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Monday
Among the many dispiriting responses to Donald Trump’s fascist takeover of America is the way that previously responsible people have been groveling before him. One of the latest is the law firm of Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, who have caved in to the president’s shakedown as one surrenders to a mob boss. Until I read a William Kristol column in the Bulwark, however, I didn’t know that Rudyard Kipling has described this behavior in his poem “Dane-Geld.”
As the Associated Press describes it, Trump’s recent attack on Weiss is the latest in a series of actions targeting law firms whose lawyers have performed legal work that Trump disagrees with. In this instance, his presidential order
threatened the suspension of security clearances for Paul Weiss attorneys as well as the termination of any federal contracts involving the firm. It cited as an explanation the fact that a former Paul Weiss attorney, Mark Pomerantz, had been a central player in an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Trump’s finances before Trump became president.
Weiss, fearing that his law firm would be driven out of business, offered Trump $40 million in pro bono services, at which point Trump withdrew his threat. Kristol titled his account of the capitulation, “Paul Weiss Pays the Dane Geld,” a reference to Kipling’s poem:
Dane-Geld
By Rudyard Kipling
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbor and to say:–
“We invaded you last night–we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:–
“Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:–
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”
At the moment, Trump is Kipling’s “armed and agile nation” to Weiss’s “rich and lazy nation.” Weiss has been instructed to “pay up or be molested,” along with the promise that his firm will be safe once they do so. Fat chance, say both Kipling and Kristol. Paying the Dane-geld is letting the Dane know that he can keep demanding. “If once you have paid him the Dane-geld,” the poet points out, “You will never get rid of the Dane.”
Knowing this, progressives, liberals, and traditional Republicans like Kristol are begging those in leadership positions—whether they be heads of law firms, universities, media companies, or Senate Democrats—not to buckle under. They understand too well that “the end of that game is oppression and shame,/ And the nation that plays it is lost!”
