Right-thinking people like you and me (for neither of us believes we’re wrong-thinking) pride themselves on having open minds. Not for us the iron grip of ideology or slavish conformity to dogma. But how open are our minds, really? Aren’t there any number of things we wouldn’t even countenance being true?
If you’re genuinely committed to avoiding a closed mind, you need to take seriously the possibility that you might be wrong about something so blindingly obvious to you that even doubting it is hard work. For me, one such verity is that the Trump presidency is a disaster for America and the world. So I need to ask myself: what if Trump is right?
Even to ask this question here assumes that most who read this would immediately find the idea as implausible as I did. I suspect most of us struggle to envisage anyone vaguely sensible disagreeing with many of our strongest beliefs. What a lack of imagination this shows! Intelligent people can believe almost anything. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there’s at least one Mensa member who thinks Elvis is on the moon.
(If you are a Trump supporter, you’re very welcome, and allow yourself a chuckle that the rest of us say we like to be challenged but don’t hang out where challenging ideas are most likely to be found. Keep reading and try to apply the way of questioning I describe to your own cherished political beliefs.)
To get started, we need to ask what it would mean for Trump to be right. To do this we have to separate the normative and descriptive, the facts and the values. When we argue with political opponents, we usually don’t do this. In Iran, for example, Trump’s opponents tend to think his actions are morally wrong and doomed to fail. But it is very naive to believe that good always prevails and the wicked always lose. To ask if Trump is right is to ask two questions: is he morally right and is he right to think what he is doing will achieve his aims?
Iran is the worst place to start for this since even many of his backers think this war of choice was a terrible mistake. However, let’s grant that no political leader gets everything right and set Iran side. If Trump is right then America will be great again — meaning for him that its economy will be thriving, jobs will be plentiful, wages high, immigration low and it won’t be stuck in forever wars outside its borders. (Note that according to Vice President JD Vance, America is not at war with Iran.)
Put like this, is it really inconceivable that the MAGA movement will get what it wants? I’m not asking you to think it’s likely. There are many reasons to think that Trump will not prevail even on his own terms. But should you or I be so confident in our assessments of how economies and politics work to be sure that he won’t? So far, for example, the American economy has been performing pretty well, and although many experts argue it would have done even better without the tariffs, no one knows. And Trump has pretty much closed the southern border, completing a task Joe Biden started.
What this means for the rest of the world isn’t clear but for Trump that doesn’t really matter. If Europe declines and Africa’s economic development is stymied, for example, that’s the fault of those continents for not getting their own houses in order. I think the most likely global consequences of Trump prevailing would seem to be the end of the rules based order (not that it was ever as ruled-based as it was supposed to be) and the rise of regional powers with their spheres of influence. In such a scenario, “peace” in Palestine would be achieved by the ethnic cleansing of its Arab population, several of Russia’s neighbours will have their dreams of true independence shattered and we could say goodbye to any prospect of China becoming a freer, more democratic nation. Much of this is abhorrent to many of us and it doesn’t look good for the smaller countries in the big powers’ shadows. But from a Trumpian perspective it would be a stabler world order than the one we have witnessed since the Second World War. For example, better for him an Afghanistan that is not exporting jihad and has no freedom for women than one which is a constant foreign policy headache requiring the resources of the US military and the loss of soldiers’ lives. Trading with anyone and everyone irrespective of pesky details like their human rights records is also great for business.
For me, the main purpose of contemplating that Trump will succeed is not to weaken our belief that he won’t. Rather, it focuses the mind on the most fundamental objections to the Trump project. Some political disagreement is just technocratic, concerned with what works and what doesn’t. But much is ethical, concerned with what kind of country and world we want to live in. Opponents of Trump need to keep a laser-like focus on this. The primary argument against him is not that he won’t succeed but that if he does, we will live in a darker world, one which is more xenophobic, more authoritarian, less free for women and anyone who is not heterosexual. It would be one with a mercantile world order, where the only thing that matters in foreign policy is favourable trade terms.
Such a world could be richer, more stable and even less war-torn. So to make the case against Trump, you have to show why this would not be a good outcome, and that is not obvious. I think it would be a nastier world in which our higher values had been set aside, replaced by purely material ones. However, not everyone sees it that way. To make the case requires a discussion about values in which sensible people could take different sides. That’s the debate that has to be won, if the populist politics of Trump and his many global peers is to be defeated. Talking about why it just won’t work is easier, but it dodges what is at the heart of our disagreements. In other words, we need to take seriously the possibility that Trump is right in order to show why he is wrong.