Arpaio, briefly
Some brief thoughts on Trump’s pardon of Sheriff Arpaio, written mostly for myself as an exercise in honesty. Since I wrote this in a single sitting and didn’t edit, it’s probably pretty disjointed. This is my view at the moment; by tomorrow it might be completely different.
I. In the heat of the moment

An obvious tendency of basically any human being with any political convictions whatsoever is to avoid remarking on events which tell against their beliefs or threaten their identity.
I’m certainly no exception to this; several instances in both recent and distant memory come to mind when events challenged what I thought to be the proper view of the world, and usually I simply let them pass unremarked — even when I felt somewhat compelled to think about them, I never made my thoughts known.
I think I can attribute this to several things, some good and some shifty at best:
- I didn’t want to give “aid and comfort” to the opposing ideas;
- I needed time to think through my views of these events, and by the time I had an opinion of some definable shape, the moment had passed;
- It was simply unpleasant to think about these things.
Of course, this is burying my head in the sand to some extent. But it is quite difficult to do otherwise, and even figuring out what should be done is not trivial.
I know a lot of people who believe that one should simply dispassionately accept whatever conclusions are reached by argument, even if none of them have the mental fortitude to actually go through it (some of them are honest enough to admit this). Nevertheless, aside from the fact that this is literally inhuman, I don’t think it’s even the proper response. Ironically, I came to this conclusion after reading this very persuasive argument by Scott Alexander.
[It is of course very frustrating for any of us who like debate when we give an argument that our “opponent” (scare-quotes since these are not formal debates) clearly cannot refute, and yet they refuse to accept the conclusions. But it makes good sense that people should behave this way; it should take much longer than a single day to produce a fundamental shift in anybody’s attitude (on the other hand, I don’t think I can defend it taking ten years of obvious and total wrongness to change my mind on Marxism).]
So I’m writing this now, without fully pinning down my opinions on the matter, before the moment passes.
II. My view of Arpaio

So what do I think of Arpaio? Basically the exact same thing I think of Rodrigo Duterte.
We can start off with the bad: Arpaio is clearly a serial abuser of power, quite unconcerned about the lives his policies will destroy, is a cheater (allegedly staging an assassination attempt against himself), and has a vicious brutal streak in him (above and beyond any brutality that is justified by circumstances), and possibly a racist (of the “David Duke” sense, which is the only definition which I find to be proper, see here for an explanation why).*
[I say “possibly” a racist because accusations of “racism” are so ubiquitous and thrown about with such carelessness that usually I just ignore them. However, for Arpaio I make an exception and do seriously consider it a possibility.]
If I were any of my friends (one or two excepted), that would be the end of it — Arpaio is an evil man, full stop, and any pardon of him is indefensible, confirms that Trump is also a racist, etc. This view is quite appealing in that it is neatly self-contained and wraps everything up with a little bow.
The problem is that this view is almost certainly wrong, and becomes completely two-faced when we consider that Arpaio is quite popular in his home county. “They’re just all racists down there!” is a common enough retort, but its ugly quality becomes apparent when we break it down into its components: (1) only a vile populace could elect a vile person like Arpaio; and (2) I, comfortable person in [blue state], understand better what makes a proper sheriff for Maricopa County than the people who live there. Both of these components are contemptible.
The awfulness of (1) can be seen by the standard view of President Rodrigo Duterte, which is that most people don’t even think about him despite the fact that the Philippines is undergoing one of the most radical experiments in drug control in history. They don’t think about him because to do so would be to admit that the Philippine people elected him, which implies either (a) Filipinos are a bunch of bad eggs, unacceptable to anyone with any sense, especially an “anti-racist” (who can permit himself to believe that white people from Arizona are evil, but not Filipinos), or (b) good people can sometimes support someone like Duterte if the circumstances are correct, which would imply that maybe Arpaio was popular because there were real problems, again unacceptable to the average right-thinking liberal.
[Another implication of course is that one must admit that Hitler too was elected by human beings and not vampires, which ranks as the most painful personal change of opinion I’ve ever had to make, even more than renouncing Marxism.]
(2) of course is just arrogance, plain and simple.
Considering Duterte, the conclusion I’ve drawn is that the drug problem must be insanely bad there, that someone who promised to simply start killing dealers and addicts in the street was considered a serious candidate and went on to actually win the election. Whether or not I believe in the proposed solution, my impression is that there is a real problem requiring a real solution.
And so the same with Arpaio; whether or not I believe he is rotten (to a large extent I do), his popularity suggests that he is the only one who is trying to fix a real problem.
III. On the pardon

As I mentioned, I haven’t had the time to fully pin down my view of this. However, I have a few very brief thoughts.
- This lowers my opinion of Donald Trump (who I was never very fond of to begin with). Arpaio seems to have clearly abused his power, and whatever you think of illegal immigration**, abuses of power are extremely damaging — and so letting him get away with it is also a bad sign.
- My previous belief, that Trump would work in above-board ways (in general), is challenged strongly. This isn’t proof of underhanded tactics are being used or going to be used; but it does send a disquieting signal.
- However, I don’t think this is “indefensible”, for precisely the same reason that I felt that probably Maricopa County had some real grievances with how the border was being controlled. People like Arpaio or Duterte don’t get popular, especially in the face of gigantic negative press coverage, ex nihilo.
- It does somewhat relieve my unease with the departure of Bannon, who is flawed (like all members of this administration) but was the clear representative of the anti-globalist pro-American stance of the administration (as opposed to Kushner, who still creeps me out a bit). Like a lot of his campaign rhetoric, the pardon functions as a clear signal that Trump has not yet been completely captured by the university-sponsored transnationalists’ agenda.
- Anyone who truly believes in the “Drain the Swamp” rhetoric should welcome this. Arpaio earned both his popularity and vilification from his repeated defiance of “the Swamp”. Personally, while I am quite disgusted with a lot of “the Swamp”, I think a lot of it exists for real reasons and any truly “revolutionary” action against it frightens me. Chesterton’s Fence applies just as much to Trump as it does to the academics who for a century or more have been fighting to radically change the nature of American society.
- I haven’t heard or seen nearly as much discussion of this as I’d have expected to. I’m not sure what to make of this.
In short, to me this is a mild but very clearly negative move, with the toleration of abuse of power being the most obvious problem. While abuse of power can be defended by invoking the obvious fact that the left wing also clearly engages in power abuses, I’m very uneasy about this whole stance. If the United States is gearing up towards a civil war, as the extremists on both sides seem to think it is, then I am wrong. But if there remains time to halt the acceleration of extremist views, then this is a poor development. In almost every way I would have preferred that Bannon stay on and Arpaio not be pardoned; this would signal a break with globalism and the academic elite without the accompanying message condoning extralegal tactics.
[ONE DAY LATER: Having read a bit more, I find that Arpaio’s abuses of power, unconcern for the safety of those who he is responsible for, and gratuitous brutal streak are probably worse that I initially thought. I therefore retract the word “mild” from the previous paragraph. My assessment that keeping Bannon and not pardoning Arpaio would have been much preferable is strengthened. Pardoning Arpaio somewhat undoes the damage from Bannon’s departure by signaling continued defiance by Trump against the academic set; but it adds much worse damage elsewhere. Otherwise, no change in my view.]
Footnotes
* We can cross “cheater” and “racist” off for Duterte, I think.
** Back when I was still more or less a standard progressive (but already showing signs of moving to the right), I wrote a comment to the effect of “preventing illegal immigration is important, but I don’t think it should be done by Arpaio and his traveling freak show”. I still have more or less the same opinion, though now I’m a little more forgiving of this type of thing because if we really had decent immigration control, probably Arpaio wouldn’t have done the whole freak show thing in the first place.
