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I have a rant to get off my chest directed at a favorite punching bag: Never Trump. I’ve been wrestling with some thoughts that have crystallized this week and don’t know where else to write them down. Every single NT argument is built upon a single faulty premise.
That premise being the existence of a concept of goodwill in politics. In interpersonal relationships, goodwill exists. I grab the check tonight, you pay for dinner the next time. And good people remember and follow through. No matter how much you fight it,
there is no reciprocity coming in politics. Nothing you do or say will have any bearing on what your opponent does or says in the future. The entire basis for the concept of social goodwill is reciprocity: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
In a vacuum, there’s no morality involved in the paying back of a dinner that was paid for you. The only reason it is considered the “right thing to do” is because when someone does something nice for you, you reciprocate. There is no reciprocity in politics.
You can fight this truth all you want, it remains true. No one will give a shit that Bill Kristol opposed Trump the next time Bill Kristol’s guy is in power. It literally will not register. You will be Hitler again. In drafting bills, there is no true
Bipartisanship, there’s two parties fighting to get as much as they can. If Republicans go “ya know what, let’s make us both happy let’s do X that you want and Y that we want” the response from Democrats will be “no.” And the same would happen in reverse
If Republicans hold a vote for Merrick Garland, the second the roles were reversed Democrats would do exactly what McConnell did. There’s no shame here, politics isn’t your friend circle, it’s a fight for the power to govern. This all might sound like an
excuse to enable people’s worst impulses. Perhaps, but that’s something you need to worry about on an individual level, because your concern about restraining people’s worst behavior is meaningless, people will act independently of your desire for comity
and will take what they can get away with taking. In summation: appeals to “morality,” “decency,” or any other such platitude has no place in politics and represents a fundamental, and permanently defeated, perspective. Take what you can and prepare your defenses.
