Tuesday
Given that a recession would doom Donald Trump’s already shaky reelection chances, how will he behave if the economy suddenly tanks? On Nicole Wallace’s NBC program last week, the Rev. Al Sharpton said that Democrats must be prepared to deal with a man who has no boundaries and will do anything to win.
Of course, this isn’t news to anyone who has watched him accepting election help from a foreign adversary and encouraging white supremacists. But should Democrats use Trumpian tactics to fight back? Nietzsche warns them not to:
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Well aware of this possibility, the Obamas famously asserted, “When they go low, we go high.” For that matter, Al Gore didn’t use George W. Bush’s scorched earth tactics to contest the Florida election in 2000 (which include the Brooks Brothers riot to stop a vote recount), figuring that the institution of the presidency was more important than his own fate. (Earlier, he also turned over leaked George W. Bush debate notes to the FBI.) Nor did Democrats come up with equivalents of the swift boating used against John Kerry, the Willy Horton ads used against Michael Dukakis, or the welfare queen attack ads used by Ronald Reagan. They lost elections but retained the moral high ground.
Or is it that Democrats are naïve, failing to fully appreciate the extent to which Trump, McConnell and the GOP are undermining the system. In a past post I have compared Obama to the credulous Othello and speculated that the naivete of both might be attributed to race. If members of oppressed minorities experience success, they may believe too deeply in the system that acknowledged their worth. Why not go high when going high has worked so well?
I contrasted their naivete with that of King Lear’s Edgar, which is the result of privilege and more applicable to Gore than Obama. Edgar is so assured of his position that he can’t imagine someone acting like Edmund to take him down. His complacency and good morals are in part the product of someone who has always benefited from the system.
My idealized view of Republicans when I was growing up was as town patriarchs who believed in fair play. I might not agree with my Illinois grandparents on civil rights or the Vietnam War, but I saw them committed to Grantland Rice’s philosophy:
For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes - not that you won or lost -
But HOW you played the Game.
But while I saw my grandparents as Illinois versions of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, I now wonder whether they would have evolved into the Atticus of Go Set a Watchman if they had lived to see the Trump presidency. While the first Atticus is fully committed to the law and contemptuous of the KKK, the second joins the White Citizen’s Counsel once the Civil Rights movement gets underway. He plays the role of distinguished patriarch only as long as his privileged position is not threatened.
Would a frightened Atticus have voted for Donald Trump or, for that matter, the senate candidate and pedophile Roy Moore? After all, Doug Jones owed his victory largely to black Alabama women while in Go Set a Watchman Atticus and Calpurnia are at odds. After seeing Republicans’ near universal silence in the face of Trump’s open embrace of white supremacy, I’m thinking that Lee’s Atticus #2 is accurate.
But that brings us back to the Democrats and what politics they should practice. Everything in literature and religion says they should take the high road regardless of the consequences—Doctor Faustus teaches us the cost of soul-selling—so that’s my recommendation. But it’s hard to maintain faith in virtue when cynical scoundrels like Goneril, Regan, Edmund and Iago wreak havoc. Con men and women get away with a lot.
I guess the lesson for Othello and Edgar is to be vigilant, even while remaining virtuous. Call out iniquity without descending into the abyss and becoming monstrous yourself. If you hold on to your integrity, you are never truly lost.