Donald J. Trump is the closest thing to Hitler America has yet produced.
He is the crisis. In becoming the primary object and fascination of the world, Trump has revealed both his character and that of everyone supporting him.
He is a racist. He is a fascist. He seeks dominion over the world only to seize its wealth for himself and his friends. His allies use power only as a tool against other religions, or other races, or against strawmen (and women) of their own devising. They beat the chains of their followers into swords.
We know this, now. In the summer of 2019, many believe there’s nothing to be done, that his final victory is inevitable. They see Democrats as feckless and divided. More important they see technology as Trump’s ally.
It’s this last point I come to challenge. While there are features in technology that assist any surveillance state, and the war of all against all, technology as an industry is the greatest boon to human liberty yet created.
The reason, as I’ve written here many times, is that human capital is now the gating factor to economic growth. It’s the human mind’s ability to conceive of new problems, and of ways to solve those problems, that delivers economic growth. Access to capital, and to other minds that might execute on plans, becomes a multiplying factor.
But first comes the idea. First comes the experiment. First comes science, and engineering. Later you need money, and marketing. All these things are maximized where human minds are free, where capital can choose its own home, and where people can choose their own leaders.
Capitalism. Democracy. Liberty. The more of these you have, within an ordered system, the more growth you have. It’s the need for order, for restraint, that has many people confused into thinking China’s rise at America’s expense is inevitable.
There are several ways to achieve order. You can impose it from above, as China does. You can share the burden, as democracies attempt to do. Or you can call order what it really is.
Tolerance.
To the degree that people tolerate their neighbors, civil order comes at the lowest possible cost. Cops, courts and prisons cost money. Troops cost money. The surveillance state costs money, and these costs are constantly increasing, because people are clever and know how to get over walls.
Tolerance has an immense economic value in a society built on technology. The only hope slaveholders of any stripe have of victory is to eliminate tolerance, to force the price of order so high that they can compete.
This is what Putinism is all about. This is what Trumpism is all about. By making intolerance a civic virtue, by encouraging the war of All Against All, by raising the level of fear so that their methods of control become economically tolerable, they really can win.
Thus, we have the daily campaign of fear. Fear the black man. He might rob you. Fear the women. They might remove their bodies from your control. Fear the immigrant. She might take your job. Fear your neighbor.
This was Hitler’s playbook as well. Hitler played it first against the nations that enforced the peace of Versailles. He turned Slavs into the equivalent of American Indians. Jews were the greatest threat, because their survival depended entirely on tolerance, on the niches of capitalism others wouldn’t sully their hands on, on the protections of democracy and liberty.
This is how empires are built, by the elect and only the elect. This principle worked well 200 years ago, when economic growth was defined by the products of farming. This principle even worked 100 years ago, when it was defined by the resources laying under the land. You can make people run machines, allowing only those few who created the machines entry into the elect.
But this doesn’t work with technology. Not really. You can imprison minds and get something out of them, while keeping everyone else away from the tools of growth. But you’ll be beaten, destroyed, and that right soon, by any society that maximizes its human capital and lets anyone play.
In Lincoln’s time, the last time this drama played out in America, manufacturing and railroads drove old Dixie down. These represented a better economic model than slavery. John Henry, that steel driving man, never stood a chance against the rail-driving machine.
In Hitler’s time, when this drama played out on the world stage, America was the “arsenal of democracy.” It was our united production capacity, safe behind twin seas, that destroyed the Axis Powers. This could be brought to bear quickly enough to make a difference because mass production technologies made it possible, and because Roosevelt was able to dramatically increase tolerance so that the muscles of otherwise marginalized groups could be brought to bear on the effort.
In today’s world, the forces of opposition can be marshaled in real time. In today’s world, moreover, the battle can be literally hidden from view.
I mean the war has already begun. World War III has been underway right under our noses for nearly a decade, and the medium you’re using right now is the battlefield. Security technology, both offensive and defensive, are weapons in this war. So is social media, with its ability to manipulate people for good and for ill.
There are many today who think that Trump and Putin have corralled all this power. They’re wrong. That’s because, as I’ve said, human capital is the gating factor. More precisely human minds are the gating factor.
Silicon Valley simply has both Trump and Putin outgunned. The Valley was stunned by the events of 2016. These represented a Pearl Harbor moment. Since then they have become increasingly engaged. They are engaged well below the surface, at hundreds of companies seeking to protect computer networks from intrusion and pro-actively detect threats from state and non-state actors. These technologies can be used against any state actors, even United States government actors. This is one front in the war.
The other front is here. It’s in the war of ideas, between tyranny and freedom, between the forces of Putinism-Trumpism and those of democracy and tolerance. Here you’ll find the public face of this war.
Trolls and bots are increasingly easy to detect, and isolate. The reach of this technology is increasingly global, meaning intelligent minds on every continent can be mobilized on behalf of tolerance, freedom and democracy.
Even where economies are nominally state-controlled, as in China, tech companies do have freedom of action. Managers at Alibaba, and Baidu, and at thousands of other companies must be given freedom of action, which means access to capital and the profits of that capital, the ability to freely roam across the universe of ideas. Every day, Xi Jinping’s control over his own society diminishes, kept in place only by the fact that Chinese people value order highly, having seen what disorder did to their parents and grandparents in the last century, and the benefits of order in this one.
The American Hitler doesn’t stand a chance. Technology demands freedom, it demands liberty, it demands access to human capital. Silicon Valley won’t let the country of its birth be imprisoned by either physical walls or firewalls.
