WEEK 13

Wednesday, May 7

A frequent comment in the social media is "This is not legal." So what?

A friend commented on my belief that democracy collapses when the electoral winners make the life of the losers intolerable, by observing that Trump is making the life of his supporters miserable. According to the Substack by Don Moynihan, the net effect of the proposed changes of expenditures and taxes will be that the bottom quintile of income recipients will lose about 5% of their incomes, while the second bottom quintile will lose about 1%. So my friend seems to be right. I am not persuaded, however, that this will have political effects. Some people go to the gallows singing hymns in praise of their hangman. Is this what Trump is banking on? He has become exceptionally religious since his approval took a downturn: May 1 was proclaimed to be the Day of Prayer and a Religious Liberty Commission was established by an Executive Order. Can ideology beat the economy? No economist thinks so but this is their professional bias. Abraham Lincoln did not think so and he was not an economist. The MAGA people seem to think so. It was always a puzzle why so many people would vote for someone whose program they should have been expected to make them worse off economically. When pressed, my economist friends could come up only with the explanation that people were reacting to the post-Covid inflation but were unable to formulate forecasts. The question remains whether, perhaps only how long, will people support Trump when their economic conditions deteriorate.

The government will impose a 100% tariff on foreign films. According to @realdonaldtrump, La Dolce Vita is incompatible with MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

Thursday, May 8

We forgot. We face the specter of a calamity that will make life on earth impossible, Trump or not Trump. Trump did make a contribution to accelerate its advent. But the tragedy is that everyday events are so pressing that we no longer think beyond the present moment.

I am dumfounded. I asked Chatgpt how it can happen that higher per capita income and a larger number of past alternations in office increase the probability that democracy survives while interaction between them decreases this probability, which is what I find when I do statistical analyses. The first answer was:

"1. Complacency and Overconfidence: Wealth + history of peaceful power transitions might lead to the perception that democracy is "consolidated."

This can:

Reduce vigilance against authoritarian backsliding.

Encourage elites or leaders to test limits, assuming institutions will hold.

Lead to weaker public resistance to democratic erosion."

I found it brilliant. I have read some technical stuff on how the AI works but I cannot even imagine how it came up with this answer, within seconds. Other answers were more shaky but this was the first possibility that came to me and it sounds plausible. So now I can be replaced by an algorithm.

The US was ranked in the 57th place, between Sierra Leone and Gambia, on press freedom by Reporters without Borders. Here is the justification of this placement in the 2025 by the World Press Freedom Index: "In the United States (57), Donald Trump's second term as president has led to an alarming deterioration in press freedom, indicative of an authoritarian shift in government. His administration has weaponised institutions, cut support for independent media, and sidelined reporters. With trust in the media plummeting, reporters face increasing hostility. At the same time, local news outlets are disappearing, turning vast swaths of the country into 'news deserts.' Trump also terminated federal funding for the US Agency for Global Media, which distributes resources to vital international media organisations, affecting audiences and outlets worldwide."

Friday, May 9

There goes item 3 of my list of atrocities impossible in the United States. This is from the Executive Order issued on April 28:

"Sec. 4. Using National Security Assets for Law and Order. (a) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement.

(b) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Attorney General, shall determine how military and national security assets, training, non-lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized to prevent crime."

I see no echoes of this EO in the media but I find it exceptionally ominous. Just a few days I thought that using the armed forces against US civilians is impossible. It no longer seems so.

I have received an enlightening comment via Substack from Kunheo on my recurrent puzzlement about why Germans did not anticipate Hitler. His analysis is that the German bourgeoisie did fear Hitler but feared the Communists even more. Between the two, they rationally opted for Hitler, choosing the lesser evil. When this explanation is transported across countries it implies that the falling support for Trump does not predict much as long as the electorate dislikes the Democrats even more.

Saturday, May 10

I have stayed away from corruption, for which there is rapidly growing evidence. I must admit that I do not care much if Trump is getting rich, just because for me his enrichment pales in importance in comparison to what he is doing to the country and the world. There is a Polish proverb: "It is not the time to lament the roses when forests are burning." When big disasters hit, everything else recedes in importance, even the defeat of my favorite soccer team. Still, he may be electorally vulnerable on this issue.

When I talk to foreigners, the first question they invariably ask is "Where is the opposition?" I have no answer. The Democratic Party seems completely adrift. It has no program, no leader, no strategy. It does not even make the news. With some individual exceptions, it is just mute.

Montesquieu (1748) thought that if any power succeeded to violate fundamental laws, "everything would unite against it"; there would be a revolution, "which would not change the form of government or its constitution: for revolutions shaped by liberty are but a confirmation of liberty." In this tradition, Weingast (1997, 2015) argued that if a government were to conspicuously violate the constitution, cross a "bright line," citizens would coordinate against it and, anticipating this reaction, the government would not commit such violations. Fearon (2011) thought that the same would occur if a government were not to hold an election or commit flagrant fraud. A combination of separation of powers and popular reactions would make democratic institutions impregnable to the "encroaching spirit of power" (Madison 1788), the desire of politicians for enduring and unlimited power. Are such beliefs just false?

Sunday, May 11

Stephen Miller floated the idea of suspending habeas corpus. Textually, "The writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So I would say that's an option we're actively looking at." It may refer only to immigrants, because in the view of the administration their guilt does not require any due process. When I played soccer in Chile 55 years ago, my nickname was Perez, from the first three letters of my name. I am trying to imagine what my life would have been like today if my name were in fact Adán Pérez.

I just read an informative post by Scott Galloway on the contribution of federal funding to the economic success of the US. He lists the internet, GPS, mRNA, Siri as products of government conducted or government sponsored research that led to the growth of the most successful private companies.

Over the years and across different ranking systems, US universities have been consistently ranked as best in the world. The QS 2025 ranking has MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and CalTech among the top 10. Times Higher Education ranks MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, and Yale in the top 10. I wonder how many US universities will be in the top 10 by 2028.

Back to my persistent puzzlement: Why would the administration cancel grants to study cancer to a university that has a Middle Eastern Center?

By a Proclamation issued on May 9, Trump decreed May 11 to be Mother's Day: "NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 11, 2025, as Mother's Day." Nothing can occur in the country without being authorized by the Leader. In fact, Mother's Day has been a national holiday since 1914.

Monday, May 12

Jeanine Pirro is the 23rd former Fox employee appointed to the administration. Their skill is preaching to the faithful. Loyalty over competence is the criterion of Trump's recruitment. Because the loyalists compete for Trump's attention, the government frequently makes an impression of an uncoordinated chaos. But it also means that it leaves no stone unturned. Its attention to detail is impressive. They withdraw Global Entry permits from particular individuals, they make disappear climate data collected over decades, they act against specific programs at particular universities, they censor particular books. My general impression is that the administration has a detailed blueprint but it fumbles frequently implementing it. It has a program but not the cadre to implement it competently. This may mean that its animus will fizzle away but it also means that some of its random slashes are exceptionally destructive and perhaps irreversible. There was an article in the New York Review of Books some years ago pointing out that the people who were disloyal to Trump during his first administration were not the "deep state" but a "shallow" one: those he appointed to the top positions. Now, I think, those people are intensely loyal. I am wondering, however, how the competent people left over from the previous administration will act in a system in which the incentives are to be loyal. Will they be willing to act against their expertise or will they sabotage inane ideas? How solid is the "deep state" against the barrage of incompetent loyalists?

I have only a vague memory of having read a game-theoretic paper in which the government makes a large unpopular move, then goes back a part of the way, and gains popularity with its retreat. The assumption must be that people react only to most recent changes, to the "slopes" in mathematese. They do not compare their welfare under the original status quo with their welfare after the retreat, which is lower, but only to the improvement resulting from moderating steps. Such reactions do not appear rational but strangely this seems to be the way the stock market reacts to news about tariffs. If the public reacts the same way, Trump's retreat from some tariffs will increase his support.

Henry Farrell writing on DOGE on May 12 deserves being quoted verbatim: "Be aggressive, prizing speed over efficiency. Who cares if you make mistakes? You are not looking to achieve perfection, but victory! Aim to achieve complete domination, before your enemies can crush you. Take them by surprise, bypassing their defenses. Keep them perpetually on the back foot, as you move from one aggressive action to another, so that they are always reeling and off balance. Work with a small team, which is deliberately insulated from the bigger organization, and not accountable to it. That is, very much, the story of the last four months of DOGE. It hasn't succeeded in reshaping the federal government around its mission, and it almost certainly won't. But like the original blitzkrieg, it has absolutely created large scale devastation."

Tuesday, May 13

I have run out of steam. From time to time I wanted to abandon this Diary because following the news every day is depressing. Now I want to abandon it because I just cannot keep up. This is a tsunami. It floods everything indiscriminately. Every day some government agency or program is dismantled, some funds are cut, some institution or individual is targeted by a variety of sanctions, someone is arrested, an illiterate letter is sent by some Department Secretary, some scientific data accumulated over decades disappear. If it were not tragic, it would have been boring. But, worse, I can no longer contain my anger. I have been controlling my emotions because I believe that outrage blinds. Now I am frequently just outraged. I may post something if I think I have something to say but I can no longer keep the Diary on a daily basis. I am going to still do some research, watch La Dolce Vita, read novels, take walks, and follow soccer.

Given that I am about to quit, this is a time to collect my thoughts. As I see it now, there are three, roughly distinguished, possible prospects: (1) Trump will moderate and the animus will fizzle away because the MAGA crowd is incapable of governing effectively, (2) Trump will moderate because Republicans will lose the House in 2026 or even earlier because some House Republicans will fear losing in 2026, (3) Nothing will stop the MAGAs from doing whatever they want, including establishing a de facto dictatorship.

The question I have been repeatedly asking myself is how do we go about attaching probabilities to such outcomes. The "we" is obviously different for the political elite, economic elite, intellectual elite, and ordinary people. In Germany, the political elite incorrectly believed until February 1933 that they would control Hitler even if he were to become the Chancellor. The economic elite feared communists more than Nazis, so it rationally opted for Hitler even if it preferred an army dictatorship. The intellectual elite, in turn, kept changing its expectations very rapidly as the events unfolded. (There is a very good book about it, Uwe Wittsock, February 1933).

People with whom I interact divide. Some think that (1) is most likely, many that it is (2), while I think it is (3). Is there any way to resolve such disagreements? Do we differ only because of our psychological predispositions? Unprecedented events are unlikely by construction if one thinks inductively but if they occur it means that thinking inductively is misleading. We all had thought that a breakdown of democracy in the US is next-to-impossible, which is what the data say. The essence of the question, as I see it, is how one attaches expected utilities to unprecedented events. This is a twofold question: (1) How bad one expects the imaginable but unprecedented outcome to be? (2) How does one attach probabilities to unprecedented events? Note that answers to these questions have consequences for actions. Should one just wait, expecting the danger to fizzle away; should one engage in actions that may prevent it; should one prepare to emigrate, as did many Germans?

As I confessed earlier, my views are unstable. They change depending on who I interact with last. I often have a gnawing feeling that my pessimism is excessive. Perhaps the economic consequences of Trump's policies will be so disastrous that Republicans will suffer a defeat in 2026, so resounding that it will be impossible to avoid. This, I think, is the primary hope of MAGA opponents and it seems quite plausible. Mobilizing for it is crucial even if the state of the Democratic Party is dismaying. Still, my fear is that Trump will prevail in 2026 either because his base will remain solid or because of repression and fraud or both. And if Republicans retain the control of both Houses in the mid-term election, Trump will be liberated to do whatever he wants. So we will not know for eighteen months.