We're covering Trump's anti-democratic tendencies （Bilingual 双语）我们正在报道特朗普的反民主倾向

NYTimes

The Morning

October 30, 2024

By David Leonhardt

Good morning. We're covering Trump's anti-democratic tendencies — as well as Gaza, Botswana and New York pizza.

Donald Trump has shown more hostility to American democracy than any other president in the country's history. He tried to overturn an election result. He celebrates political violence. The list goes on, and it is familiar by now.

A central question about a second Trump term is how this hostility might manifest itself. The country's political system survived his first term, after all, and many Americans understandably wonder how much different a second term would be.

It really could be different.

Trump is now far better positioned to accomplish his goals, as my colleagues Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan have explained in a series of stories. His aides are vetting job candidates for loyalty, trying to exclude establishment Republicans who might resist his wishes. Both Congress and the judiciary would likely be friendlier to him than they were eight years ago.

In today's newsletter, I want to help you understand the main ways that Trump could undermine democratic traditions. Along the way, I'll point to Times coverage from the past two years. I will also address some objections that I expect some readers to have.

The dangers

There are at least six major ways Trump could weaken American democracy:

1. Prosecute critics. Trump has promised to use the Justice Department to punish his political opponents if he is president again, including with “long term prison sentences,” as he wrote online.

Presidents have traditionally not inserted themselves into criminal cases. But that has been a choice; a president has the power to issue orders to the Justice Department. In his first term, Trump demanded investigations of at least 10 people, sometimes damaging their lives, as my colleague Michael Schmidt has documented. Trump could order more investigations in a second term, given his staffing plans. (This graphic lays out how Trump could seek to jail his political opponents.)

2. Silence critics in other ways. Trump may also try to use his regulatory powers to shape public discourse. He has suggested that NBC, MSNBC and CBS deserve to lose their broadcast licenses because of their critical coverage of him. He has talked about punishing Amazon because its founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.

These comments echo the silencing campaigns that foreign leaders like Viktor Orban in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India have conducted (as this essay by A.G. Sulzberger, The Times's publisher, explains).

3. Reward allies and campaign donors. Trump, as The Times has reported, “is sometimes making overt promises about what he will do once he's in office, a level of explicitness toward individual industries and a handful of billionaires that has rarely been seen in modern presidential politics.” Both the oil and vaping industries — and perhaps Elon Musk — seem likely to benefit.

4. Replace federal employees with loyalists. Late in his first term, Trump issued an executive order that gave him the power to fire and replace tens of thousands of federal workers, including economists, scientists and national security experts. The order would have vastly increased the number of political appointees, which is now about 4,000. President Biden rescinded the order.

True, there is an argument that such an order promotes democracy by causing the federal work force to reflect the elected president. But the moves may also strip the government of nonpartisan expertise that connects policy with reality. And combined with Trump's many anti-democratic promises, the wholesale firing of federal employees could allow him to use the government for his personal whims.

5. Undermine previously enacted policies. Rather than trying to repeal laws he opposes, Trump and his allies have suggested that he may simply “impound” funds — effectively ignoring laws that Congress previously passed. One example: He could try to block money for clean energy.

6. Refuse to transfer power peacefully. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, still do not acknowledge that Biden beat Trump in 2020. Trump even vows to pardon some of the rioters who attacked Congress when it was meeting to certify the result on Jan. 6, 2021.

This combination suggests that a transfer of power took place in 2021 only because enough Republicans stood up to Trump. And they may not do so in the future.

Policy isn't democracy

I know that Trump supporters may ask why we're not writing a similar newsletter about the Democratic Party. And it's true that liberals have violated democratic norms at times — with aggressive executive orders, for example, or attempts to stifle debate during the Covid pandemic. But Trump's anti-democratic behavior is of a different order of magnitude. Pretending otherwise is false balance.

As an example of how different Biden and Trump are, look at Biden's Justice Department. It has indicted not only prominent Republicans (like Trump) but also prominent Democrats (like Mayor Eric Adams and Senator Robert Menendez), a major Democratic fund-raiser (Sam Bankman-Fried, the now imprisoned crypto executive) and even the president's son (Hunter Biden).

I also know that some Democrats will argue that the list here is too short and should include Trump's potential policies on abortion, immigration, climate change and more. But it's worth distinguishing between policy disputes and democracy itself.

There is nothing inherently anti-democratic about reducing environmental regulations, allowing states to restrict abortion access or deporting people who entered the country illegally. Democrats can make the case that these policies are wrong — and voters can decide who's right. Voters can also change their minds if the policies don't succeed.

Attacks on democracy are different. If democracy breaks down, the political system can lose the ability to self-correct.

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My comment 

The author's so-called American democracy is based on the major premise - the U.S. society is a beyond-class or simply a classless society, hence its democracy is for all the people to enjoy as the society consists of neither a ruling class, nor any of the ruled classes.

Unfortunately, this premise is false. 

The U.S. society falls into the same category of private-ownership societies hence it is a class-based society as genuine as any other one in the world, excluding those of the DPRK and Cuba. 

The US democracy is enjoyed not by its ruled classes but by its ruling class , i.e.,  the capitalist ruling class. Its democracy is not a people's democracy but a capitalist dictatorship under the downright falsehood of democracy.

Any honest person would not claim such a fake democracy to be genuine one,  let alone support it.

It is not surprised that the ruling capitalist class seldomly mention the fake democracy in the open as they worry about embarrassing themselves.

While the upper echelon of the working class - the so-called middle-class may want to muddle along such a fake democracy, the rank-and-file lower echelon of the working class refuses to compromise. They want to ignore the fake-democracy-mongers' sweet words. On the contrary, the majority of the oppressed and ruled class of the country have awakend to such a high level of class consciousness that they support Donald J. Trump's MAGA party to rectify the decaying and crumbling fake democracy by first supporting his attacking and weakening the fake democracy, then persuading his calling for a change of the system to a democratic dictatorship of, by and for the working class majority. 

The MAGA party will serve a potentially indispensable role in embarking on a new democratic revolution, first in this country, then in the world. [Mark Wain 10/31/2024]

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Translation

英译汉

纽约时报

晨报

2024 年 10 月 30 日

大卫·莱昂哈特

早上好。我们正在报道特朗普的反民主倾向——以及加沙、博茨瓦纳和纽约披萨。

唐纳德·特朗普对美国民主表现出的敌意比美国历史上任何其他总统都要多。他试图推翻选举结果。他庆祝政治暴力。名单还在继续，现在已经很熟悉了。

关于特朗普第二任期的一个核心问题是这种敌意将如何表现出来。毕竟，这个国家的政治体系在他的第一个任期中幸存了下来，许多美国人可以理解地想知道第二任期会有多大的不同。

它真的可能会有所不同。

正如我的同事玛吉·哈伯曼、查理·萨维奇和乔纳森·斯旺在一系列故事中所解释的那样，特朗普现在更有能力实现他的目标。他的助手正在审查工作候选人的忠诚度，试图排除可能抵制他意愿的建制共和党人。国会和司法部门对他的态度可能比八年前更加友好。

在今天的新闻通讯中，我想帮助您了解特朗普可能破坏民主传统的主要方式。在此过程中，我将指出《纽约时报》过去两年的报道。我还将解决一些读者可能提出的反对意见。

危险

特朗普至少有六种主要方式可以削弱美国民主：

1. 起诉批评者。特朗普承诺，如果他再次当选总统，将利用司法部惩罚他的政治对手，包括“长期监禁”，正如他在网上写道的那样。

传统上，总统不会插手刑事案件。但这是一个选择；总统有权向司法部下达命令。在他的第一个任期内，特朗普要求调查至少 10 人，有时甚至损害他们的生命，正如我的同事迈克尔施密特所记录的那样。考虑到他的人员配置计划，特朗普可能会在第二任期下令进行更多调查。 （这张图表展示了特朗普如何试图监禁他的政治对手。）

2. 用其他方式让批评者噤声。特朗普还可能试图利用他的监管权力来影响公众言论。他曾暗示 NBC、MSNBC 和 CBS 应该因为对他的批评性报道而失去广播执照。他曾谈到惩罚亚马逊，因为亚马逊创始人杰夫·贝佐斯拥有《华盛顿邮报》。

这些评论呼应了匈牙利的维克托·奥尔班和印度的纳伦德拉·莫迪等外国领导人开展的噤声运动（正如《纽约时报》出版商 A.G. 苏兹伯格在这篇文章中解释的那样）。

3. 奖励盟友和竞选捐助者。正如《纽约时报》报道的那样，特朗普“有时会公开承诺他上任后会做什么，这种对个别行业和少数亿万富翁的直言不讳在现代总统政治中很少见。”石油和电子烟行业——也许还有埃隆·马斯克——似乎都有可能从中受益。

4. 用效忠者取代联邦雇员。特朗普在其第一任期的后期发布了一项行政命令，赋予他解雇和替换数万名联邦工作人员的权力，其中包括经济学家、科学家和国家安全专家。该命令将大大增加政治任命人员的数量，目前约为 4,000 人。拜登总统撤销了该命令。

确实，有一种观点认为，这样的命令通过使联邦劳动力反映当选总统的意见来促进民主。但这些举措也可能使政府失去将政策与现实联系起来的无党派专业知识。再加上特朗普的许多反民主承诺，全面解雇联邦雇员可能会让他利用政府来满足自己的个人心血来潮。

5. 破坏先前制定的政策。特朗普及其盟友表示，他可能只是“扣押”资金，而不是试图废除他反对的法律——实际上无视国会先前通过的法律。举个例子：他可以试图阻止用于清洁能源的资金。

6. 拒绝和平移交权力。特朗普和他的竞选搭档 JD Vance 仍然不承认拜登在 2020 年击败了特朗普。特朗普甚至发誓要赦免一些在 2021 年 1 月 6 日国会开会确认选举结果时袭击国会的暴徒。

这种结合表明，2021 年的权力移交只是因为有足够多的共和党人站出来反对特朗普。而且他们未来可能不会这样做。

政策不是民主

我知道特朗普的支持者可能会问，为什么我们不写一份关于民主党的类似通讯。自由主义者确实有时会违反民主规范——例如，发布激进的行政命令，或在新冠疫情期间试图扼杀辩论。但特朗普的反民主行为是另一个数量级。假装不是，是一种虚假的平衡。

拜登和特朗普的不同之处就在于此，看看拜登的司法部。它不仅起诉了著名的共和党人（如特朗普），还起诉了著名的民主党人（如市长埃里克·亚当斯和参议员罗伯特·梅内德斯）、一位主要的民主党筹款人（现已入狱的加密货币高管萨姆·班克曼-弗里德）甚至总统的儿子（亨特·拜登）。

我也知道一些民主党人会认为这里的名单太短了，应该包括特朗普在堕胎、移民、气候变化等方面的潜在政策。但有必要区分政策争议和民主本身。

减少环境法规、允许各州限制堕胎或驱逐非法入境者本质上并不反民主。民主党人可以证明这些政策是错误的——选民可以决定谁是对的。如果政策没有成功，选民也可以改变主意。

对民主的攻击是不同的。如果民主崩溃，政治体系就会失去自我纠正的能力。

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我的评论

作者所谓的美国民主，建立在这样一个大前提上：美国社会是一个超阶级社会，或者说是一个无阶级社会，所以它的民主是全民享有的，因为这个社会既没有统治阶级，也没有被统治阶级。

很遗憾，这个前提是错误的。

美国社会属于私有制社会，所以它是一个阶级社会，和世界上除朝鲜和古巴以外的其他社会一样是真正的阶级社会。

美国的民主不是被统治阶级享有的，而是统治阶级，即资本主义统治阶级享有的。美国的民主不是人民民主，而是彻头彻尾的虚假民主下的资本主义专政。

任何一个诚实的人都不会说这种假民主是真的，更不会支持它。

统治阶级很少公开提及伪民主，因为他们担心自己会丢脸，这并不奇怪。

虽然工人阶级的上层——所谓的中产阶级可能想勉强维持这种伪民主，但工人阶级的下层却拒绝妥协。他们想忽略伪民主贩子的甜言蜜语。相反，这个国家被压迫和被统治的阶级的大多数已经觉醒到如此高的阶级意识水平，他们支持唐纳德·J·特朗普的“让美国再次伟大”党来纠正腐朽和摇摇欲坠的伪民主，首先支持他攻击和削弱伪民主，然后说服他呼吁将制度转变为由工人阶级多数人统治、为工人阶级多数人服务的民主专政。

“让美国再次伟大”党将在开始一场新的民主革命中发挥潜在的不可或缺的作用，首先是在这个国家，然后是在全世界。 [马克·韦恩 2024 年 10 月 31 日]