What the King of Hawaii Can Teach Us About Trump
A political fable from 1819.
To the ever-expanding literature of How to Explain Trump, I’d like to add a short little fable. It was first told 35 years ago by Alasdair MacIntyre, one of our greatest living philosophers, but it concerns an actual event that took place in the kingdom of Hawaii in 1819, many years before it was annexed by the United States. MacIntyre didn’t really intend it to be a story about politics, but I think it speaks to our political moment more directly than any op-ed you’ll read, because it’s a story about the rules we take for granted, and about what happens when those rules become hollow.
Once, in the kingdom of Hawaii, there was a set of unwritten rules—whose name English-speaking writers spelled “tabooâ€â€”that governed all kinds of everyday activities. One of them, for instance, forbade men and women from eating together; others forbade certain foods. In 1819, a new king, Kamehameha II, came to the throne and decided to do away with the taboos. The rules had held sway for longer than anyone could remember, and many predicted a tremendous backlash if the king went through with his plan. But Kamehameha was adamant: He declared that the taboos were abolished, and so they were.
And nothing else happened. That’s the story.
I can’t be the only one who has lost count of the democratic norms—the unwritten, informal, but hugely important rules that help us govern ourselves—that now seem to be gone with as little consequence as the taboos in the story. If you’re running for president, you don’t even raise the possibility that the election won’t count if you don’t win. You don’t threaten to throw your opponent in jail if you do win. If you change your mind about throwing your opponent in jail, you don’t explain it as an act of mercy, because that’s not how the rule of law works. If you’re running for president, and especially if you get elected, you release your tax returns, so voters can know that you’re not financially compromised by foreign governments, or by corporations seeking to do business with the United States. You put your assets in a blind trust, so you never confuse your self-interest with the public interest. You don’t accuse millions of Americans of voter fraud without evidence. You don’t compromise civilian control of the armed forces. You don’t let your team threaten to lock up journalists who investigate you.
You don’t do those things, until, one day, you do. The only thing holding you back in most cases is the force of custom, and there are times and places—Hawaii in 1819, or America in 2016—when custom is so weak that it’s no force at all.
Of course, Donald Trump didn’t need to be a political genius to realize that norms like these were historically weak. He only needed to watch the news. In just the last eight years, we’ve watched the unthinkable become the debatable and then the unexceptionable. We’ve seen President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee denied even a hearing for nearly a year, and we’ve seen his other nominees blockaded at an historic rate. We’ve seen real, live U.S. senators promise that no justice nominated by a Democratic president would ever be confirmed. We’ve seen credible threats to default on the national debt. We’ve seen the president’s budget director denied even the right to propose a budget to Congress. We’ve seen the president expand executive power in response to all of this, in a way that’s troubling even to some liberals. We’ve seen the Senate filibuster go from rare to routine—and watched Senate Democrats retaliate by partially nuking the filibuster. It was laughable when a member of Congress interrupted the State of the Union to call the president a liar—until a movement calling the president a liar about his birthplace launched his successor to power.
In the end, we have seen all of it work.
A political fable from 1819.
To the ever-expanding literature of How to Explain Trump, I’d like to add a short little fable. It was first told 35 years ago by Alasdair MacIntyre, one of our greatest living philosophers, but it concerns an actual event that took place in the kingdom of Hawaii in 1819, many years before it was annexed by the United States. MacIntyre didn’t really intend it to be a story about politics, but I think it speaks to our political moment more directly than any op-ed you’ll read, because it’s a story about the rules we take for granted, and about what happens when those rules become hollow.
Once, in the kingdom of Hawaii, there was a set of unwritten rules—whose name English-speaking writers spelled “tabooâ€â€”that governed all kinds of everyday activities. One of them, for instance, forbade men and women from eating together; others forbade certain foods. In 1819, a new king, Kamehameha II, came to the throne and decided to do away with the taboos. The rules had held sway for longer than anyone could remember, and many predicted a tremendous backlash if the king went through with his plan. But Kamehameha was adamant: He declared that the taboos were abolished, and so they were.
And nothing else happened. That’s the story.
I can’t be the only one who has lost count of the democratic norms—the unwritten, informal, but hugely important rules that help us govern ourselves—that now seem to be gone with as little consequence as the taboos in the story. If you’re running for president, you don’t even raise the possibility that the election won’t count if you don’t win. You don’t threaten to throw your opponent in jail if you do win. If you change your mind about throwing your opponent in jail, you don’t explain it as an act of mercy, because that’s not how the rule of law works. If you’re running for president, and especially if you get elected, you release your tax returns, so voters can know that you’re not financially compromised by foreign governments, or by corporations seeking to do business with the United States. You put your assets in a blind trust, so you never confuse your self-interest with the public interest. You don’t accuse millions of Americans of voter fraud without evidence. You don’t compromise civilian control of the armed forces. You don’t let your team threaten to lock up journalists who investigate you.
You don’t do those things, until, one day, you do. The only thing holding you back in most cases is the force of custom, and there are times and places—Hawaii in 1819, or America in 2016—when custom is so weak that it’s no force at all.
Of course, Donald Trump didn’t need to be a political genius to realize that norms like these were historically weak. He only needed to watch the news. In just the last eight years, we’ve watched the unthinkable become the debatable and then the unexceptionable. We’ve seen President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee denied even a hearing for nearly a year, and we’ve seen his other nominees blockaded at an historic rate. We’ve seen real, live U.S. senators promise that no justice nominated by a Democratic president would ever be confirmed. We’ve seen credible threats to default on the national debt. We’ve seen the president’s budget director denied even the right to propose a budget to Congress. We’ve seen the president expand executive power in response to all of this, in a way that’s troubling even to some liberals. We’ve seen the Senate filibuster go from rare to routine—and watched Senate Democrats retaliate by partially nuking the filibuster. It was laughable when a member of Congress interrupted the State of the Union to call the president a liar—until a movement calling the president a liar about his birthplace launched his successor to power.
In the end, we have seen all of it work.
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