What Machiavelli might say about current American politics

I’ve been studying Power recently. We have seen some interesting exercises in it lately. Really, most of what I study relates to biology so I consider the quest for power in terms of being a blind, dumb Darwinian drive and a result of human dominance instinct. While it has worked pretty well as a strategy for the last 150,000 years or so, it now is a strategy becoming more and more dangerous to human survival. Its violence endangers the civilization we have built and that is our life support system. It is wasteful and it prevents the cooperation that civilization requires for efficiency. Nature is limited in the kind of strategies it can produce and we need more sophisticated ones now than our instincts can provide.
In my study, I had to of course look at what Nicoli Machiavelli said about power. He is considered something of an authority. He made a lot of points and showed different ways to look at Power. One thing he describes was that what a person is and what they look like may be very different. He said that a Prince might be a very good person, but that will not help him keep his power, quite the opposite actually. So he must have two personalities, a private morality and a public one. Privately a prince may be good or evil. The public, political persona though must be able to be ruthless and able to imitate any immorality of his “evil” enemies. His message was really about how “good” princes could deal with immoral “evil” ones.

So how does that apply here, today? Much of this goes back to Newt Gingrich. He saw how frustrating politics was with compromise and conflict leading to nothing he wanted. He was an admirer of biology and thought that bringing biological principles to American Government would get the results he wanted. He groomed a generation of representatives to ruthlessly seek power by rejecting any compromise. Negotiation about legislation ended and the win at any cost principles of nature is what we are dealing with today in politics. He brought the Darwinain Law of the Jungle to fight the Laws of the Constitution.

Interestingly this problem of groups subscribing to different standards of behavior seems comparable to current policy considerations calling for “technical bifurcation” from China. That’s because the alternative to bifurcation is a world in which China’s non-democratic norms have “won”. How do you compete with someone that doesn’t play by the same rules and believes cheating is just fine?

So what might Machiavelli think of current events? It is easy to describe the princes that vie for power at any cost. That is the Republican Party, though the history of his goes back much further than the war on liberals or even the culture wars. Who is the “good” prince on the other side then? That would be the law, based on the Constitution. The Preamble of the Constitution is one of the greatest moral statements of all time. The entire Constitution describes the power of the government. This is what the “evil” princes are trying to take power away from. That’s easy to see. So how could the Constitution compete? It really cannot become publicly immoral like a prince. Its power is in the courts and the ability to mete out punishment. That suggests that the punishment for insurrection and lawlessness in general that threatens the Constitution or tries to take its power must be brutal and as ruthless as Machiavelli described as necessary to deal with evil. Machiavelli would probably say that Democracy is in great danger because the power of the evil princes is not being limited to moral actions. The law must “ruthlessly” punish them. Their lies must not be tolerated. Their immorality must be judged as evil. Otherwise, they will certainly win and democracy will lose. Really, under that asymmetric attack, it’s hard to see how democracy can survive.

Keep in mind. Some people have asked if when Trumpism is gone will we forgive them. They will never forgive you or stop trying to gain power over you by taking your power and the power of law. It’s just a blind Darwinian drive they are following. The moral struggle is not a war to be won, but battles fought every day by all good men and women against the Darwinian driven forces that would enslave us and kill the bright potentials of humanity’s future.

The question is what can you do about people that are willfully immoral. It’s like the question that has been asked here before: how can you deprogram your friends and family that have accepted Trumpism. I had a thought. I examine word meanings in weird ways. I once examined what honor is. In history, it has held a critical place. I once wondered if in the anonymity of the Internet whether honor would mean anything. I never pursued it a lot but now it may be the word we need. The thing is that if you support the lies or immorality of Trump or Trumpism, you have sacrificed your honor. I know that much. Remember that much of Trumpism is the War on Liberals. It’s not about how good the Trumpers claim to be or their policies or vision of the future of America. They know they are not good. They just claim to be infinitely better than the liberals and the lies they tell each other to support that are whoppers, but they know, I’m sure they know that they are lying. They change the subject or get mad if you call them on it, but they won’t say they aren’t lying. Sew… what would happen if you questioned their honor? It is more than just a quaint word. To lose one’s honor is to choose to reject the law. They have rejected the truth. You can’t do business with a person like that. A contract is no longer reliable. They will send a lawyer instead of payment. Ultimately, if it becomes convenient they will threaten you with violence and death. Does that perhaps sound familiar? A society cannot survive without honor. Individuals must respect the truth. In history, those without honor were often killed. Now those without honor must be shunned. Businesses have quit making donations to them and must because they may succeed in the short run, but they will be death to us all in the long run. They know they aren’t acting with honor. Call them out on it. Don’t let them change the subject or get angry about it. If they cannot claim honor, reject them. It is too dangerous to accept them as has been known since the first time that it was said that “an evil tree bears no good fruit”.