Willfull Men

 In his capsule biography of Robert La Follette, included in his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos describes with admiration the great liberal's lonely campaign to keep the United States out of World War I. 

Woodrow Wilson (much like Trump) campaigned on a pledge of no more wars, but managed to embroil the U.S. in one regardless. 

At one early stage of this process, Dos Passos writes, La Follette cast a brave vote against one of Wilson's armaments bills that was clearly edging the country closer to involvement in the European war. 

As Dos Passos recounts, Wilson tried to delegitimize this effort by sneering at La Follette—and the people who voted with him against the bill—as "a little group of willful men expressing no opinion but their own." 

I thought back to this line yesterday, when Rep. Massie introduced charges against Pete Hegseth for his role in starting two illegal wars of aggression, ordering the extrajudicial murder of hundreds of people on boats in the Caribbean, bombing civilians in Iran and Yemen, etc. 

The Secretary of Defense tried the same move Wilson did in order to delegitimize La Follette. Sounding very de haut en bas, Hegseth airily dismissed Massie—a dissident Republican—as one "disgruntled and defeated congressman" who spoke for himself alone. 

This is of course absurd. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows that the American people just delivered a resounding verdict against the Iran war and Hegseth's leadership—and this administration's other imperialist debacles—at the polls in the midterm elections. 

But Hegseth knows the one cardinal rule of survival in the Trump political orbit; and it is the same one Rameau's nephew prescribes in Diderot's classic dialogue: "butter them up, watch the great, study their tastes, fall in with their whims, pander to their vices, approve their injustices." (Tancock trans.)

And so, Pete Hegseth unloaded a heavy artillery barrage of flattery and sycophancy on Trump. He compared the House effort to the earlier impeachment votes against his boss, and he reportedly cried, "if standing with President Trump puts me in that company, I’ll take that company every day of the week."

And apparently, it worked. Trump graded the speech in real time on social media with an "A PLUS PLUS PLUS" score, as he put it. Hegseth buttered him up good!

Rep. Massie, meanwhile—"whose warmest heart recoiled at war," as E.E. Cummings wrote of the conscientious objector Olaf in his great poem on the subject—is quickly elevating himself to the pantheon of American heroes, up there with La Follette himself. 

If Dos Passos were writing another U.S.A. trilogy today, I think he'd have to include a capsule biography of him!

And he is therefore meeting the typical fate of heroes—at the hands of the rest of the Republican caucus—which E.E. Cummings also describes in the same poem: his wellbelovéd colonel(trig

westpointer most succinctly bred)

took erring Olaf soon in hand;

but--though an host of overjoyed

noncoms(first knocking on the head

him)do through icy waters roll

that helplessness which others stroke

with brushes recently employed

anent this muddy toiletbowl,

while kindred intellects evoke

allegiance per blunt instruments [...]

The other Republican members of the House, it would appear, are still entirely beholden to Trump. While Massie, like the great Olaf in Cummings's poem, has decided to tell his own party, "there is some shit I will not eat"—the rest of the Republican House caucus sidles up with a plate and fork and says: "please, daddy, dish me out some more! Mmm it tastes so good!"

As Massie said yesterday, this is the one positive thing coming out of the impeachment effort that the House leadership managed to shelve. It was at least clarifying about the state of the Republican Party after the midterms. "What I found out tonight is they still haven’t broken from the spell of Donald Trump," as Massie put it; "He still controls this conference."

I admit that this was somewhat of a surprise to me too. I briefly fell into the trap of thinking that Republicans would have to experience some kind of awakening after their wipeout loss in the midterms. I thought: surely many of them disliked Trump all along, in their hearts, and now they will find the courage to oppose him publicly. 

But no. Not only did they help save Trump's walking dumpster fire of a SecDef yesterday; the Senate Republicans also voted to keep their current leadership. And the House Republicans reportedly picked Trump loyalist Jim Jordan as their new minority leader for the 120th Congress. 

Apparently, Republicans have learned nothing at all—except to double down even harder on what they've been doing wrong already. 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I should have remembered the kinds of people Trump has brought into office under this banner, and how many other Republicans with any scrap of common sense and integrity he has purged from the party in the meantime. 

MAGA is not a political movement. It's a cult. And like any other totalitarian cult, it will never really rid itself of its delusions so long as the charismatic founder still walks among them. 

I woke up this morning thinking of the apt but unprintable words of warning with which Bertolt Brecht closed his play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (about a thinly-disguised version of a certain German dictator who also led a cult of personality): 

So let’s not drop our guard too quickly then: / Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard / The b---- that bore him is in heat again. (Tabori/Beaton trans.)

That seems to be exactly what happened in the midterms. The American people stood up and stopped Trump, in a resounding and unmistakable electoral repudiation. But the corrupt and toadying Republican Party that made him possible is up to exactly its usual tricks. So, indeed, "let's not drop our guard too quickly then." 

And of course, Democrats are also being true to form in their own way. If the typical vice of the Republican Party in the Trump era is to circle the wagons around their own leaders precisely when they ought most to rethink the direction of their party—the Democrats are managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by turning on theirs. 

You'd think that Republicans, after losing the elections by historic margins, would be the ones looking for a change in personnel at the top. 

But no. They just returned Thune to Senate leadership and doubled down on Hegseth and Trump. 

Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer just led us to an historic sweeping victory that completely remade the electoral map of the country. He personally recruited some of the most successful candidates who flipped Senate seats for us in places like Texas, Kansas, and Ohio. 

And instead of thanking and rewarding him for this success, some of the same people Schumer just helped bring to power are already turning on him. As the Associated Press reported late yesterday, "A number of incoming Democratic senators have echoed the call" for Schumer to step aside. 

The Republicans can't help but stick with a leader even after he has lost them everything. Democrats apparently cannot stick with a leader even after he has won them everything. 

What could better distill the two characteristic opposing vices of the parties? Republicans can't help but adhere to a cultish in-group mentality, even when it hurts them. Whereas Democrats can't help but sabotage themselves through destructive sectarian in-fighting, even when their current leadership brought them to victory. 

I get that Schumer didn't initially support all the most "progressive lane" candidates in this race. He would have preferred others. But once the voters had spoken in the primaries, he backed El-Sayed to the hilt in Michigan and defended him vehemently when Haley Stevens tried to claw back her endorsement. 

Now, with rank ingratitude, the same progressives Schumer just swallowed his preferences to elect—out of a spirit of party loyalty—immediately turn on the man who brought them to power. 

With boundless arrogance, the progressive-lane candidates who won their races in a number of already-Democratic seats (by narrower margins than generic Democrats led in the polls), are already claiming for themselves the right to set the future direction of the entire party—even though the midterms gave no clear sign that voters support their agenda. 

Progressive lane candidates either lost or merely held on to seats that were already in Democratic hands, by unimpressive margins, whereas all the candidates who managed to flip seats ran as moderates. 

Where progressives did win, then, it was largely by riding on the coattails of a much more sweeping Democratic victory—reaching far beyond their progressive faction—that Schumer helped engineer. They are biting the hand that fed them. 

Also, it's not like Schumer just grudgingly endorsed the progressive lane candidates in this race. As Ezra Klein points out in the latest episode of his podcast, he also directed enormous amounts of party resources ($50 million, by Klein's count) to get El-Sayed elected. 

Now, one of the first moves El-Sayed and the other newly-elected progressives make after the vote is to call for Schumer to step down? 

I can only repeat of Schumer's fate what James Joyce wrote of Parnell, in the poem he includes in his "Ivy Day in the Committee Room": 

He lies slain by the coward hounds

He raised to glory from the mire; [...]

Shame on the coward, caitiff hands

That [...] with a kiss

Betrayed him[.]