With apologies to Dean Swift
There is a paradox at the heart of the Democrats’ attempts to combat Trump’s self-declared power. When he claimed the biggest crowd ever at his inauguration and announced that eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence to the contrary were fake news he was previewing his future behavior. Reality and truth were to be irrelevant. This presented his followers with a difficult choice : they would have to either follow or defect. (Or be dumped.) McConnell and Ryan and the Republican Senate chose to follow, at the price of their honor and self-respect. The prospect of tying themselves securely to the powerful Trumpian coat tails was too tempting. A few respected civil servants did stick it out briefly before they chose to defect (Mattis, Tillerson, Sessions). The dumped included Christie, the Donald’s most experienced and effective political manager. Reality or honesty played no part in any of the ‘remain’ decisions. The Godfather was making it clear to the world that facts would no longer count for the duration of his reign. You played by his rules or you were out of the game.
We Democrats, with our heads firmly stuck in the sands of the past, nevertheless put enormous effort into showing up each of his lies on the theory that an accurate accounting could shame the jellyfish and educate the ignorant. (How much time and money has the Times spent on fact-checking? How much is it still spending?) Albert Einstein had words for that years ago : “Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result is a definition of insanity.” We were wasting our time and our money on an outdated vision of truth long ago rejected by Trump and his resentful and angry troops.
Most of us have, I think, now finally begun to accept this picture. No amount of fact-checking is going to have the slightest effect on the Trumpists. They are explicitly scornful of facts. So why should we waste more money on it? Who cares? Only we Democrats, and the Democrats can’t control the Congress so long as McConnell stands in the doorway of the schoolhouse with his fungo bat, knocking proposals away like so many practice flies. What can we do that might change Republican minds?
In an effort to mine political history for an answer to that question, I turned to David Hume, my old college friend who explained so much to me when I was learning at the feet of my elders. I found the pertinent sections in a book he wrote shortly before the American Revolution : An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
He laid it out right from the opening pages, in his comma- and semicolon-sprinkled, but always pointed prose. I quote :
Disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome, except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.
But in order to make any practical use of this insight, we have to agree on the meaning of the phrase ‘sounder principles’. Sounder according to what standards? How are sound principles to be distinguished from unsound principles? Are there principles that are fixed and unchanging across national, ethnic, chronological, religious, and personal boundaries, or are they subject to redefinition according to circumstance, location, and leader? Here we come to the second part of Hume’s title — Morals. He deals with it as follows :
Those who have denied the reality of moral distinctions, may be ranked among the disingenuous disputants; nor is it conceivable, that any human creature could ever seriously believe, that all characters and actions were alike entitled to the affection and regard of everyone. The difference, which nature has placed between one man and another, is so wide, and this difference is still so much farther widened, by education, example, and habit, that, where the opposite extremes come at once under our apprehension, there is no scepticism so scrupulous, and scarce any assurance so determined, as absolutely to deny all distinction between them. Let a man’s insensibility be ever so great, he must often be touched with the images of Right and Wrong; and let his prejudices be ever so obstinate, he must observe, that others are susceptible of like impressions. The only way, therefore, of converting an antagonist of this kind, is to leave him to himself. For, finding that nobody keeps up the controversy with him, it is probable he will, at last, of himself, from mere weariness, come over to the side of common sense and reason.
Here I think Hume, while he may be right, is of no use to us. We don’t have the time to let Donald shoot himself in the foot. Not that he won’t; just that by the time he does too many of us will have also painfully lost some toes. We need a strategy with a faster payoff.
On the other hand, there is recent good news. Twelve Republican senators found the other day that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to get his wall was finally too much for them to stomach. They voted to restrain him, despite knowing that their ‘revolt’ would fail on his veto, but aware that Clio, the goddess of history, was waiting, and that their constituents were not yet ready to write off their Constitution as a fake document.
For the record, these twelve, were named Romney, Alexander, Blunt, Collins, Lee, Moran, Murkowski, Paul, Portman, Rubio, Toomey, and Wicker. With luck those names may be hailed as the first signs of the return of sanity to Washington.
But first we must acknowledge that all of us, too, have been guilty of pretending that our idealistic view of the world is as fake as Donald’s. We talk with serious faces about democratic principles, the rights of man, women’s rights, workers’ rights, and universal respect for the individual as though these were real goals and real descriptions of the ideal world we are fighting for. We need to start by admitting that all that is bullshit. It does not describe any world you or I have ever seen or ever will see. What describes the world as it really functions is one word : corruption. Politicians struggle for power and use their power for two purposes : first, never to willingly leave the office they have worked so hard to gain, and second, to profit as much as they can from that office before they are shuffled off this mortal coil to some other, or not.
It was H. L. Mencken who said, “When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.” Ironically, Donald himself used it in referring to Clinton and Whitewater in the campaign for the 2016 nomination. What if we were to choose that as our guideline today? The overwhelming power of the Koch zillions is obvious. Their wealth seems to be in position to purchase the entire Senate in the next voting go-round if their campaign advisors and lobbyists have their way. Democrats have deep-pocketed donors, too, but not as deep.
With sufficient funds we might be able to convince more Republicans that there is more patriotism on the left side of the aisle than on the right. One by one, we might be able to peel away those who see that the ship is sinking, and persuade them to start crawling down the mooring ropes toward safety. But for encouragement they need a reward — a clink in the begging bowl. Not a stick, but a carrot. They are unlikely to get one from their Republican colleagues or from the K Brothers, so if there is to be one it will have to come from us Democrats. Are you ready?
A $20 contribution from each of Hillary’s 65,800,000 voters would create a 1.3 billion dollar fund to be spread among other Republicans thinking of joining the defectors. That’s more than the amount the Koch forces have announced they will spend in 2020 : 900 million. In short, especially if we place our shots effectively, we could be on an equal footing with the Darth Vader.
Would it pain you to contribute twenty bucks to anyone who would strip children from their mothers and fathers in the name of a useless wall? Of course it would, but in our camp we accept the basic understanding that democracy (small ‘d’) is based on compromise. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. (Unless you are Jared or Ivanka.)
So who could organize such a fund and decide where to use it for maximum effect as we get nearer 2020? What about the DNC (the Democratic National Committee) itself? They already have the mailing lists, the staff, and they are probably already up to their ears in shady-trick plans. All they need is the Jacksons (check your twenties). We can call the Fund ‘JFJ’ — ‘Jacksons For Justice’. You and I can start it off without further help. Just send the DNC a $20 GoFundMe contribution marked “Republican Bribery Fund, to be used to support Republicans with a grasp of reality”. I’ll guarantee you that after a few hundred thousand dollars come in, the Times and TIME and the rest of the scribblers will give you all the free publicity you could ask for, and you will find that the same opportunistic Republicans who put Trump in his present perch are still open to the siren call of those Jacksons.
And my faith in both Einstein and David Hume will be restored. My undying admiration for Mencken will be validated one more time.
Vance Weaver 