enemy in the deep state, and by that I mean he will generate this idea that there is a deep state that he's fighting against. So then that translates to supporters an enemy of supporters as well. So then, I guess my question is what are you expecting and what are you going to be looking for over the next few years in that regard?
Dr. Hawdon:The notion that we escaped political violence or averted it, avoided.
Dr. Hawdon:It is true if we're thinking about direct violence, immediate direct violence, right, we're not going to see a January 6th-like event when the vote is certified, and we're not going to see that type of violence come the inauguration or anything like that.
Dr. Hawdon:But of course, there's different types of violence. Right, there's institutional violence. There's institutional violence and I think that there is the danger, given some of the rhetoric that President-elect Trump has used and some of the things that he attempted to do in his first administration. There is the danger for a more violently supported administration, if you will. And what I mean by that is that kind of the threat of violence, even if it's not enacted, the threat of violence against people who disagree with him, the media, the number of people that he has promised retribution against. Even if that's not enacted, the threat of it in and of itself is a form of violence, a form of political violence that you know, evoking the immense power of the state against the citizens, and is a serious threat. And then, when you're talking about, like the militias and such that are and I agree with you I think it is baked into the MAGA movement.
Dr. Hawdon:You know there is a possibility that these become you know, we have seen this before. You know, like the brown shirts and the rise of the Mussolini regime Right, the, the use of these paramilitary and extra state groups that provided legitimacy by the, by the political regime, you know, to kind of just enact, instill fear and enact fear, right. And you know, and if you think about, like the Jim Crow South and the violence that was enacted, there you know it wasn't always direct there.
Dr. Hawdon:Threat of more violence, freedoms, so you know there'll be enough violence to make people take the threat of additional violence very seriously. Right, and and if you think about the like the Jim Crow South, you know the, the success with which the local politicians and such suppressed the vote. Just that in and of itself is a form of political violence. So I think that's what we might be running into in the next four years.
Shawn:Well, I do wonder if it is just the next four years. I think this could be a Trump phenomenon that goes away with Trump, but there's, I do have an abiding fear that this is. You know, we've turned a corner and this type of discourse and this type of this component of political violence in in our discourse might be something that we're just stuck with for a while. What say you?
Dr. Hawdon:Yeah, I mean I think I'm going to go kind of hedge my back here. I do think that you're right that we have turned a corner, that the rhetoric of political violence, I think, is here to stay for a while, if for no other reason, it is so prevalent on social media, which of course we, at least for the moment, will not limit that speech, right, so people are going to be exposed to that. But there is something about the MAGA movement and Trumpism is? He is a charismatic leader, right? That is if you think about you know the forms of legitimacy he is very much relying on. You know his charisma and you know and he has very frequently talked against a kind of more rational legal form of legitimacy and bringing up the notion, and perpetuating this notion, that there is a deep state undermines the rule of law right.
Dr. Hawdon:So, he is very much a charismatic leader and what frequently happens with movements that are started by charismatic leaders and you know- that once they go away. That energy is just not there, right.
Dr. Hawdon:And if you think about not saying that he's the only potential successor. But JD Vance just does not have a whole lot of charisma, he's not going to be able to fire up the base the way that Trump has. And so, depending on how long he lives, I think that the longer he lives, I think the longer this goes on. I think that the longer he lives, I think the longer this goes on. And and of course, after he shuffles off the moral coil and moves on, you know the violence will, the rhetoric will linger, for sure. But you know, as, as we've seen with the fall of lots of authoritarian regimes, especially ones run by charismatic leaders, which most of them are, you know there is a backlash to it once everybody kind of says oh whoa, did we really do that?
Shawn:This is kind of an awkward pivot, but what are you looking forward to in the new year?
Dr. Hawdon:You know, at the moment we have a family trip planned to New York to see a couple of shows. My daughter is a theater major and looking forward to her graduating. That should be exciting. But you know, I'm also very interested to see what happens in the next year. I don't know if looking forward to it is the best way to phrase it.
Dr. Hawdon:I am very interested to see how this all plays out. Will the system of checks and balances actually hold up? That will be interesting to watch. Yeah, but in terms of fun we really don't have any huge plans yet, so I guess I'll go with seeing my daughter graduate from college. That'll be exciting.
Shawn:What aspect of theater does she do Acting? Yeah, oh, okay.
Dr. Hawdon:Yeah, she's an actor. She's waiting actually waiting to hear if she got a role in the spring play. That'll be exciting. Well, that's good, but yeah, that's good, but yeah that's, she's a theater and English major, so she's going to try her hand at theater, and then she has a plan B.
Shawn:Well, we should probably all have a plan B.
Dr. Hawdon:Yes.
Shawn:Yes, dr Hawdon. Thanks for the few minutes of your time, and here's to brighter days.
Dr. Hawdon:Indeed. Thank you for having me.
Shawn:The gravity of our current moment is impossible to ignore. Like Rome before us, we in the United States stand at a crossroads where the choices we make, or fail to make, will have implications for our democracy and also for global stability, implications that will have repercussions for generations. The defense of democracy isn't the responsibility of judges, election workers or politicians alone. It falls to each of us to recognize that democratic institutions don't collapse in an instant, but through the collective silence of those who could have spoken up, should have spoken up and didn't. This is surely what the vast majority of Germans considered upon the collapse of the Third Reich, italians after the Mussolini regime, cambodians after Pol Pot, ugandans after Idi Amin, chileans after Pinochet. We stand in a place right now where we face that uncertain, potentially authoritarian future. So, as we enter a new year, now is the time to ask yourself, when history looks back on this moment, which side of this struggle will you have chosen? All right, check back next week for another episode of Deep Dive Chat. Soon, folks, thank you, thank you.
