America’s Astonishing Antifragility

This isn’t totally surprising. Such analysis of presidential contenders is the grist of campaign mills. What was unusual is how matter-of-factly the analysts cast America’s institutions as a china shop.

We were continuously advised of the porcelain-level delicacy of our system of government. Were Trump to burst in, he’d raze the building and pulverize its contents. Dire warnings were issued by progressive columnists like Jonathan Chait (“extraordinary threat to American democracy”) and Paul Krugman (“a corrupt nation ruled by strongmen”) and conservatives like Michael Gerson (“genuine threat to the American form of self-government”). The Washington Post editorial board called Trump, on different occasions, “a unique threat to American democracy,” “a danger to the republic,” and the “candidate of the apocalypse.”

Since his inauguration, President Trump has, admittedly, offered such critics little solace. The substance and rollout of his first executive order on immigration flouted a range of governing norms. His attacks on federal courts, the intelligence community, and the media (“the enemy of the people”) attempted to undermine legitimate checks on his authority. His dubious claim of millions of illegal votes eroded confidence in our electoral system. His accusation that President Obama spied on him tarnished the office; his press secretary’s claim that the British had done the same made matters worse. His first national security adviser’s shadowy extracurricular activities added to concerns about Russian canoodling.

In just a few short weeks on the job, Taurus Rex gave the impression that he was intentionally challenging core elements of our governing infrastructure—separation of powers, due process, an independent press, fair elections. In a March article in the Atlantic titled “How to Build an Autocracy,” David Frum, a former aide to president George W. Bush, put these puzzle pieces together and argued, “We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered.”

Though understandably alarmed, observers could still hold out hope that this was no premeditated assault. Maybe this was just a brash political outsider doing what brash political outsiders do: jostling the system. Bulls aren’t calculating; they’re all instinct and muscle. They can be corralled.

But then came the smoking gun. A February Politico Magazine article seemed to reveal that there was, in fact, a method to the madness. The similarity of these disquieting episodes wasn’t mere coincidence. Perhaps we were seeing an intentional effort to upend our system.

The article compiled—and editorialized about—some of the favorite books of Trump’s top strategist, Steve Bannon. The books listed “help to explain the commotion” of the early Trump administration. We were told that one book, The Fourth Turning, informed Bannon’s view that America is in a period “of cataclysmic change in which the old order is destroyed and replaced.” In total, the books purportedly reflected Bannon’s view that Western civilization is “on a downward trajectory and that only a shock to the system can reverse its decline.”

Highlighted on this menacing list was Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2012 bestseller Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, which according to Politico “reads like a user’s guide to the Trump insurgency.” It was described as a “broadside against big government” that advocates the takedown of arrogant elites who’ve been in charge. A year ago on Facebook, Taleb wrote, “People are not voting for Trump (or Sanders). People are just voting, finally, to destroy the establishment.”

To those already anxious about Trump’s treatment of our institutions, the article amounted to conducting a five-espresso gavage on someone already in the grips of a panic attack. Here, it seemed, was proof that the administration’s behavior was driven by a purposeful, pernicious strategy. The bull isn’t just brawn, vim, and intuition. It is studied and shrewd. It knows exactly what it’s doing.

But a closer reading of the article is the best sedative. Interviewed for the piece, Taleb never mentioned undermining, much less destroying, American institutions (he doesn’t identify himself as a Trump supporter). More important, anyone who’s read Antifragile knows it’s not a how-to playbook on rebellion. It’s an insightful, serious study of how things develop the ability to withstand and grow stronger from shocks. In fact, the term “antifragile” describes organizations, institutions, and systems that don’t crumble under pressure but instead absorb impacts, adapt to changing conditions, and constantly improve in reaction to acute stress.

And this—America’s astonishing antifragility—would seem to be the real story of our nation’s response to the Trump administration so far. The president may be a bull, but American institutions are proving to be anything but a china shop. They are not only surviving every threat thrown their way, they may be growing stronger thanks to the tests.

Immune Response

Much of America’s intelligentsia has been in an acute state of hypochondria since Trump’s election. With each passing day they discover new reasons for hand-wringing over the prospects of the union. But the American body politic is preternaturally robust. The Constitution is chock-full of devices protecting the nation from internal threats. Our Founders weren’t dreamy-utopian types; they knew human history and human nature. They planned for this. They knew men weren’t angels, and that angels would not govern men.

So federal powers were separated, checked, and balanced. Federalism and individual rights further diluted state authority. Not coincidentally, Americans embraced the concept of subsidiarity and developed an energetic civil society—both tools for acting together locally and voluntarily—since we didn’t want to be acted upon from far away. America broke apart the scepter and distributed its pieces far and wide. Call it the “Madison-Tocqueville defense,” a prophylactic against autocracy.

And so while commentators galore have been sounding the alarm in response to President Trump’s ostensible offensive against our institutions, a torrent of white blood cells have been rushing to the site of every single attack. Whether you’re enjoying the new administration’s activities or absolutely apoplectic, we should collectively be awed by the immune response.

To protest Trump’s positions on a range of issues, the Women’s March gathered millions across dozens of locations. After his travel-ban executive order, lawyers descended on airports to offer pro-bono help to affected individuals, the ACLU reported record-setting donations, and “sanctuary city” mayors remained defiant. After Kellyanne Conway plugged Ivanka Trump’s clothing line, Congress and the Office of Government Ethics publicly advocated discipline. After revelations of unseemly engagements with Russian leaders, Trump’s national security adviser was hounded from office and his attorney general recused himself from future investigations. When Trump disparaged the judiciary, his own Supreme Court nominee lamented attacks on the courts.

This extensive and ever-growing list teaches us that America possesses a copious capacity to respond to the state’s transgressions. Whatever the action, there’s been an equal and opposite reaction. Our system has already shown itself to be amazingly resilient. And like a secure city-state protected by high, durable walls, it’s those on the attack who are getting worn down. White House leaks are unremitting. The president fulminated at his senior staff over the attorney general’s recusal and then decamped for Florida without them. White House staff members are reportedly working in a “culture of paranoia” because of the toxic internal environment.

But when we assess the strength of institutions, Antifragile tells us to look “beyond resilience or robustness.” It’s not merely what a body can take or what it can dish out; antifragility is also about “post-traumatic growth.” “Some things benefit from shocks,” Taleb writes. “They thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors.”

Inverse Iatrogenesis

Conservatives are well aware of the unintended negative consequences of government action. It’s the political version of the medical concept of iatrogenesis—illness caused by medical treatment. But Taleb lauds antifragile institutions that demonstrate an “inverse-iatrogenic” effect, those that somehow get sturdier and smarter when assailed. In the weeks since the inauguration, we’ve seen signs of this across the board. For instance, concerns that civic opposition to the administration would wither from fear already seem laughable. To the contrary, the will to defy has only strengthened. In the early days of the new administration, the acting attorney general’s refusal to defend the administration’s travel ban made her a hero to the opposition; late-night comics have been relentless; the liberal think tank Center for American Progress rebranded itself as the “central hub of the Trump resistance.”

Obviously, it will take more than a few months to know for sure whether our major American institutions have been meaningfully and lastingly toughened by the Trump phenomenon. But the early signs are that two of the most important institutions—the media and Congress—may be headed in that direction.

For eons, the media have been criticized (often with good reason) for political bias. But frustration grew in recent years as “reporting” expanded to include editorial-style analysis and tendentious “fact-checking,” which was often indistinguishable from editorializing. Criticism peaked as the press, for a year, utterly failed to grasp Trump’s appeal to tens of millions of voters. The appraisal was damning and mostly deserved: The media are partial and out-of-touch, and their obsession with tweets and clicks have made them excitable and unserious.

Trump’s subsequent fake-news and enemy-of-the-people attacks might’ve been a body blow to a profession that looked like a shadow of its former self. Indeed, in December, a prominent journalism professor predicted that “winter is coming” for the American press, and in January the Atlantic ran an article, “What Trump Could Mean for Journalism,” that chronicled how populist strongmen in Venezuela, Turkey, Russia, and elsewhere had successfully muzzled the press.

Such alarms now look astonishingly overwrought. Instead, Trump’s ascendance has led to at least a measure of self-reflection. The New York Times public editor has questioned the paper’s use of unnamed sources and the evolution of its editing process. A columnist for the Washington Post argued that the press must “return to the fundamentals” of reporting, “put our heads down and do our jobs,” and “triple-source.” He ended with a remarkably antifragile sentiment. Trump “represents a fundamental challenge to journalism in the 21st century. That’s not a bad thing.”

More important, there have been some nontrivial changes since the election. The editor in chief of Reuters penned a principled, level-headed message to his staff about how to cover Trump, which included “recommitting ourselves to reporting fairly and honestly.” A number of reporters have acknowledged bubble-induced blind spots. The leadership of the Times felt compelled to publish a nonapology-apology about its misunderstanding of Trump’s appeal and a promise to rededicate itself to “report America and the world honestly.” CNN, wanting to be an organization that does more than just “[talk] about breaking news,” hired two Pulitzer Prize winners. The Washington Post is adding 60 journalists to its newsroom.

There might be even more light on the horizon. Politico‘s senior media writer believes the Trump era could make the press great again, calling the moment a “journalistic spring,” a chance for a revival. The Times executive editor agrees, recently telling an audience, “The next two years will be a historic moment in the life of news organizations.” The point is simple: Apprehension about the media’s future may be overblown; it could be stronger post-Trump.

And we may be witnessing an even more antifragile response from the First Branch. In recent years, Congress has too often taken a back seat to the executive branch—it’s done too little to stop the unfettered growth of the administrative state and has too often been complicit in that growth, preferring to eschew responsibility and blame faceless bureaucrats for unpopular regulations. It’s been unable, or unwilling, to get a handle on the federal budget process. Trump’s alpha-dog aggression could have caused a discombobulated, skittish legislative branch to perpetually expose its belly. And that would have immediate and long-term institutional consequences.

But Congress seems instead to be steeling itself. Its opposition party is in full resistance mode, from party-line “no” votes on multiple confirmations to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s nevertheless-she-persisted moment. Congressional Republicans are also sticking their necks out, at least occasionally. Senator Marco Rubio, frustrated by the administration’s posture toward Russia, publicly scrutinized the nomination of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and criticized the president for equating Vladimir Putin’s misdeeds to our own; senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against a cabinet nominee.

Some of this may be the usual grandstanding for which Capitol Hill is famous. But that only underscores the point: If the apocalypse were upon us, you would no longer see lawmakers engaging in their normal behaviors. And beyond the actions by individual members are the notable institutional responses to current events. The intelligence committees are examining deeply Trump’s specious wiretap allegations and endeavoring to shed light on any untoward ties to Russia. Congressional leaders and budget committee members are pushing back against elements of the administration’s spending proposal. House speaker Paul Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell—not administration officials—tried to direct the Obamacare repeal effort, and their work was toppled by animated, empowered members who were uncowed by the president’s threats to exact a political price for their lack of cooperation. And all of this is taking place in the broader context of Congress’s nascent attempts in recent years to reassert itself.

For a year, Sen. Mike Lee has been pushing what he calls the “Article One Project” to re-empower Congress vis-à-vis the other branches. Congress has reanimated the dormant Congressional Review Act, through which it can overturn a wide array of agency regulations, thereby checking the administrative state. A bit more than a year ago Congress passed the sweeping, bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act to call a halt to the executive branch’s meddling in schools. Earlier this year, the House expanded its oversight ability, empowering committee staff to subpoena and depose government officials.

Congress’s self-assertion is starting to mirror the institution’s prior demonstrations of antifragility. The legislature has historically gotten stronger after tussling with audacious presidents. It censured “King Andrew” in 1834; it responded to the Johnson-Nixon era with the War Powers Act and impeachment proceedings; it defeated FDR’s court-packing scheme and then limited presidents to two terms. A china shop this ain’t.

Of course there can be problems with overactive immune systems. The media, for instance, have shown a propensity to interpret even benign Trumpian activities as provocations deserving retaliation. And even healthy immune systems can exhaust themselves, degrading the capacity to respond to real threats or forcing us to suffer the political equivalent of chronic pain—merely enduring through gritted teeth instead of growing stronger. But with nearly 100 days under our belts, the early indications tell us that had anyone actually intended to fundamentally undermine our institutions, it was a fool’s errand.

In fact, the resilience of our system has been so pronounced that it’s not completely unreasonable to wonder if the administration has taken onboard the true lessons of Antifragile. That is, perhaps the president and his team are so at ease dispensing with traditions, altering international relationships, flouting political niceties, and so on because they believe this is their only hope for effecting the dramatic policy changes they believe are necessary and because they understand that our institutions are more than capable of handling the ensuing tumult.

Even if that interpretation is too generous, the turbulent early days of this administration plus the astounding antifragility demonstrated by our institutions offer something encouraging for the president’s supporters and detractors alike: If his approach to governing proves sound, he will have made American policy great again. But if his approach is indeed a threat, he may still help to make America’s institutions greater than ever before.

Andy Smarick is a Morgridge fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.