Earlier this week, Charles Sykes penned a piece in Politico offering an apt analogy between today's so-called "America First" neo-isolationists and the isolationists of the 1930s. (It's not like they've made it hard to draw the comparison, by the way—they even borrowed the same slogan from their 1930s forebears!). Much as the isolationists back then refused to support efforts to resist Hitler's aggressive ambitions in Europe, today's isolationists want to give Putin free rein to trample over our allies and trigger the next world war.
In an effort to resist them, Sykes offers a lesson from history. He says that FDR, in a series of speeches leading up to the 1940 election, managed to make the isolationists appear ridiculous by the simple device of rhyming their names. "Martin, Barton, and Fish," he chanted in several speeches—which, as Sykes points out, perhaps lodges in the brain because it subtly evokes the same cadence as the childhood rhyme "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod." He therefore suggests that Biden ought to come up with something similar (while conceding that verbal fluency is not Biden's strong suit).
The updated version of the chant Sykes offers is "J.D., Jordan, and Trump," referring to the unholy trinity of Senate, House, and would-be White House officials who seem most primed to sell out our NATO allies in a future term, and bow down to Putin's territorial ambitions. And this proposed chant is a valiant effort, to be sure; but it it lacks the punch of "Martin, Barton, and Fish," in part because the first and second terms in the list do not rhyme. Sykes concedes as much and suggests to readers that they try to come up with their own version that would work better. I have been attempting to do so.
The best I've got so far is "Tucker, F**ker, and Trump." I've also considered "Putin, Tootin', and Trump." These at least manage to restore the rhyme. But they are still far from perfect, since both require the reader to know that the middle term in both sequences is meant to refer to J.D. Vance. I am hopeful, though, that as the Senator from Ohio's behavior becomes increasingly insufferable over time, this will start to seem as equally self-evident to everyone else as it does to me now. Who else could be meant by the neo-isolationist F-bomb I have in mind for the second proposed term?
After all, Vance is fast rising to the top of my list of the very worst members of this whole nefarious tribe. He seems possibly worse than all the others, in part because he obviously knows better. He therefore adds hypocrisy to the list of all the other vices of the neo-isolationists (such as cowardice and worship of bullies). Here, after all, is a man who once said in a text message to a friend that he was worried that Trump might turn out to become "America's Hitler." Yet look at him now.
What changed since that text to make Vance become Trump's number-one Senate lapdog? Maybe, as Vance claimed, he changed his mind about Trump (though the accumulated evidence in the years since—a coup attempt, family separation, worship of Putin, increasingly unhinged rhetoric, etc.—would hardly seem to suggest that Vance's 2016 text message was on the wrong track). Or maybe Vance decided that even if Trump becomes America's Hitler, he cares more about his own power and political future than he does the fate of the country's democracy.
Or maybe Vance decided that Trump will indeed become America's Hitler, and he thinks that's awesome. Maybe he's decided that a Hitler is exactly what America needs. After all, Vance is already openly calling on a future Trump administration to defy Supreme Court orders—openly demanding a constitutional crisis and trying to subvert the rule of law, in short. Vance is also voting to sabotage all efforts to resist Putin's warfare and aggression in Europe, mirroring the appeasement policy of 1930s isolationists who abetted Hitler's rise. (Recall that Hitler used very similar arguments to claim the Sudetenland that Putin is using today to try to hive off chunks of Eastern Ukraine.)
Vance, after all, is the man who says he "do[esn't] really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another." Yet, as Ukrainian activists are reminding us, we'll have to start caring eventually. Even if we completely reject the notion of having any moral obligation to allied democracies overseas that are being invaded and butchered by our adversaries—even if we only apply the most crassly self-interested logic to the situation, after all, we'll have to admit eventually that Putin is only so many borders away from us. If we let him gobble up everyone who stands in between, he'll eventually be on our shores too.
Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes recently published a Substack post that featured photographs of a pro-Ukraine performance artist on Capitol Hill. She had covered her face and shoulders in dripping red paint, evoking blood, and donned a costume that made her the personification of Putin's Russia. She also held up a sign. It read: "Be ready world! If you don't stop me, I will stop you!"
The line put me in mind of the closing speech of Bertolt Brecht's warning about Hitler's rise to power, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. In the play's closing monologue, penned for performances after the war, Brecht is in a position to reflect back on Hitler's reign, after his government had finally collapsed under the weight of its own evil, aggression, and hubris. This time, "the world stood up and stopped the bastard," the monologue runs (Tabori trans.), but Brecht warns us that another Arturo Ui could rise in future.
And that's just the problem we have right now—with Trump, Vance, Putin, and their whole interconnected gang of would-be authoritarians and their boot-licking toadies. The world hasn't heeded Brecht's warnings; and so, it hasn't yet stood up to stop the bastards. And that's what the pro-Ukraine activist's sign on Capitol Hill is warning us too. If we don't stop them, if we keep on failing to stop them, if we don't defeat Putin's friends and apologists in the next election, then our future is all too clear. It will be as blood-soaked as her costume warns.
And so, as Sykes suggests, let's stop being polite about the matter. Let us not fear to drop the verbal F-bomb if it will save us from the nonverbal A- or H- bombs in the years ahead. If a silly rhyme will help, let us utter it. You have heard my proposed chant. Tucker, F**ker, and Trump. It's time we stopped the bastards.
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