The Political Law of Motion: For every stupid action there is an equal or stupider reaction.
Newton wasn’t thinking of politics when he described his Third Law of Motion: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
But when it comes to American politics today, it is the one and only operating principle. If one political party does something stupid, the other party’s response is something stupider. Followed by a even stupider retaliation, ad infinitum.
Here’s stupid: Justifiably angered by the Democrat’s stupid “Russia, Russia, Russian” campaign to expell him from the White House. Donald Trump retaliates in 2020 with an unprecedented, unconstitutional and truly stupid scheme to get Vice President Mike Pence to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden. It didn’t work, and if it had, America’s democratic fabric would have been permanently ripped apart.
"In politics stupidity is not a handicap."— Napoleon Bonaparte
Despite the reported advice of his advisors (except perhaps for knucklehead Rudy Giuliani), Trump assembled an angry crowd of supporters on the very day that, according to the Constitution, Congress was to officially declare him the loser. Being called a loser in Trump’s fevered mind the worst thing that you can say about anyone. Which, I suppose, motivated him to do something stupid.
In this, Trump was stupid enough to open wide the door for his opponents to trash him. And true to the Political Law of Motion, his opponents went recklessly stupider: Trying to toss him off the ballot.
Chief among the practitioners of stupid is the Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows who unilaterally has excluded Trump from the GOP primary ballot on the shakiest legal grounds. Even some Democrats can’t believe how stupid it is to commit a political act like that—something that has so little chance of a payoff but is a huge boost to Trump’s argument that he’s a martyr.
The multitude of Trump criminal and civil indictments by Democrat
“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber” - Plato
prosecutors was sired by the stupid January 6 madness. If Trump gets re-elected brace yourself for ever worse retributions aimed at his opponents. And that, in turn, will launch even more insanity.
The political landscape is littered with the carcasses of politicians, consultants, reporters and political junkies who thought they could get revenge by out-stupiding (word?) the opponents’ stupidness.
Impeachment of the president now has become a permanent feature of the political landscape. Democrats impeached Trump twice. Republicans are getting even with their own impeachment investigation of Biden. The whole process now is in danger of getting boring..
To be clear, stupidity is a frequent visitor to Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative precincts. As I’ve said before, the purpose of government has become payback. How did we ever get here?
Hard to tell. Probably goes back to the Stone Age. But if pressed, I would point to the Democrat’s nasty, successful campaign to block nominee Robert Bork from sitting on the Supreme Court. It was so vile that his name became a verb: “To bork.”
“Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself” - Mark Twain
Ever since, any president’s high court nomination became a political circus. Among the worst was the Democratic attack on Clarence Thomas, whose vicious onslaught he correctly called “a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks.” The one-sided attacks continue today with accusations that he accepted lavish favors from a billionaire. The liberal New Republic said, “The Democrats Need to Destroy Clarence Thomas's Reputation."
Of course, Republicans retaliated by blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland. Just wait until Biden tries, if ever, to nominate a high-court justice.
And so it goes, around and around, until the halls of Congress echo with a fever pitch of allegations, condemnations, blames, finger-pointings and denunciations. Fury already is the coin of the political realm.
Where this is leading us is terrifying.
Dennis Byrne is a retired Chicago journalist, author and freelance writer. Email: dennis@dennisbyrne.net
I place the starting point for "getting even" at Watergate. (Even though it was ostensibly bipartisan.)