To Be or Not to Be
In the pendulum swing of politics, Mr. Trump and his Republican lackeys in Congress have caused the pendulum swing as far right as I can imagine. When I was recently on a motorcycle trip with a solidly red friend, he asked me with genuine curiosity why I thought some people in the country are throwing their support behind Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren when their positions are clearly so socialistic. This was anathema to my friend as it is to most Republicans. I told him that it was a predictable overreaction to the harshness of the Trump presidency, just like the Trump election was an overreaction to eight years of Obama, who undoubtedly rankled the highly and even mildly bigoted end of the Republican spectrum. I suspect my friend might have called bullshit on my theory just because he would prefer to think all those leftists were just crazy rather than reacting rationally. But we happened to be joined by another friend who was a very prominent Republican Governor recently ousted in his reelection bid. He thought my explanation was very plausible and said so. It caused my friend to noticeably alter his stance and nod his agreement with what would have otherwise been too far-fetched for him.
The physics of a pendulum are very simple and yet they encompass the first three laws of Newtonian physics. The mathematics of pendulums are even more complicated. I’m not sure how to reconcile that simultaneous simplicity and complexity. I imagine that given man’s constant quest for machines of perpetual motion to conserve and efficiently utilize energy, a pendulum probably gets lots of attention. The use of a pendulum in high quality timekeeping pieces is good evidence that the pendulum is an attractive mechanical target for use.
The problem is that pendulums are for business as usual and we are now officially beyond business as usual in American politics. I have this mental image of Trump, acting out his normal petulant child of privilege routine, opening the glass case that houses the clock pendulum, surprising himself that he has gained such easy access to the mechanism, and reaching in and grabbing the pendulum with his sticky and crass fingers and giving it a harsh yank to the right. I honestly do not think Trump thinks deeply about anything. This is not a philosophical gesture or one driven by an ideology, it is the flailing of a man-child that simply does not know any better.
Meanwhile, the previously disdainful Republican hierarchy that did not delight in Trump’s overwhelming base thrusting him forward into the leadership of the party, has stopped to reconsider. The reality of the moment could either have them exiting the party to form Republicans Part Deux or figuring how to manipulate the beast. With his grubby hands on the pendulum, the thought suddenly occurred to the Republican leadership; maybe this could work for them after all. The problem with pendulums in politics is that the hard work over eight years was usually undone to a large extent over the following eight years as the pendulum swung back. There was progress, but it was inchingly slow. Furthermore, the demographics of the United States (nay, the world) were suggesting that the pendulum might well skew to the left in a way that an over-torqued pendulum gets pushed over the top, only to make a return to balance impossible. This is to say that the “browning” of the population by the extreme growth rate of the Islamic world (1.8 billion souls growing twice as fast as the 2.2 billion Christian base means that Islam will overtake Christianity in twenty years). Furthermore, on an ethnic basis, whites will be a minority in the United States by 2040 depending on how much immigration is opened or curtailed. This is a classic train coming around the bend whose smokestack gives away the inevitability of the coming “trainwreck” for white Christians.
It does not take a genius of a Republican to realize that business as usual with the pendulum does not work for them. Watching Trump grab the pendulum by the stem may not have been a methodology Republicans had conceived or even approved of, but one can almost see the lightbulb going on over their collective heads as it is happening. Self-preservation is the most powerful force of nature. It is normal for a people to act in extreme ways to preserve itself at all costs when they perceive the threat as terminal. The Republicans have decided that ripping out the pendulum altogether is worth the risk of breaking the mechanism of democracy because democracy is on the verge of turning against their very interests. Boom!
Here is the biggest question that we will be testing over the next year. Is democracy sacred enough to Americans that they will seek to preserve it for its ideological sanctity, or will extreme ethnocentric self-interest prevail. I am not certain most of the people with the power of the vote understand this stark reality, but I sure wish they did. I sense that they are all very immune to comments about the threat to democracy and consider it liberal-babble at this stage of the Mueller/Impeachment process.
I am trying to be smarter rather than ideological about all of this. I feel that smarter may prevail if we can get our head around a better solution. That is why I am getting more and more adamant about a centrist approach to the Democratic Party process. I have never registered for a political party. I have always wanted to feel free to vote my views on the candidate rather than the party. This year I may finally register as a Democrat in order to try to help sway the outcome towards the “smarter” approach that is more likely to prevail and help prevent the ripping out of the pendulum mechanism altogether. Needless to say, I feel a second Trump term is a disaster of the ultimate order, a pendulum-ending event. I will push as hard as I can for a centrist solution whether it is Buttigieg, Bloomberg or even Biden. I just realized that there is new meaning to that old Shakespearian quote from Hamlet “To be or not to be, that is the question.” I might want to recast it now as “To B or not to be, that is the question.” Let me end this diatribe by further quoting Hamlet.
This above all: to thine own self be true. – Act, Scene 3
What a piece of work is man! – Act 2, Scene 2
What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. – Act 3, Scene 1
And for my Republican brethren, not idly standing by, but helping Claudius with his evil deeds, be warned that… Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead – Act 4, Scene 2