特朗普與美國民主的命運

On Human Rights Day last month, Donald Trump’s White House issued a statement in support of those suffering under the “yolk” of authoritarianism. Cue the inevitable puns about egg on White House faces. Amid a constant stream of Trumpian typos, this ranked among the best. It captured the indolence of an understaffed presidency that is barely going through the motions. Details are revealing. But you do not need to be a copy-editor to know that Trump cares little about human rights. The error captured the span of Trump’s persona — entertaining and chilling at the same time.

在上月的人權日，唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)領導下的白宮發表聲明支持在威權主義“蛋黃”(yolk)下受苦的人。這讓人不可避免地想到有關雞蛋砸在白宮臉上的雙關語。在特朗普頻頻出現拼寫錯誤的情況下，這已經算得上最佳句子之列了。它反映出人手不足的特朗普政府的懈怠，他們只是在得過且過地混日子。細節說明問題。但你不需要成爲文字編輯就可以知道特朗普並不關心人權問題。這次錯誤體現了特朗普性格特點的跨度——既充滿娛樂性又令人不寒而慄。

The same applies to Michael Wolff’s controversial book about Trump, Fire and Fury. The furore around it has already ended Trump’s alliance with Steve Bannon, his alt-right alter-ego, who is also Wolff’s biggest source. On Tuesday Bannon quit his job as head of Breitbart News, having lost the confidence of his financial backers. He is surely now regretting having spoken so candidly to the author. Wolff may or may not deserve his reputation as a chancer — a journalist who allegedly disrespects the meaning of “off the record” and embellishes reconstructed scenes. I do not know him personally. But having conducted my own off-the-record conversations with Bannon and others, I find his book to be largely credible.

邁克爾?沃爾夫(Michael Wolff)所著關於特朗普的充滿爭議的《火與怒：特朗普白宮內幕》(Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House)一書也是如此。該書引發的軒然大波已經讓特朗普與其盟友兼知己、另類右翼的史蒂夫?班農(Steve Bannon)決裂，後者也是沃爾夫最大的信息來源。上週二，班農辭去Breitbart News執行主席一職，因爲他的金主對他失去了信心。他現在肯定很後悔對沃爾夫如此坦言。沃爾夫作爲投機者的名聲可能名副其實，也可能名不副實——他是一名據說無視“不得引用發表”的意思、喜歡渲染再現場景的記者。我個人不認識沃爾夫，但我自己與班農等人進行過“不得引用發表”的交談，我覺得他的書基本上是可信的。

He paints a White House in which virtually no one has any respect left for the president and where the staff are in “a state of queasy sheepishness, if not constant incredulity”. Both Reince Priebus, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, and Steven Mnuchin, his Treasury secretary, are quoted as calling the president an “idiot”. Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, reportedly describes him as “dumb as shit”. We already knew that Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, thinks the president is a “f***ing moron”. For good measure, Rupert Murdoch, whose approval Trump craves, apparently called him a “f***ing idiot”. I doubt it needs spelling out but this is not a suitable book for family reading. Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump is “dumb as a brick”, according to Bannon, while Donald Trump Junior is “Fredo” — the low-IQ sibling in the movie The Godfather. But where is Don Corleone? In his bedroom on the phone complaining to his friends, it seems.

他刻畫了一個幾乎沒有人尊重總統的白宮，而且那裏的工作人員處於一種“令人厭煩的不安狀態，甚至是持續的懷疑狀態”。據說特朗普前白宮幕僚長雷恩斯?普里巴斯(Reince Priebus)及財政部長史蒂文?姆努欽(Steven Mnuchin)都稱他爲“白癡”。據報道，特朗普的首席經濟顧問加里?科恩(Gary Cohn)形容他“蠢得像屎”。我們已經知道，國務卿雷克斯?蒂勒森(Rex Tillerson)認爲總統是“他媽的蠢蛋”。另外，魯珀特?默多克(Rupert Murdoch)顯然把他稱爲“他媽的白癡”，而特朗普是那麼希望獲得默多克的認可。我不確定是不是要說得這麼直白，不過它不是一本適合家庭閱讀的圖書。與此同時，據班農說，伊萬卡?特朗普(Ivanka Trump)“蠢得像磚頭”，而小唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump Jr)則是電影《教父》(The Godfather)中的低智商哥哥“弗雷多”(Fredo)。但唐?科萊奧內（Don Corleone，即教父——譯者注）在哪兒呢？他似乎是在臥室裏向朋友們打電話抱怨。

Axios, the email-based newsletter, revealed last week that Trump is cutting his office hours ever shorter. He now only emerges for appointments at around 11am — two hours later than when he started the job. He often concludes his lightly scheduled routine before 6pm then retires to the presidential apartment upstairs. There he is surrounded by three giant flatscreen televisions and likes to order a cheeseburger, make “self-pitying calls to friends” and send tweets, says Wolff. John Kelly, the retired general and White House chief of staff, whom Wolff claims can barely conceal his distaste for the president, has professionalised Trump’s Oval Office day. People can no longer wander in and out at will. Trump’s response has been to curtail the hours that Kelly controls.

基於電子郵件的新聞通訊網站Axios近期透露，特朗普正在日益縮短辦公時間。他現在在上午11點左右才現身辦公——比他剛上臺的時候晚了兩個小時。沃爾夫說，他經常在下午6點之前結束一天的輕鬆日程，然後到樓上的總統套房休息。他在樓上被三臺巨大的平板電視環繞，喜歡點上一個芝士漢堡，“自怨自艾地給朋友打上一通電話”，併發送推文。退休將軍、白宮幕僚長約翰?凱利(John Kelly)規範了特朗普橢圓形辦公室的工作流程——據沃爾夫說，凱利幾乎不能掩飾自己對總統的厭惡。人們不再能隨意進出。特朗普的迴應是縮短凱利控制的時間。

The journalist Joe Scarborough asked Trump whom he most trusted, according to Wolff: “The answer is me,” said Trump. “I talk to myself.” For those around him, it is a losing battle. Trump will always win. It is “like trying to figure out what a child wants,” says Katie Walsh, a former White House official who left last year (though she has disputed some of Wolff’s quotes).

據沃爾夫稱，記者喬?斯卡伯勒(Joe Scarborough)曾問特朗普最信任誰？特朗普說：“答案是我。我和自己說話。”對他身邊的人來說，這是一場必輸的戰鬥。特朗普總是會贏。去年離職的白宮官員凱蒂?沃爾什(Katie Walsh)表示，“這就像試圖弄清楚一個孩子想要什麼一樣”（儘管她對沃爾夫的一些引述有所質疑）。

Doubtless some of Wolff’s examples are cherry-picked. There must be occasions where Trump uses a grammatically correct sentence, or reads a briefing sheet to the end. There are surely some officials who retain loyalty to their president. But the spirit of Wolff’s narrative rings true amid suspicion over some of the details. In one quoted email purporting to represent the views of Gary Cohn, Trump’s White House is cruelly depicted as “an idiot surrounded by clowns”. The truth is that the Trump administration has no Don Corleone. Yet in spite of lacking a respected authority figure, the show is likely to go on. To work out why, readers should turn to David Frum’s Trumpocracy and How Democracies Die, a slim volume by two Harvard academics, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

毫無疑問，沃爾夫舉的一些例子是精心挑選的。特朗普肯定有使用語法正確的句子或者一直讀完簡報的時候。肯定有一些官員仍然忠於他們的總統。雖然一些細節令人懷疑，但沃爾夫敘事的基調聽來真實可靠。在一封據稱代表蓋瑞?柯恩(Gary Cohn)觀點的引用電子郵件中，特朗普領導的白宮被無情地描繪成“一個白癡被一羣小丑包圍”。真相是，特朗普政府沒有“教父”。然而，儘管缺乏受人尊敬的權威人物，表演很可能仍會繼續。要想弄清原因，讀者應該去看看戴維?弗拉姆(David Frum)的《特朗普統治：美國共和國的腐敗》(Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic)，以及哈佛學者史蒂文?列維茨基(Steven Levitsky)和丹尼爾?齊布拉特(Daniel Ziblatt)合著的小篇幅著作《民主制度如何死亡》(How Democracies Die)。

Frum, a former speech writer to George W Bush and one of the most articulate “Never Trumpers”, asks how a man like Trump could have reached high office in the first place. One answer is that Trump does possess real skills. Among these is an almost diabolical knack for divining other people’s resentments — perhaps because he is riddled with so many of his own. Trump often tries out different applause lines at rallies and sticks with the ones that resonate. Such market testing appears to work. He has an ability to identify with people who feel slighted. Wolff describes how on a tour of Atlantic City with foreign investors many years ago, Trump was asked to define “white trash”. He replied: “They’re people just like me, only they’re poor.” Trump converted their frustrations into electoral gold.

曾在小布什(George W Bush)政府擔任發言稿作者的弗拉姆是最旗幟鮮明地表達“永遠不要特朗普”(Never Trump)的人之一。弗拉姆發問，特朗普這樣的人到底是如何當上總統的？一個答案是，特朗普確實有兩把刷子。比如，特朗普幾乎可以像魔鬼一樣感知他人的憤怒——可能是因爲他本人也充滿了這種情緒。特朗普經常在集會上試用不同的“金句”來博得掌聲，然後一直使用那些能夠奏效的語句。這種市場測試法看起來是有效的。特朗普還擅長與那些覺得自己被輕視的人羣建立聯繫。據沃爾夫描述，多年前特朗普陪同外國投資者參觀大西洋城時，有人問他“白種垃圾”是什麼意思。當時特朗普回答：“他們就像我一樣，只不過他們很窮。”特朗普把這些人的挫敗感轉變成了自己的選舉資本。

Much of their plight is real. Between the late 1990s and 2015, according to Frum, non-college-educated white Americans went from 30 per cent less likely to 30 per cent more likely to die in their fifties than non-college-educated African-Americans. White males account for just under a third of America’s population but over two-thirds of its suicides. Yet white working-class America’s collapsing morale has been downplayed by mainstream society. In the year leading up to Trump’s election victory, the word “transgender” appeared in The New York Times 1,169 times. The word “opioid” appeared just 284 times.

這些人的困窘是實實在在的。根據弗拉姆提供的數字，在上世紀90年代末，與未接受過大學教育的非裔美國人相比，未接受過大學教育的美國白人在五十多歲死亡的風險要低30%；然而到了2015年，他們的風險要高30%。男性白人佔美國人口總數的比例略低於三分之一，卻佔美國自殺人口的逾三分之二。然而美國白人工薪階級頹喪的精神狀態卻被主流社會輕描淡寫地帶過。在特朗普贏得大選的那年，“變性人”一詞在《紐約時報》(New York Times)出現了1169次。而“鴉片類物質”一詞纔出現了284次。

Now picture Trump in his tweet on December 25 2016, standing in front of a Christmas tree with his fist clenched in defiance; “We’ll all be saying Merry Christmas again!” had been the refrain. That image captured the rage against political correctness that fuelled his campaign. It also expressed the mythology. No American was banned from saying “Merry Christmas”. But people started to repeat Trump’s line. They are still doing so. As the writer Dale Beran, quoted by Frum, puts it: “Trump supporters voted for the con-man, the labyrinth with no centre, because the labyrinth with no centre is how they feel.”

想一想特朗普在2016年12月25日發的推文中的形象：他站在聖誕樹前攥緊拳頭，擺出一副反抗的姿態；再彈起“我們大家又能說聖誕快樂了！”這樣的老調。這樣的形象表達出對政治正確的怒火，而這怒火正是他競選的“東風”。這個形象也傳達了一種謬誤。實際上沒有哪個美國人被禁止說“聖誕快樂”，但人們卻開始重複特朗普的口號。到今天依舊如此。就像弗拉姆引用作家戴爾?貝蘭(Dale Beran)的話：“特朗普的支持者把票投給了騙子，投給了沒有中心的迷宮，因爲沒有中心的迷宮就是他們的感受。”

Trumpocracy is a far more rewarding book than Fire and Fury. The significance of Trump’s administration goes so much deeper than Wolff’s “idiot and clown” account. Trump’s fate will shape the future of liberal democracy. That is what makes it so alarming. As Frum points out: “Democracy is a work in progress. So is democracy’s undoing.” All it takes is for good men, and women, to do nothing. Just over a third of Republican senators called on Trump to quit the race after the Access Hollywood tapes were released in October 2016. He ignored them. Thirty-two minutes after the “pussy-grabbing” transcript came out, WikiLeaks dumped its largest cache of Hillary Clinton emails to date, including those of John Podesta, her campaign manager. Most of those Republican senators are now firmly behind Trump. Roughly half of the conservative intellectuals who signed the famous “Never Trump” letter published by the National Review during the campaign have now fallen into line behind Trump.

《特朗普統治》比《火與怒》更值得一讀。特朗普政府的影響要遠比沃爾夫所說的“白癡與小丑”深刻。特朗普的命運也將決定自由民主制度的未來。這正是可怕的地方。就像弗拉姆指出的那樣：“民主是一項正在進行的工作。民主的失敗也是如此。”要使民主失敗，只需要好人的不作爲。2016年10月，《走進好萊塢》(Access Hollywood)的一段錄音曝出後，僅有略多於三分之一的共和黨參議員呼籲特朗普退出競選。特朗普無視了他們。“抓私處”那段錄音的文字稿曝光後32分鐘，維基解密(WikiLeak)就對希拉里?克林頓(Hillary Clinton)的郵件進行了到那時爲止最大的一次披露，其中包括希拉里競選團隊主席約翰?波德斯塔(John Podesta)的郵件。現在，那些之前呼籲特朗普退選的共和黨參議員中，大部分人堅定地站在了特朗普的身後。在大選期間，曾在《國家評論》(National Review)發表的著名的“永遠不要特朗普”公開信上簽名的保守派知識分子，有大約一半人加入了特朗普的行列。

Trump’s inauguration committee raised $107m — twice the previous record — with donations from financiers who had previously shunned Trump. Paul Singer, the “Never Trump” hedge fund billionaire, donated $1m. In the first four months of 2017, the Trump International Hotel in Washington took in $4.1m more in revenues than projected at a time when other hotels’ occupancy rates were flat or declining. Meanwhile, senior Republican figures such as Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, now routinely sing Trump’s praises. The party’s gatekeepers have decided to swallow their doubts. “It is their public actions, despite their private qualms, that sustain Trumpocracy,” writes Frum.

特朗普的就職委員會從之前回避特朗普的金融家手中籌集了1.07億美元的捐款，這是之前紀錄的兩倍。曾支持“永遠不要特朗普”運動的對衝基金億萬富翁保羅?辛格(Paul Singer)捐了100萬美元。2017年前四個月，位於華盛頓的特朗普國際酒店(Trump International Hotel)的收入比預期高410萬美元，而同期其他酒店入住率持平或下降。與此同時，像衆議院議長保羅?瑞恩(Paul Ryan)這樣的共和黨資深人物也開始例行公事地對特朗普大唱讚歌。黨內的看門人也決定把質疑咽回肚子裏。“儘管他們私下裏有顧慮，但正是他們的公開行動，維繫了特朗普統治。”弗拉姆寫道。

Where does it go from here? The great strength of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is that it rejects the exceptionalist account of US democracy. Their lens is comparative. The authors say America is not immune to the trends that have led to democracy’s collapse in other parts of the world. “Even though we know democracies are always fragile, the one in which we live has somehow managed to defy gravity,” they write. “Our constitutional system, while older and more robust than any in history, is vulnerable to the same pathologies that have killed democracy elsewhere.”

“特朗普統治”何去何從？列維茨基和齊布拉特所著的《民主制度如何死亡》的出色之處在於，該書擯棄了認爲美國民主制例外的說法。他們採用了對比的方法。兩位作者認爲，美國無法避開導致世界其他地區民主制度崩潰的趨勢。“儘管我們知道民主制度總是很脆弱，但我們所生活的這個民主國家過去卻一直以某種方式成功避免崩潰，”他們寫道，“我們的憲法體系雖然比歷史上任何其他憲法體系都古老和強大，但它也會患上殺死其他地方民主制度的疾病。”

Since the turn of this century, according to the Stanford scholar Larry Diamond, no fewer than 25 countries have ceased to be democratic. In almost all cases this happened by stealth within an existing system that retained outwardly democratic trappings. Think of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey or Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Gone are the days of military coups. During the cold war, coups d’état accounted for three-quarters of democratic breakdowns. Today they barely feature. “The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy — gradually, subtly, and even legally — to kill it,” they write.

斯坦福大學(Stanford University)的學者拉里?戴蒙德(Larry Diamond)認爲，自從進入本世紀以來，至少25個國家不再實行民主制度。幾乎所有案例都是在仍然保留民主外殼的現有體制中悄然發生的。想一想雷傑普?塔伊普?埃爾多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)領導的土耳其或者歐爾班?維克托(Viktor Orban)領導的匈牙利。軍事政變的時代已經一去不復返。在冷戰時期，政變導致了四分之三的民主垮臺事件。如今政變幾乎毫無蹤影。他們寫道：“從選舉走向威權主義的可悲悖論在於，刺殺民主的刺客正是利用民主制度——循序漸進、隱祕、甚至合法地——殺死它。”

They set out four tests for whether a democracy is in danger. Trump fulfils them all. The first is when an elected leader rejects the democratic rules of the game. Trump more than meets this test. Campaigning against Hillary Clinton in 2016, he threatened to “lock her up” and said the poll would be “rigged”. Since then he has alleged electoral fraud and repeatedly vowed to use the vast law enforcement powers at his disposal to investigate the defeated Democratic candidate. The second test is whether the leader rejects the legitimacy of his opponents. Ditto. The third is whether he tolerates or encourages violence. During the campaign he encouraged supporters to beat up protesters and even defray their legal costs. Since becoming president, he has goaded law enforcement officers to beat up immigrants and other arrestees. The final one is whether the leader is willing to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media. Trump almost daily accuses the media of bias and threatens them with libel action. It took Trump’s lawyers less than 48 hours to issue a “cease and desist” threat to Wolff’s publishers.

他們進行了4項測試，來檢驗民主制度目前是否處於危險之中。特朗普全都符合。第一項是，民選領導人是否拒絕遵守競選的民主規則。特朗普符合得不能再符合了。2016年與希拉里競爭時，特朗普威脅要“把她關起來”並稱民調結果將被“操縱”。從那之後，他一直宣稱選舉舞弊並再三發誓要利用他手中強大的執法權來調查那位被打敗的民主黨候選人。第二項測試是，這位領導人是否拒絕承認其對手的合法性。同上。第三項是，他是否容忍或鼓勵暴力行爲。在競選期間，他鼓勵支持者毆打抗議者，甚至爲他們支付法律費用。自從就任總統後，他鼓勵執法人員毆打移民和其他被捕者。最後一項是，領導人是否願意剝奪反對者（包括媒體在內）的公民自由。特朗普幾乎每天都指責媒體對其有偏見並以誹謗訴訟來威脅他們。特朗普的律師用了不到48小時就對沃爾夫的出版方提出“停止並終止”威脅。

As these authors diligently show, and Frum eloquently argues, democracy is based on norms rather than rules. The system is only as good as the people who uphold it. Plenty of Latin American democracies adopted the US constitution almost word for word. It offered them little protection against the depredations of strongmen. According to Wolff, Trump does not even understand the basics of the US Constitution. An aide who was asked to explain it to him stopped after the Fourth Amendment — Trump’s mind had wandered elsewhere. The only people who hold real sway in his White House are his “shamelessly grasping extended family,” says Frum.

正如這些作者極力表明、以及弗拉姆以雄辯說明的那樣，民主制度的基礎是規範、而不是規則。民主制度的好壞只會和擁護者的水平一致。很多拉美民主國家幾乎一字不差地照搬了美國憲法。但面對政治強人的蹂躪，這根本沒有爲他們提供多少保護。沃爾夫認爲，特朗普甚至不理解美國憲法的基本內容。被請來向他解釋美國憲法的助手在說完《第四修正案》(Fourth Amendment)後就停下來了——特朗普早已神遊到別的地方。弗拉姆表示，在白宮內唯一真正有支配力的人是他“貪婪無恥的大家庭”。

That may be true. But American democracy’s ultimate arbiters are those on Capitol Hill, in the federal bureaucracy, in the media and elsewhere who have the power to block or enable him. Whether Trump’s White House heralds a new phase in American politics — or a grotesque aberration — is in the hands of those whose names we may not know. Above all else, the secret sauce of democracy is the integrity of people.

這可能是事實。但是美國民主制度的最終裁決者是國會議員、聯邦機構官員、媒體以及其他有能力阻止或支持他的人。特朗普執掌的白宮是否宣告美國政治進入新階段——或是進入荒誕的偏差——答案掌握在那些我們可能從未聽過的人的手中。最重要的是，民主的祕訣是人民團結。