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Fighting Words
The careful language of democracy is failing to save democracy. Do we need new words?
Crowd behavior does not always serve the crowd well. We saw a stark example of that in the recent election, when a trickster figure named Donald Trump yelled “fire” in the crowded theater of American politics and the voting public surged en masse toward the exits.
The bet voters made was that the small-minded, power-hungry deceiver who failed during his first shot at high office would somehow not be the President Trump we got this time around. It was what a confidence man might call a sucker bet.
Did voters get what thought they were signing up for? Or are they now watching the chaotic and disquieting early days of the new administration and wondering what sort of deal with the devil they might have made?
We don’t know the answers to that, not yet. I do think it helps explain why the opposition to Mr. Trump started out so quiet this time around. No million-person marches. No cars turned over in the street. The defeated and deflated Democratic Party may have found some wisdom in the old saying, “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.” It was smart to take a breath here. Trust the ears more than the tongue until you’ve figured out what it might be useful to say.
