Newsletter 339 April 7, 2025
Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
In Brief:
After reading our last several newsletters on "Fiddling While Rome Burns" (Newsletters 329, 332, and 333), David Eisner shared a few additional thoughts. He wondered whether the fires we were alluding to in past newsletters were "wildfires" or "controlled burns," and to what extent all of the heat over President Trump's actions would eventually subside, and many of his changes would come to be considered "mainstream," as so many populist ideas have done in the past. He also expanded upon his earlier ideas about the role of bridge-builders in this time. Although he (like we) is often being told "now is not the time for bridging," or "now is the not the time for moral equivalency," the task of helping both sides hear and understand the concerns of the other is still essential, David asserts, if we are to "get out of this quagmire." And, he goes on, "if bridgers aren’t playing that two-way portal role right now, who will?" We include David's thoughts below in full, followed by our response about fires. Given that we are experimenting with much shorter newsletters, we are holding our response about bridging — and his question about whether it is possible to predict the future — for a later newsletter.
David's P.S.
1. In my focus on the question “Are we fiddling?” I neglected to help complexify the assumption that “Rome Burns.” What parts of the burning are wildfires threatening untold destruction, and what should we see as “controlled burns” that drive toward ends that are legitimate (even if many hate those ends)? How do we respond to Yascha Mounk’s smart conclusions that we are not yet in a constitutional crisis, although we might be headed toward one; and that anyone claiming to know what will happen next should be ignored, because no one does?
2. To my list of the urgent responsibilities of bridgers at this moment, I should have added that we serve as a critical portal for ideas on each side to be heard, understood and considered by the other. Both the Trump-oppositional pro-democracy community and the community championing Trump’s actions and agenda are too angry and inflexible to excavate value from the other. Yet each must learn from the other’s perspective if we are to get out of our quagmire. The Braver Angels Way asserts correctly; “All of us have blind spots and none of us are not worth talking to.” Yes, the shouts that "now is not the time for moral equivalency" ring in my ears, but if bridgers aren’t playing that two-way portal role right now, who will?
3. Finally, consider the documented evolution of ideas spawned by past populists who became reviled at the time as "anti-democratic" by the bureaucracy, party traditionalists, academics and status quo defenders of all stripes. Even as the generators of the populist ideas expressing the anger of “the people” were villainized by the status quo defenders and the media — think Ross Perot — those ideas became mainstream relatively soon. Clinton built much of his 3rd Way strategy on the bones of ideas developed by Perot. True, with the exception of Andrew Jackson, many of whose ideas also became mainstream, no other populist has become President, with all the power that entails.
Sure, all three ideas have corollaries and implications that make me squirm a bit, but they are worth bringing into the conversation.
Guy and Heidi's Response
We agree with David, these are all important topics to discuss more than we have. With respect to whether these are these out-of-control wildfires or controlled burns, we suspect that Trump and his supporters would answer that they are controlled burns. But we fear that they are well on their way to becoming very widespread, uncontrolled wildfires. Before going further, we need to point out that the first fire associated with Musk and DOGE's efforts to tame government spending has now been joined by a second fire surrounding tariffs and Trump's larger effort to reverse the destructive aspects of globalization. In both cases, there is a very real risk that the Trump administration could lose control of these burns in ways that would be deeply harmful to their agenda and the interests of their constituents (as well, of course, as the interests of their political adversaries and the world as a whole). Given that we (Guy and Heidi) live in high-risk wildfire country, we are well aware that controlled burns can get out of control very quickly, if they are not very carefully planned and actively managed (with lots of standby firefighters). To us, it seems clear that these fires are not being at all carefully conducted.
The election made clear that a plurality of voters certainly see a need for some controlled burns. Continuing with the metaphor, the progressive undergrowth had gotten quite overgrown and needed to be thinned. Trump did quite reasonably, we think, tap into several areas of widespread (though certainly not universal) American discontent: DEI, immigration, waste and inefficiency in government, jobs being lost to overseas competitors, and a general sense that our economy was not what it should be (although inflation was down, many consumers still felt insecure).
Had Trump approached these problems carefully, analyzing the nature of the problem, and the costs and benefits of alternative solutions, he might well have come up with a "controlled-burn strategy" that would have benefited most Americans, and generally, "made America great again," as he promised.
But that's not what he appears to be doing.
Firefighters know that you do not start controlled burns on hot, windy days. Trump, with the help of Musk, is taking a blow torch to dry kindling at a time when the temperature is 100 degrees with 80 mph winds. They are deeply cutting anything that even remotely relates to DEI or any other progressive program Trump and his constituents don't like (such as programs related to climate change). In their haste and hostility toward anything that has anything to do with government, they risk cutting genuinely worthwhile and broadly supported programs (such as Medicare, Social Security, air traffic control, disaster response, and national defense). Part of this is the result of implementing the cuts extremely quickly — far too quickly to have done any assessment of what "brush" needs to be cleared and what is essential to keep for a healthy ecosystem. And, their actions seem to be designed to increase heat — burning targets that are most revered by the left, so that Trump's enemies will become particularly angry. In addition, Musk's cuts are being made in highly humiliating ways, adding to his victims' desperation and anger. That's like pouring gasoline on the controlled burn, and turning on fans to spread the flames.
He is not just burning underbrush, he is allowing the fire to spread to structures — using the word "structures" both in the metaphorical sense of the fires getting to urban areas and burning homes and businesses, but also in the literal sense. He is destroying the governmental structures and the economic structures on which this country depends: trade, the economy, scientific inquiry, health care.
When forest fires get really hot, they sterilize the soil so that nothing will regrow for years after the fire goes out. Trump appears, in some cases at least, to be trying to do just that. He doesn't want his despised programs (and much of the rest of government) to come back in four years when he is out of office. So he is destroying things sufficiently that they cannot be recovered. His just-announced tariff policies have sent markets and the larger globalized economy into a tailspin because they have upended the complex financial calculations upon which the viability of all businesses depend. More importantly, from a conflict perspective, he has destroyed the trust upon which all mutually beneficial exchange relationships depend. Since there is no way to reliably predict what the tariffs are going to be going forward, no business is going to make significant investments knowing that their entire business could be wiped out by presidential whim or a change in the political power balance. Bottom line, our allies (and our enemies) aren't going to trust our word for a long time to come.
Not only is he closing down departments and whole agencies, we hear from insiders that they are destroying masses of documents inside those agencies, destroying the record of what was done, with whom or why. Rebuilding aid and peace work after Trump will be much harder without having old history to look back on. That's even more true for scientific research which must build on past work. The likelihood that he is doing similar things to undermine our understanding of economic and trade policy is even more dangerous.
Another feature of Trump's controlled-burn strategy is that it is, to his adversaries, a scorched-earth strategy — one that is designed to destroy pretty much everything that they care about. As such, it is virtually certain to ratchet up the hyper-polarization spiral far beyond the extremes of the Biden era. We think that we have now reached the point where virtually all taboos against forms of non-violent political combat that were previously seen as illegitimate have collapsed. This means that, if escalation is allowed to continue, there is now a serious risk that adversaries will increasingly conclude that the only way in which they can defend themselves is by resorting to violence.
In the heavy smoke and flames of a raging forest fire, it is hard to tell, exactly, what is burning. It is hard to know what will burn next and what might be saved. It may turn out that these fires are not nearly as devastating as they appear right now, and when the flames finally go out, there will be fertile ground for healthy new growth. We hope that is true. But we fear it is not. Trump's approach seems designed, much more, to be a soil sterilization scenario, so that the only way forward is his, whatever that may be.
Finally, and to continue the fire metaphor one step further, there is another, even more disturbing possibility. One can, in the light of what many see as serious DEI overreach and the dramatic growth of social welfare programs over the last several decades, understand the desire to severely cut back government programs. It is, however, harder to see how destroying the trust at the heart of all economic relationships is really going to reverse the excesses of globalization. It seems to us that it is more likely that it will result in a severe economic contraction (one that would make things much worse for the people he is supposedly trying to help). And this gives rise to the awful possibility that we are dealing with an arsonist, not someone who is using controlled burns to promote a healthier ecosystem. We sure hope that this isn't the case and that the administration will make the course corrections needed to at least put it back on the track of serving the interests of its constituents (and, hopefully, genuinely making America great again).
David asked three other questions that we want to address: are we in, or headed toward, a constitutional crisis; is it possible to predict the future; and what role do bridgers have in this highly polarized, "hot" situation? Since we are trying to shorten our newsletters, we will address those two questions in another newsletter, coming out soon.
Lead Graphic Photo Credit: Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/2011-08-04_20_00_00_Susie_Fire_in_the_Adobe_Range_west_of_Elko_Nevada.jpg; By: Famartin, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Date Acquired: April 4, 2025
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Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
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