Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Do not give in

“Never give in. Never, never, never. Never yield in any way, great or small, large or petty, except to convictions of honor and good sense.” ~ Winston Churchill
 
Donald J. Trump has repeatedly revealed himself as a lying, crooked, narcissistic ignoramus, incapable of generous thoughts or deeds, indeed, incapable of seeing beyond himself at all. The idea of that man living in Lincoln’s house is nauseating. But he is the President, so what is one to do? More particularly, what are conservative intellectuals to do?

The most important thing is to speak the truth, indeed, to become somewhat fanatical on the subject. That means, to be sure, acknowledging such good as he or his administration may do—increased defense spending, a smack at excessive regulation, and stopping the persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor or charter schools. More important will be calling him out every time he or his underlings lie: every time he says he has a plan when he does not, every time he jeers at a hero and denies having said any such thing, every time he claims to have created jobs to which others gave birth, or denies an inflammatory statement that he did make. And it means taking on the Reince Priebuses, Sean Spicers, and Kellyanne Conways when they lie at 11 a.m. to cover up the outrageous remarks their boss tweeted out six hours before.

Trump lies because it is in his nature to lie. One suspects that there is nothing inside this man that quivers, however slightly, at an untruth. One suspects that there is nothing inside this man that quivers, however slightly, at an untruth. It is not uncommon for politicians, to a greater extent than most people, to believe what they want to believe, or to change their take on reality depending on what is convenient for them. With Trump, however, this will to believe is pathological: his psyche is so completely besotted by Trump that there is no room for anything, or anybody else.

We will not change him—no one can. His children may be able to soften the edges and his most trusted advisers may deflect him off his erratic courses, but nothing will teach him gravitas, magnanimity, or wisdom. Until he is impeached, thrown out of office in four years, succumbs to illness, or lasts through eight years, he is what we have learned he is, and will remain so. The beginning of wisdom will be to treat his office with respect, but him with none, because it will achieve nothing, and because as a human being he deserves none. He will remain erratic, temperamental, vengeful, and perhaps most of all, deeply insecure. A man who mocks John McCain, denounces Gold Star parents, snarls at an actor who spoofs him, and makes fun of a crippled reporter is someone whose core is empty, and whose need for approbation is unlimited because the void within him is so complete.

Such is Trump. What of his underlings? His Cabinet officials are, after all, by and large Republican—some very good, some mediocre, some simply cruel. All of his political subordinates either know or will discover that the corruption of power works not by making you do or say outrageous things (at first), but rather by inducing you to persistently shade the truth. They will, for example, find themselves pretending that we have a coherent policy toward Europe when we do not. They will excuse an unhealthy and possibly sinister relationship with Vladimir Putin as an exercise in realpolitik.

They will tell themselves that they have gone to work for the man because they think they can affect him; they will learn—or more likely, their friends and associates on the outside will observe—that actually, he is affecting them. Very few will resign in outrage, because the compromises to their integrity will creep up on them. As Sir Thomas More puts it in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, they will be like the man who, having taken an oath, is “holding his own self in his own hands, like water” and when he opens his fingers, “needn’t hope to find himself again.” They will try to open their fingers just a little bit, and it will not work: the water will cascade out. Many of them will never find themselves again, but will instead spend the rest of their careers making excuses for things that once upon a time they understood were inexcusable.

There will be exceptions: military men mostly, I suspect. Jim Mattis and John Kelly have seen the worst and the finest in human nature; contact with the likes of Trump will not defile them. But there was also General Flynn, the intelligence officer whose life in politics caused him to become entangled in the investigation of Trump campaign corruption and collusion with Russia. There may be younger people who come through cleanly, mostly in corners of the government where they can avoid the pitch that will stick to others higher up....

...The reputational hazard they will run is real, however, and some of them will eventually regret having succumbed to the lures of ambition or the conceit of self-value that brought them in. But in any case, our hope or desire to encourage the best of them should not cause us to cut any of them any slack. No one who backed Trump has any excuse for being surprised by what he does; no one who joins his administration can ever be allowed to claim that they did so in ignorance.

We all know who and what Trump is.

And the rest of us? “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” goes the old saw, and it is truer than ever. Churchill, as always, best laid out the right frame of mind. “Never give in. Never, never, never. Never yield in any way, great or small, large or petty, except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

The age of Trump will pass. The institutions will contain him and the laws will restrain him if enough people care about both, and do not yield to fear of him and whatever leverage he tries to exert from his mighty office. He may summon up internet trolls and rioters, attempt to sic the IRS or the FBI on his opponents, or simply harass individuals from the Oval Office. But political history tells us that would-be authoritarians usually come to unpleasant ends, their moments pass, and the mobs that cheered them on will come to denounce them just as vehemently. Trump has started the process of his administration’s self-destruction by repeatedly and gratuitously alienating one group after another—the intelligence community, journalists, Hispanics, and African-Americans for starters....

This will be a slogging match until the end... oppose and expose, contradict and stand up, without apology, without compromise, and without hesitation....




edited from Truth in the Age of Trump



You cannot shame the shameless

What if you were suddenly whisked back to elementary school, and you found yourself face-to-face with a bully threatening to beat you up. Now let's say you told him that surely his actions would exhibit a break from norms and that he would feel hypocritical because he would probably once have been victimized by someone. You would, in all likelihood, get beaten to a pulp.
Anyone who went to an average middle school understands how this plays out – which is why it is all the more bewildering that leftists, centrists, and guardians of the genteel status quo seem to think this approach will work with Trump after it failed to work with the Republican Party for at least a generation.

What Congressional Democrats do not understand is that being reasonable with Republicans colleagues has not worked for decades – and will not work now. Trump's team is a hammer, and every problem, including you, is a nail. They have no sympathy for anyone. Empathy is foreign to them.

Like a lot of bad ideas, this all started with a misunderstanding: an article of faith among the left that people vote against their own self-interests and tolerate political chicanery because they do not understand economics or history or good governance or what popular conservative demagogues like Reagan said or did 30 years ago. They think that all one has to do is explain how things really are – just lay out the facts. But these people are in a hardened cloud of fantasy and alternate "facts" and will scorn what you have to say.

This misreading also fuels the bottomless liberal faith in the power of political comedy. The Daily Show and its descendants run on hypocrisy. No one should be surprised that this kind of comedy took off. With eight years of George W. Bush's wars, followed by eight years of spectacularly cynical Republican obstructionism with which President Obama did not understand how to handle, you could circle the globe three times over with comedic one-liners alone. 

Moreover, the prospect of massively successful viral clips that explain events to casual voters is practically irresistible. These popular political comedians will take one appalling statement from some malicious clown today, then run file video of that same clown saying the opposite under the previous administration. Now, morally, said person in power should have no choice but to dissolve in a puddle of shame – except that he doesn't. The only problem is that it doesn't work!  The target of your video feels no shame – he is incapable of it.

A pathological liar who acts as the setup for at least a dozen political comedy punch lines by saying outrageous, politically incorrect statements just got elected president in spite of audio/video evidence of him bragging about committing a sexual offense. Even when comedy speaks truth to power, it doesn't work because it fundamentally misunderstands the message and appeal of conservatism – which is shame and punishment. There again is the hammer, pounding anything that perverts a phantom American utopia – you know, the good old days when every boy under 18 had a buzz cut haircut.

Democrats seemed to spend half of their time whenever they have a Democratic president and congressional majority wasting time and energy trying to figure out which move would upset the least number of people. But Republicans do not do this. Even before Trump was sworn in the GOP announced a forthcoming repeal of Obamacare (the ACA) and the defunding of Planned Parenthood. They attempted to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, and they will spend the next two weeks tongue-bathing a roster of cabinet members who are ludicrous and ethically compromised. They do not heed polite norms, because polite norms are things that Mama's boys obey.

Against this, the left and social media has normalized the conservative "I got mine, you get your own economy" with false equivalencies of how dare you, sir of the electorate and even louder lamentations about America, heartbreak, and loss. Apart from being almost wholly ineffective on its own terms, all it does is vindicate the conservative message. They gloat because they gotcha.

Every malignant troll – 95 percent of the time, it is a he – who changed his Twitter username to "Deplorable @#$%^&" to "piss off the libtards" feeds off impotent moral outrage and public despair. These nut jobs and their leaders are people who feel so disempowered by women's equality and the perception of minorities as full human beings that they brought on the reign of a world-historical virulent non-Christian Narcissist and psychopathic liar to fight the changing culture. They would not care if he were the devil incarnate.

Logging onto social media to announce that you feel terrified and heartsick just vindicates these people. Your fearfulness tells them that it is working. Friends on your side of the ideological fence see your feelings of hopelessness and feel a pang of empathy. But any attempt at broader entreaty to the people inspiring this feeling is founded on a mistake.

You cannot shame the shameless; you cannot appeal to an inborn trait that you have but he doesn't have.

"When they go low, we go high" is something you can say when someone has agreed to sit at the table with you, but Trump and the people who revel in his omni-directional crass abusiveness and opportunism refuse to sit at the table. (We won, we will do what we want.) They do not care who gets hurt. Their resentment and bullying will always find the lowest elevation. When they go low, just stand back and let them – like the bully who eventually trips on the playground, it makes it easier for everyone in the rest of the class to see how small his size, how few his number, how low his road, and how everyone, together, can defeat his agenda. 

Stand back. Do not negotiate with them.

Let them hang themselves!