Stewed Frogs
Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) has recently urged a ‘keep your powder dry’ approach to the crisis of the Trump Presidency. Reasoning that too much passion now will weaken the necessary response later, when the real bad thing happens, he has been critical of the heightened tone around the first weeks’ acts. Beyond the fact that I think it is too difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when Trump will have reached the line, there is the deeper problem that even if it were possible to identify the correct wrong act, at such a point it would be too late.
Looking at the past week, the legal cases which have constrained and now stayed the immigration Executive Order may not have been brought or argued so well without the intensity of opposition in the past week. It is also important to remember there are no real defenses of the Checks and Balances which are meant to keep our government in line, and so the fact that the decision on the ban immediately brought a response to delegitimise the judge and the court’s place to review is troubling. We should accept without naivete that his supporters now thoroughly question the court’s actions. This deepening of the lines of enmity will have a further ripple effect.
And this is where we see Nichols’ plan falter. While he is correct that the ban itself (or any of a host of other gaffes) was not an act worthy of the almighty wrath, and its worst likely will be overturned, its damage has been done. Because the real problem we face is not the acts but their effects. Dumb actions, whether they are Executive Orders or tweets, can be construed as irrelevant to the greater harm that could be done. But to too many Trump supporters these actions and statements fulfill promises and are seen as legitimately Presidential. And each time they are defeated or constrained, these supporters are being told the administration is being undermined. We are losing ground by the day. Similarly, foreign partners cannot chuckle their way past these opening acts. They must cope with their own domestic opinion and they can’t know for certain when or how any of Trump’s acts will be restrained. And so even as US policy may not significantly change, the world around us will have.
As it is clear this model will continue, the damage will accumulate while awaiting the ‘essential bad act’. So, while Nichols tells us to wait until the right moment the ground is changing beneath us. Unlike the frog put in a kettle set to boil, we instead are slowly stewing in a context that worsens with every act. Before we reach a boil we will be cooked. At that exact right moment to act the support for the Trump administration narrative will have become too strong, the problems created at home and abroad gone too far, for the righteous response to the correctly wrong act to save us.
The need, then, is not to perfect some wisdom to identify the perfected moment, but to develop the means to be resilient and persevere. This might argue for a lessening of finger wagging, as that energy could be better spent elsewhere.
