Speculative Attempts to Complicate Throughout History - 2023

When things aren't going well, those in power will sometimes introduce some speculative chaos in the hopes that what emerges on the other side will be better. It mostly doesn't work.

2023 Intro

The 2024 Election approaches quickly as Republican primary debates have already begun. Eight candidates qualified for the first debate, but of course all of the attention was on someone who wasn’t even there: Trump.

Many people want to stop Trump; to that end four different criminal cases have been filed against him. No president or former president has ever been the defendant in even a single criminal case, let alone four. Complicating matters further, the trial for one of those cases is set to start the day before Super Tuesday. 

All of this would be interesting and unprecedented enough, but there’s more. Citizens in several states have filed lawsuits to remove Trump from the ballot even if he is the Republican nominee. They argue that his role in the events of January 6th disqualifies him under the 14th Amendment. Should this happen in a deep blue state, it won’t matter, Trump was never going to get those electors anyway. But lawsuits have been filed in Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Michigan which are all swing states.

The below piece is one I wrote back in 2017 about how small perturbations in the political landscape can snowball into large crises, potentially even outright revolutions. But it’s difficult to know in advance when that’s going to happen or what seemingly insignificant toss of the dice might set it off. Certainly no one predicted the 14th Amendment play back in 2017. And while many people have long been fantasizing about criminal charges against Trump, the scale and the timing take us into unknown territory. One can only imagine other speculative attempts to complicate which might emerge as politics becomes ever more chaotic in the coming years.¹

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I’m a decent chess player, but a voracious reader. I mention this because the amount of reading about chess I have done is high relative to my skill. (If you were being technical you might say I have a high pages/Elo rating.) All of this is my way of saying, when I start talking about chess, which I’m about to, that I’m not trying to put myself forward as some sort of chess savant, merely someone who’s read a lot. And in that reading I came across an idea which has ended up being a useful framework for thinking about situations that have nothing to do with chess. It’s the idea of a “speculative attempt to complicate” and as far as I can tell I am the only one who’s adopted it for use outside of chess, given that a search on the term yields only seven results. 

(As a tangent if you ever doubt my mastery of search engine optimization, just watch me rocket to the top of that seven, now eight item search, with my well-chosen title.²)

What is a speculative attempt to complicate? In chess notation, an exclamation mark indicates a good move—more is better. Conversely, question marks are used for bad moves, and more is worse. Occasionally you might see an exclamation mark and a question mark used together. If the question mark is first (i.e. “?!”) it means “A speculative attempt to complicate”.³ Put simply, this means that the game isn’t going great for the player who made the move. In a desperate attempt to reverse things the player has made a speculative, non-standard move, hoping that they’ll emerge in a better position once the chaos clears. If the player does what’s expected, he will just lose, but if he causes some chaos or complicates the game, his position may improve.

I. 

In 1787, France’s King Louis the XVI was losing the game of running the country. To mix metaphors, the deck was stacked against him. At the time, people were dealing with the heady ideals of the enlightenment. There was a rising and restless middle class alongside general social unrest, famines, and wars.

Speaking of wars, the American Revolution was of particular impact, it not only served to stoke revolutionary fervor in France, but it had also vastly increased France’s already substantial debt. This debt had turned into a major problem, though, at least here, the King was not blameless, since he, his father, and his grandfather had spent an enormous amount of money on themselves (you may have heard of a little thing called Versailles?) In fact, while things like social unrest and war and famine may have been more important in the final analysis, it was the country’s debt which really started the ball rolling, or as historian John Shovlin said:

It is a truism that the French Revolution was touched off by the near bankruptcy of the state.

For those paying attention you may see why this post follows my last post. The King was not oblivious to the problem caused by the debt—the quick succession of finance ministers dismissed after failing to solve it should give some clue as to its severity. However the problem proved impossible to resolve. Eventually, in desperation the King convened an Assembly of Notables. The assembly wanted to do something, but anything effective would have also been painful, so they ended up being ineffectual. (One wonders if that would have changed if the nobles had known what was coming.) With the notables/nobles unable to get on top of the problem there was only one thing left to do, convene the Estates General. While convening the Assembly of Notables was kind of a risky move, convening the Estates General was the King’s true “speculative attempt to complicate”. Perhaps the fact that it had been 175 years since the last time they convened (1614) will give you some sense of how risky, unprecedented and desperate this move was. 

It’s interesting to imagine what would have happened if the King had made some other move. I’m no expert on the French Revolution, and given all the revolutions that subsequently occurred, just in France, it may be that the overall arc of things would not have been that different. Perhaps the King would eventually have to have abdicated in favor of someone else. Perhaps if he hadn’t convened the Estates General everything would have been a lot worse. What is clear is that none of the major players, and particularly the King, would have convened the Estates General if they had known what was going to happen: Robespierre, the execution of the King, the rise of Napoleon, etc. etc.

By this point you have probably realized that we do have other terms for what the King was doing that are in more common usage. Someone can “go out on a limb”, “roll the dice” , or “throw a hail mary”. But the problem with these terms is none of them mention the idea of complicating the situation as a way of turning around a losing game. Rather these terms just represent desperate gambles that will either clearly fail or clearly succeed. The pass is either caught or it isn’t. Had Louis the XVI asked the UK for help (totally inconceivable I realize), or had he implemented a radical new tax, or if he had executed the latest finance minister rather than firing him, those are all hail mary’s, but by convening the Estates General he was complicating matters, primarily by granting de facto authority to a lot of new people, all of whom were wildcards.

II.

A similar idea has been getting press in the US. The parallels are eerie. We are also in a situation where there’s broad agreement that the government is broken. There’s even some agreement that one of the main problems is financial, though, to be clear, despite what I said in the last post, I don’t think the US is heading towards bankruptcy in the same fashion as the French Monarchy. (History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes.) But, for those who are the most worried about the financial crisis, there is an unused clause of the constitution that may allow them to make a speculative attempt to complicate a game they feel like they’re otherwise going to lose, just like the King.

This particular speculative attempt to complicate involves calling a constitutional convention, as provided for by Article V. A recent article from The Economist explains the interesting backstory of the convention clause:

THE I’s had been dotted; the T’s were crossed. The 55 delegates to America’s first and so-far-only constitutional convention had hammered out compromises on the separation of powers, apportionment of seats in the legislature and the future of the slave trade. But on September 15th 1787 George Mason, a plantation owner from Virginia, rose to his feet to object.

Article V of the draft text laid out two paths by which future amendments could be proposed. Congress could either propose them itself, or it could summon a convention of representatives from the states to propose them. Mason warned that if the federal government were to become oppressive, Congress would be unlikely to call a convention to correct matters. To protect the people’s freedom, he argued, convening power should instead be vested in the states. Should two-thirds of their legislatures call for a convention, Congress would have to accede to their demand: a convention they should have.

The constitution was signed two days later, with Article V changed as Mason had suggested. Since then 33 amendments have been proposed, with 27 subsequently ratified, a process which requires approval in three-quarters of the states. Whether the issue was great (abolishing slavery) or small (changing the date of presidential inaugurations), all 33 of the proposals came from Congress. Mason’s mechanism for change driven by state legislatures has never been used. Even politically informed Americans often have no idea it exists.⁴

As the article mentions, even well-informed people often have no idea that such a thing is possible, and if you are one of those people you may be experiencing some combination of curiosity, fear, or even boredom. Let’s start with boredom. 

You might be experiencing boredom because your immediate reaction is to view it as one more thing which, while technically possible, is very unlikely. Something like Evan McMullin becoming president in 2016 if he had won in Utah and the electoral college was otherwise deadlocked, or like the Secretary of Housing and Urban development becoming President after everyone else is killed. Well, one of the reasons it’s in the news is that it may be more likely than you think. At this point twenty-seven states have requested a convention. A convention only requires thirty-four, which leaves just seven more states. Conveniently, there are seven Republican states who haven’t requested a convention and in the next couple of years they’re all going to consider the issue.⁵ 

What does being Republican have to do with it? Well the major impetus for all of this is a balanced budget amendment. These are the people I mentioned who are really concerned about the financial crisis and are attempting their own speculative attempt to complicate. In any event, what this all means is that, according to the article, opponents and supporters are giving even odds of it happening by 2020.⁶ Thus it may not be as unlikely as you think. Better odds than people gave Trump and we all know how that turned out.

In the letters section of the next issue of The Economist one of the supporters of Article V, wrote in and retorted that holding a constitutional convention wasn’t dangerous, and that, in fact, it isn’t even an actual constitutional convention. That it was rather a “convention for proposing amendments”, in other words its only point would be to get a narrowly-worded amendment approved for voting, in the current case the balanced budget amendment. Thus while the convention wouldn’t necessarily be boring per se, it would be a lot less exciting than The Economist (or any of the other articles) is claiming.

I’ve come a long way without saying why The Economist called it dangerous or why Esquire called it a constitutional crisis. And if you’re still with me, at this point, hopefully you’re more curious than bored. And to satisfy that curiosity I suppose we should actually look at Article V:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; 

The key word is the plural “amendments”. I know the author of the letter to the editor in The Economist seemed pretty knowledgeable (he cited a boatload of legal precedents) but it seems like there would be grounds for someone to try and go beyond just the balanced budget amendment to propose numerous amendments. Even if they did, it still appears that this just puts the amendments on the “ballot”, so to speak, and that you would still need 3/4ths of the states to approve them.

III.

Three-fourths of the states is a pretty high hurdle, and even when you toss in the possibility of multiple amendments, it’s not, on its face, “dangerous” or a “crisis”. However, this is why I started by talking about speculative attempts to complicate and the convening of the Estates General. The King didn’t convene them because he wanted to be beheaded in four years; rather for the very narrow purpose of fixing the financial crisis. Just like the, suggested, constitutional convention is being organized for the very-narrow purpose of proposing a balanced budget amendment. And the danger and the potential crisis come from the idea that just like the Estates General went WELL BEYOND their original purpose, there is some possibility that a new convention would go well beyond its original purpose. This is where things could get complicated.

What reason would the convention have to go beyond its original purpose? I think when people consider the current divisiveness and anger, the answer to that question is obvious. Though, to be clear, things were a lot worse in 1789 than they are in 2017.⁷ That point aside, I'd like to draw your attention to another issue which goes unmentioned by any of the articles I’ve read. The other method in Article V for proposing amendments, the congressional method, is broken. The last amendment was passed in 1992, over 25 years ago, and given that it was initially proposed in 1789, I don’t think it should win any awards for either speed or efficiency. Nor was it particularly controversial.

The last one before that was 1971, 50 years ago. And it was the relatively uncontroversial amendment of lowering the voting age to 18. As evidence of how uncontroversial it was, it was the shortest time from proposal to ratification of any amendment. You would have to go all the way back to 1920—or nearly 100 years—to find an amendment that was actually controversial. I’m referring to Amendment 19, the one giving women the right to vote. (An idea that’s completely uncontroversial now.)

As I have argued previously, the Supreme Court took over (usurped?) the role of the amendment process, making it largely unnecessary, particularly for those on the more liberal side of things. One way of looking at this may be as a battle between the liberal method for amending the Constitution and the new way conservatives are trying to implement.

That seems to be why people are worried: If this convention does happen and it does end up being yet another battleground, how could the left/Democrats/progressives sit it out? Perhaps if they’re sure, like the letter-writer I mentioned earlier, that the judiciary will keep things tightly contained, they might not worry. But I wouldn’t count on it.⁸

If you’re looking for reasons to worry, the soonest a convention could happen would be 2019 and it probably wouldn’t happen until 2020, and a lot can happen in 3 years (just ask Louis XVI). Imagine that in that time, Trump has managed to appoint another justice to the Supreme Court.⁹ And imagine that with both Gorsuch and this new judge that things start moving in a direction the left doesn’t like. Imagine that some of the rulings which act like amendments, for example Roe v. Wade, are in danger of being overturned.¹⁰ Imagine further that before the convention can be held that Trump wins re-election. None of these scenarios is that unlikely (though I acknowledge that the cumulative probability is low). If a convention is held and all of these things have happened, does anyone imagine that the convention would be a nice quiet affair? 

IV.

I’ve gone fairly deep on this one example of a speculative attempt to complicate, and to wrap things up I should probably go wide. Perhaps you’re convinced that the convening of the Estates General was an attempt to complicate and that it went poorly. And maybe you’re even convinced that the proposed constitutional convention bears enough resemblance to what happened then for people to be concerned. Despite all this, you’re almost certainly looking for other examples, which is what I mean by going wide. Making one connection doesn’t prove much of anything, but what if there are dozens of examples of speculative attempts to complicate? I would argue that there are, and that, in fact, they’re everywhere once you start looking. However, this doesn’t mean that the individuals making these “moves” always realize that’s what they’re doing.

A couple of examples:

After 9/11 the US was losing to the terrorists (or at least that’s how it felt), Saddam was still in power and the Middle East was a mess. After considering all of this, President Bush decided to make a speculative attempt to complicate by invading Iraq, though he probably didn’t think of it that way. And here we see one of the key features of the unknowing speculative attempt to complicate. The people attempting it often only see the likely, good outcomes, not all the possible outcomes. In this case, Bush thought that overthrowing Saddam was obviously a good thing, and there was even a chance that he could turn Iraq into a peaceful and stable democracy that would be a beacon to the rest of the Middle East. I assume that there was always a chance that this is exactly how it would go, and Saddam was a bad guy, and, as I said, the Middle East was a mess. Finally, It did feel like we were already losing, and how much worse could it be? We got our answer. Iraq is basically a client state of Iran. (Or so my Lebanese cab driver claimed.) ISIS replaced Al Qaeda. And while Iraq may have provided the spark for the Arab Spring, that’s definitely been a mixed bag, particularly when you consider the Syrian Civil War. Meaning, whatever else you may think of it, Iraq was a speculative attempt to complicate, and it didn’t work out.

Wars are the biggest example of this sort of thing, and World War I in particular really took the cake. Gavrilo Princip and the Bosnian Nationalists were losing their quest for independence so they made a speculative attempt to complicate and so assassinated the Archduke. Germany was losing the game of colonies and made their attempt by starting the war and invading Belgium. Britain was worried about staying on top navally and they joined in on the side of the allies. The Austro-Hungarian empire was crumbling so they decided to invade Serbia. And the list could go on. Many people honestly thought a war was exactly what was necessary to shake things up. They also believed, almost to a man, and on all sides, that it would be a quick war. I was just reading the World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, who was there during this period. He talked about exactly this feeling playing out at the beginning of the war in Austria, where young men were “honestly afraid” that the war might be over before they could get there. And I’ve read other books that described exactly the same thing happening in other belligerent nations. Numerous speculative attempts to complicate, all made by people who were looking at only the potential good outcomes, not loss of empire, execution by the Bolsheviks, hyperinflation, or another, worse war 25 years later.

Currently I see speculative attempts to complicate everywhere I look: the debt ceiling brinkmanship, Catalonia voting to secede, Brexit, Kim Jong Un’s nuclear posturing, or perhaps the biggest one of all, the election of Trump…

2023 Afterward

That last bit about Catalonia is an example of something that didn’t age well. Also we’re not all that much closer to a Constitutional Convention. Nevertheless I think this post held up pretty well. Perhaps now you can see why the criminal cases and ballot access blocking might be considered speculative attempts to complicate. It’s not clear that the Democrats are losing per se, but nearly everyone admits that Biden is not a great candidate. 

Also, I almost left out the biggest recent “speculative attempt to complicate” of them all. The events of January 6th and in particular the idea that Pence could just declare Trump to be president. 

Perhaps the craziness has passed and the 2024 election will proceed smoothly. But that’s not the feeling I’m getting. As a result I think speculative attempts to complicate will continue to flourish, and continue to play out in ways no one expected.

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I continue to be involved in my own “speculative attempt to complicate” which started back in June when I decided to move to Substack and start a Patheos column. Now that you’ve been the subject of my speculation and my complication I’d love to hear how you think it’s going. 

The address to do that is we are not saved at gmail.

1. Rather than directly editing things. This time around I’m going to experiment with using footnotes more extensively. Let me know what you think.

2. This prediction did in fact come to pass, if you search for “speculative attempt to complicate” I’m the very first result. This is not evidence of my mastery of SEO. I’m terrible at SEO and I hate it.

3. These days you’ll mostly see it described as a “dubious move” but for obvious reasons I vastly prefer the “speculative attempt to complicate” description.

4. This article is obviously from 2017, but the idea keeps coming up. Here’s an article from just a few weeks ago which actually makes the argument that perhaps the left shouldn’t be entirely opposed to the idea.

5. Apparently we’re now six states away and the convention proposal in Montana was blocked by a single vote.

6. Not sure where I got this figure, apparently I didn’t think to link it to anything, but obviously this was a bad prediction.

7. Though 2023 is worse than 2017, so we’re trending in that direction.

8. Since writing this the court has gone from being a bulwark of liberalism to domination by conservatives. This is the biggest reason why the left might be warming up to the idea of a convention.

9. He actually got to appoint two more, which has, in fact, really changed the landscape. Also speaking of how a lot can change in three years. Note what happened with COVID.

10. That’s another thing you can check off.