Scott Alexander's Four Arguments for Why the Democrats Are Less Dangerous than Trump

[I know I am publishing Substacks at a ferocious rate this week, but the Election is time-sensitive. I think, too, that every one of these is different, says something different from what anyone else has said, and contains at least one nugget of information, dear reader, that you have not seen before.]

[Since so many people are reading this coming from AstralCodexTen’s Open Thread, I’ll advertise my Substack by pointing to one of my personal favorites, “(a+b^n)/n = x. Therefore, God Exists.” It’s also a bit of math/history/humor relief from election tension.]

In "ACX Endorses Harris, Oliver, Or Stein," Dr. Scott Alexander of AstralCodexTen says he prefers Kamala Harris to Donald Trump for President, and that the big reason is fear of authoritarianism. Scott is much respected, including by me, and has an unusually intelligent comment section, so he has received a lot of pushback— for example, this tweet by Richard Ngo. This Substack essay is my pushback. I adapted it from comments by Dr. David Kingsley and myself in Scott’s comment section.¹

I find it interesting to contrast my emotional response to Scott Alexander’s endorsement of Harris with my response to the New York Times’s endorsement. I don’t care a whit what the New York Times says. They’re fake news, part of the propaganda press, the legacy media. We all know they will do anything to support Kamala. We don’t trust the media anymore. Increasingly, we don’t even read it, and we don’t watch Cable TV or the Networks. Instead, we read blogs and Substacks and watch podcasts of individuals. There’s no reason to trust a faceless corporation comprised of a few good minds and mostly mediocre ones when you can pick and choose among individual people, picking just the best ones, ones such as Scott Alexander. For Trust, this holds a fortiori. I don’t trust the 500 people staffing the New York Times, and how could I trust so many people even if I knew their names? I don’t know them. Scott Alexander, Ben Shapiro, Steve Sailer, and Jay Bhattacharya, on the other hand, are people I know because their personality and degree of honest shine forth from their work, and some of those people I’ve even met in person (e.g. Dr. Bhattacharya, who it turns out learned game theory from my book). So endorsements by individual ephemerists² do matter.

Scott acknowledges that the strongest counterargument against his fear of an authoritarian Trump is that the Kamala Harris/Joe Biden handlers are a far worse danger to democracy than Trump is or ever could be. I will focus on Scott’s Section III, which has four arguments against the counterargument. His Section III starts like this:

Dr. David Kingsley responded:

Admittedly, I had not fully read it at the time. I am now educated, but I can say that it hasn't changed my initial opinion (maybe I'm stuck in a local maxima).

What I disagree with:

Consolidation of power: A core claim of authoritarianism you made was regarding the consolidation of power. In our country, the institutions consolidating power are dominated, top to bottom, by left-wingers. These same institutions seem unaccountable to any real oversight. The right, in this case, Trump and supporters like Musk, are advocating for disarming these institutions. At the very least, it would be a net positive to bring some balance to them.

Retribution against dissenters and threatening jail time as a form of coercion: Our judicial system has already been actively weaponized against political opponents to a level I would never have believed possible in a first-world country. If Donald loses, there’s a real chance he could be in jail before the end of next year on trumped-up charges. Consider the myriad of lawsuits against Elon Musk for simply refusing to capitulate to pressures from institutions that operate like an apparatus of the Democratic Party.

What should be added:

Dangerous rhetoric and attempts to eliminate political opponents: Hopefully, this one needs no explanation. The amount of leftwing violence and memory holing of it is shocking.

Harming election integrity - elections have two jobs, 1) accurately tally the votes of American citizens on candidates and propositions and 2) be perceived to accurately do so. Both are equally necessary. The press against common sense voter ID rules and other integrity measures is dangerous to both 1 and 2.

Scott asked me the same question, and I responded at greater length, a response which I will clean up a little for this Substack.

Argument 1. The Democrats are slowly and quietly eroding democracy, but Trump is attacking it outright.

Counterargument 1. First, think about what Trump’s done to democracy. Nothing, except cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 election. There, the real question is whether there was really zero cheating as almost all the media says, or at least a trivial amount of cheating, whcih is what some intellectuals say. It is begging the question to say that complaining about a stolen election is anti-democratic.

What about January 6? That was a riot, never truly investigated, probably instigated by the Left, possibly even with FBI help. Who benefited from it? Who *could* have benefited from it? The riot cut off the planned debate on whether the election was stolen, and gave the Democrats a cudgel to use for 4 years. See https://www.unz.com/article/remembering-the-reichstag-fire/ .

What Trump *has* done is talk very wildly about things like throwing Hillary Clinton in jail. But we all know that he is constantly hyperbolic. His talk is poetry, not prose, in the sense that it conveys meaning well, but not the literal meaning. He never did put Hillary in jail, and she undoubtedly committed an illegality (was it criminal or civil? I think it was criminal for Genl. Schwarzkopf) with her use of confidential info.

What about the Democrats? The reason their illegalities seem mild is because the media won’t cover them as anti-democratic. The unilateral forgiveness of student loans was illegal and an offense against democracy, even though it doesn’t sound dangerous. What about the hundreds of Jan 6 felonies misusing a false-records statute, which the Supreme Court threw out recently? What about the prosecutions of numerous Trump officials, and of Trump himself? Don’t say: “Republicans deserve it; Democrats don’t.”

The Democrats have seriously proposed packing the Supreme Court, and getting rid of the electoral college. They have overthrown a President— the Biden disappearance— and chosen a presidential candidate who had no popular support even in the Democratic Party.

So, the Democrats walk softly but carry a big stick. Trump does the opposite.

Argument 2. The Democrats have two serious obstacles to destroying democracy: the Supreme Court, and their lack of internal unity. Both of those favor the Republicans.

Counterargument 2. The Supreme Court would also stop Trump from becoming a dictator. We have no evidence to the contrary. The 6 more Republican justices, unlike the 3 Democratic justices, do not vote in lockstep. Also, it is not true that the Democrats have less unity. How many Democratic officeholders have condemned Joe Biden or Kamala Harris? Trump has lots of his former officials and lots of Republican leaders who hate him, and are willing to say so in public. Half the party, at least, has distaste for him— I, myself, am an example— and he is actually to the left of the Republican Party, a feature concealed by how willing he is to talk big about how bad the establishment is.

Argument 3. It’s bad if you want to “be pro-freedom, pro-liberalism, and pro-democracy, but you didn’t really take a stand against somebody trying to attack enemy politicians and rig an election.”

Counterargument 3. I think maybe you were getting tired of writing at that point, as I am now myself! Otherwise, you’d think about how viciously the Democrats attack Trump. Trump has obvious contempt for her, but that’s his opinion and why should he hide it? And “rig an election”? How is Trump doing that? The Democrats, on the other hand, … well, suppressing the NY Post’s Hunter story, Pfizer delaying vaccine approval just so Trump wouldn’t get credit before the electoin, changes in voting rules (in PA saying absentee ballots wouldn’t be checked for signature mismatch), the media propagandizing, and the internet platforms throttling conservatives . . .

Argument 4. Whatever bad things the Democrats do or intend to do, Trump would also do if he could get away with it.

Counterargument 4. Maybe he’d like to— he says wild things— but historically he has been all talk and no action. Suppose he *would* like to. Unlike the Democrats, Trump can’t get away with anything. The Democrats have 90% of the media power on their side— 90% of the cable news, of broadcast news, of internet platforms, of newspapers, of magazines, of webzines . . . They have the Bureaucracy, including the FBI, the Justice Dept., and the armed forces. They have most lawyers and lobbyists and nonprofit groups, and the most money.

Scott did not respond to either of us. That’s fine— there were over 800 comments, so it’s flattering that he even asked us for our arguments. If anyone wants to respond to us on his behalf, go ahead!³

Footnotes

1. The picture at the top of this post is from an Ultra Maga Trump video. That is just the second-best Ultra Maga Trump video I know. The best one used a Bollywood epic dance, but it seems it was taken down after copywrite complaints.

2. I just made up the word “ephemerist”. Ephemera are the ephemeral products of a civilization, out of date by 5 years later. 99.99% of journalism is ephemera, no matter how good it is. That’s why Nietzsche warned against reading newspapers. An ephemerist is someone who produces ephemera. I, for example, am being an ephemerist at this moment as I write this footnote.

3. “Life-changing choices we may be forced to make if Donald Trump wins,” Rick Perlstein, The American Prospect (October 30, 2024). Somebody on Twitter asked for a steelmanning of the argument that Trump will threaten democracy, and the Perlstein article was suggested in the comments. At a quick glance it looks like a good try, rhetorically at the very least. If I have time (unlikely in the next day or two), I will read it and respond.