Everyone in Politics Needs an Enemy

By Christopher Chantrill

Every human seems to need some cardboard villain to blame for all the sorrows of the world.  Zman makes the point that, in the dystopias imagined by George Orwell, it is not just enough to have an enemy, but a possibly unconquerable supernatural force: the very devil himself.

And our liberal friends have Donald Trump, the enemy of the ages.

But then there is the experience of women, and I am inclined to believe that the enemy of woman is the whole world. Thus Greta Thunberg: “You have stolen my dreams.” Who is “you?” Answer: everyone. And the blessed AOC: “Everyone my age is scared to have kids.” Why? Because “you” refuse to solve the climate crisis. Notice how these two beauties share the same world view. They are going to sit there and complain until someone -- some man? -- “does something” to make them feel better.

Of course, our lefty friends, ever since Marx, have lived and died on the existential enemy: capitalists, bourgeois, robber barons, patriarchy, racists, all past, present and future “-phobes,” and now “white supremacists” and “toxic masculinity.” Oh, and Trump.

Naturally, when running for president, Donald Trump rallied his supporters against poll-tested enemies: The Swamp and illegal immigrants. Of course, he did. He’s a professional.

But you and I, we are wise and thoughtful; we can rise above all that. We understand, of course, that running for office means running against an enemy. Humans are humans; the whole point of social animals is to protect against a common danger. And then all religions, at least since the Axial Age, have required a Satan, a Devil, as the enemy of God. And that’s the way it is.

And because we are wise and thoughtful we have figured that it makes sense to have a separation between church and state so that the enemy of the state can be an earthly enemy, such as World Communism or liberal professors, and the enemy of the church community can be Old Scratch himself. Hey, why not divide and conquer the enemies!

We wisely observe that when you combine church and state, as in totalitarian leftism, then the enemy of the state and the enemy of the church get blended into the One True Enemy. And that is not good. Moreover, it makes Good Little Girls frightened.

Hmm. I wonder if that is the problem with the NeverTrump crowd: “Mo-om! Donny took my dolly!”

But isn’t there something we can do to immunize ourselves against the raging epidemic of The Enemy?

Thank you, Senator; I’m glad you asked. Way back in the old days, you may recall, the president appointed a National Task Force on Hate on which served all the best minds of the nation -- and also a few drug-addled children of politicians -- and they studied the Enemy Problem. Their task was to come up with a National Solution to the Enemy Problem, and the Task Force proposed: Professional Sports. That way, all the young men of each city could rally around their city’s professional sports teams and yell their heads off in municipally financed sports stadiums and imagine the very worst of fates for the evil sports teams of all the other cities in the country. An additional benefit turned out to be the life-saving contributions made to local political coffers by greedy bankers involved in the financing and corrupt contractors involved in the construction of municipal sports stadiums.

If only we had presidents and National Task Forces today like we had in the old days!

Now, in our day, the experts on the National Task Force on Enemies would probably use the analytical framework erected by computer guy Curtis Yarvin of “The Clear Pill” that scientifically divides America into Gentry, Commoners, and Clients. They might come up with the following scientific understanding of Enemies.

For the Gentry, the enemy is racist, sexist, homophobic Commoners that are oppressing helpless Clients.

For Commoners, the enemy is the foreigners and illegal immigrants taking their jobs.

For Clients, the enemy is whoever the Gentry teaches them to hate, as in “Yes Master.”

Since Enemies are inevitable, who should the National Task Force teach us to hate? Colluding Russians or terrorist-financing mullahs? White nationalists or “mostly peaceful” Antifa protesters? CO2-spewing SUVs or bat-chomping wind turbines?

You can see that this is an intractable problem that the best minds in the nation are probably over-qualified to solve.

It may be that the solution is to let ordinary people solve the whole thing in a regularly scheduled presidential election. Of which there is one scheduled, by the grace of our Founders, in November 2020.

But here is a crazy idea. I propose that after the election all the great minds of the nation chant in unison that the voters have spoken, that we are all Americans, and that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Graphic credit: Shelly licensed under CC-BY.

 Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.