Sunday, February 12, 2017

Containing Trump - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."


Jonathan Ruch, theatlantic.com

image from article

He may well try to govern as an authoritarian. Whether he succeeds depends less on what he does than on how civil society responds.

Excerpt:
To help the body politic resist de-norming, you need to make an argument for the kind of government and society that the norms support. You have to explain why lying, bullying, and coarsening are the enemies of the kinds of lives people aspire to. Instead of pointing to Trump with shock and disgust—tactics that seem to help more than hurt him—you need to offer something better. In other words, you need to emulate what the Founders did so many years ago, when they offered, and then built, a more perfect union. [JB emphasis]

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