So what are we going to do, Americans? How are we going to heal the divides in our beloved country?
Here's the thing. The only time people in a country come together is when they are threatened by an existential peril. The rest of the time they are free to argue and quarrel, and they do.
Example #1: World War II. The divisions of the 1930s were all healed and all Americans were united in fighting and destroying the threat of Nazism. But after the war we went back, not to our old divisions, but new ones.
Notice that there are two kinds of existential peril. There is the threat of an army on the border threatening invasion. It's amazing how people can bury the hatchet when the Nazis or the Mongols are massing on the border.
Then there is the existential peril of a natural disaster. If your barn collapses in a storm you'd be amazed how your neighbors will rally round to help. And if you neighborhood is flooded by a hurricane, you'll be amazed by all the fishermen launching their bass fishing boats to help out.
It is pretty obvious why this is so. It's a question of survival. Down the ages, humans have rallied together when faced with an existential peril -- and survived.
Notice that there is another kind of evil that humans combine to fight against: a moral evil. So whereas it is political leaders that bring us all together to fight an existential peril, it is moral leaders, the priests, the bring us all together to fight a moral evil.
In the present fight over The Wall, President Trump is making the existential case to keep out dangerous foreigners, while Speaker Pelosi is making the moral case that a wall -- or at least This Wall -- is immoral.
A vital part of every appeal to unity to fight the existential danger is: Hate. The political leader always teaches us to hate the enemy on the border. And the moral leader teaches us to hate the Evil One that is threatening the moral order. The best thing is to represent the Hate you generate in your supporters as a rage for justice and to represent the Hate in your opponents as Literally Hitler. Because we wouldn't want anyone to think that we are all Haters at heart. No, no. We are the good guys, and the other guys are the Haters.
So, if you want to get anything done in politics, you have to conjure up an existential peril, and rally your supporters to fight the foe. In normal times this means that the two political parties will be rallying their supporters to fight the other guys over some existential issue. Sometimes the issue will be physical, such as an army on the border; sometimes the issue will be moral.
In the good old days local political differences were resolved by civil and dynastic wars. But we are above all that, at least for now.
The idea of democratic politics with a legislature and all is to convert actual civil war into a fake civil war called an "election" and then continue the sham fight with lively debates in the legislature where elected politicians throw verbal barbs instead of real ones at each other, and then defuse the natural tendency to fight endlessly over some real or imagined issue by splitting the difference with half a loaf, or by shifting the costs of the issue on some third party that isn't at the negotiating table.
It really is very clever. Instead of plundering the losers by sacking their cities and robbing them of all their worldly goods right then and there, you plunder them gradually with taxes laid by democratic votes in the legislature. Instead of grabbing the loot and passing in out among your supporters in the smoking ruins of your opponent, you pass out the goodies to your supporters every month with a check. This is not that hard to understand. Any shepherd will advise you not to kill the sheep to get its wool, but rather to shear the live sheep every year.
Obviously it is not good when the political parties can't agree to disagree and instead insist on all or nothing. But it is not surprising. After all, if we are facing an existential crisis, it obviously will not do to compromise; we are talking life and death here!
Going back a couple centuries or more we had a bunch of political thinkers here in the West who invented a politics that would try to dial down the natural enmities among men. That was what all the fuss and feathers about democratic elections, dual-camera legislatures, and separation of powers was all about. These chaps decided that politics and conquest was not the best way to resolve human differences. So they attempted to mew up politics and politicians with a web of rules and opposed institutions to discourage squabbling and reward fair dealing in the corridors of power.
But then came a bunch of political thinkers that invented a politics that made political power into the very salvation of mankind. There are still a lot of them around, and this kind of politics is taught to all our young people in the government schools and government-funded universities.
It becomes very tricky to conduct politics when one side thinks that politics should be confined in a zoo and the other side thinks that their particular brand of saving politics should roam free and unconstrained -- while the other side is nothing but privilege and hate.
But that is where we are.
Here's the thing. The only time people in a country come together is when they are threatened by an existential peril. The rest of the time they are free to argue and quarrel, and they do.
Example #1: World War II. The divisions of the 1930s were all healed and all Americans were united in fighting and destroying the threat of Nazism. But after the war we went back, not to our old divisions, but new ones.
Notice that there are two kinds of existential peril. There is the threat of an army on the border threatening invasion. It's amazing how people can bury the hatchet when the Nazis or the Mongols are massing on the border.
Then there is the existential peril of a natural disaster. If your barn collapses in a storm you'd be amazed how your neighbors will rally round to help. And if you neighborhood is flooded by a hurricane, you'll be amazed by all the fishermen launching their bass fishing boats to help out.
It is pretty obvious why this is so. It's a question of survival. Down the ages, humans have rallied together when faced with an existential peril -- and survived.
Notice that there is another kind of evil that humans combine to fight against: a moral evil. So whereas it is political leaders that bring us all together to fight an existential peril, it is moral leaders, the priests, the bring us all together to fight a moral evil.
In the present fight over The Wall, President Trump is making the existential case to keep out dangerous foreigners, while Speaker Pelosi is making the moral case that a wall -- or at least This Wall -- is immoral.
A vital part of every appeal to unity to fight the existential danger is: Hate. The political leader always teaches us to hate the enemy on the border. And the moral leader teaches us to hate the Evil One that is threatening the moral order. The best thing is to represent the Hate you generate in your supporters as a rage for justice and to represent the Hate in your opponents as Literally Hitler. Because we wouldn't want anyone to think that we are all Haters at heart. No, no. We are the good guys, and the other guys are the Haters.
So, if you want to get anything done in politics, you have to conjure up an existential peril, and rally your supporters to fight the foe. In normal times this means that the two political parties will be rallying their supporters to fight the other guys over some existential issue. Sometimes the issue will be physical, such as an army on the border; sometimes the issue will be moral.
In the good old days local political differences were resolved by civil and dynastic wars. But we are above all that, at least for now.
The idea of democratic politics with a legislature and all is to convert actual civil war into a fake civil war called an "election" and then continue the sham fight with lively debates in the legislature where elected politicians throw verbal barbs instead of real ones at each other, and then defuse the natural tendency to fight endlessly over some real or imagined issue by splitting the difference with half a loaf, or by shifting the costs of the issue on some third party that isn't at the negotiating table.
It really is very clever. Instead of plundering the losers by sacking their cities and robbing them of all their worldly goods right then and there, you plunder them gradually with taxes laid by democratic votes in the legislature. Instead of grabbing the loot and passing in out among your supporters in the smoking ruins of your opponent, you pass out the goodies to your supporters every month with a check. This is not that hard to understand. Any shepherd will advise you not to kill the sheep to get its wool, but rather to shear the live sheep every year.
Obviously it is not good when the political parties can't agree to disagree and instead insist on all or nothing. But it is not surprising. After all, if we are facing an existential crisis, it obviously will not do to compromise; we are talking life and death here!
Going back a couple centuries or more we had a bunch of political thinkers here in the West who invented a politics that would try to dial down the natural enmities among men. That was what all the fuss and feathers about democratic elections, dual-camera legislatures, and separation of powers was all about. These chaps decided that politics and conquest was not the best way to resolve human differences. So they attempted to mew up politics and politicians with a web of rules and opposed institutions to discourage squabbling and reward fair dealing in the corridors of power.
But then came a bunch of political thinkers that invented a politics that made political power into the very salvation of mankind. There are still a lot of them around, and this kind of politics is taught to all our young people in the government schools and government-funded universities.
It becomes very tricky to conduct politics when one side thinks that politics should be confined in a zoo and the other side thinks that their particular brand of saving politics should roam free and unconstrained -- while the other side is nothing but privilege and hate.
But that is where we are.
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