[image: image.png] opening thoughts:deciding to fight back james: I wrote about the point of deciding to just fight and die on a hill rather than endlessly calculating the best moment to put up an opposition.
I’ve sort of struggled over the last couple of weeks to correctly capture the words necessary to demonstrate what I think is the most important principle of our political moment—the need to fight. The opposition, or lack thereof, to the slow degeneration of American political life into an erratic personalist kleptocratic system of governance, has been the subject of significant debate lately.
The inability of Senate Democrats to hold firm and force the shutdown of the government last week was based on a rational calculus about the long-term benefits of attempting a fight later predicated on the belief that the slow erosion of support for President Trump would make the fight easier at a later date.
In a frictionless void, Trump’s increasingly erratic policymaking would almost assuredly deplete his polling numbers—and by extension, his political capital—providing a better basis from which to wage a fight.
Politics, however, is not a frictionless void.
This moment has caused me to think quite a bit about a passage from Machiavelli’s *The Prince* where he provides two cases about the fate of a political community facing invasion from an outside power vastly superior in strength to their own.
In one of the scenarios, he presents the leaders of the community as making a rational decision to surrender without a fight, rationally preserving their lives and wealth at the expense of giving up their sovereignty. While they remained alive, Machiavelli was quick to point out that their sense of being independent people died with their unwillingness to fight.
In the second case, the political community decides to fight on despite their almost impossible odds—and are conquered by the foreign power. However, because they decided to fight, they kept alive an idea of who they were, and would one day inevitably become free again.
What Machiavelli was pointing out (and what many others have noted) is that the fight itself is as important as the odds of winning…
This gets me back to the point I want to make here about the necessity of the Democratic leadership putting aside rational political calculations and just *fighting*.
Politics is a realm that’s inhibited by passions ignited by myths and images of who we are and what we’re doing in the world. When our leadership is willing to dig their heels in and die on a hill—regardless of where that hill is—the rank and file feel like there’s *something to fight for. *
It’s almost a question of momentum, like a grand rugby match. The earlier and more tenaciously you dig into a scrum, the more willing those alongside you are to stick their necks out and just fight the thing out.
When people see others as willing to fight, *they* believe they can fight too. The will to fight doesn’t go out of a community unless the individuals in that community give up their faith in their cause. We merely need leaders who will push us to live up to that mental image of ourselves that we hold.
It’s also a story about who *we *are as people. I think there’s some form of psychological necessity in *knowing* there are things we are unwilling to bargain for. That we all have lines internal to us that we’re willing to fight it out over, and we’re not just constantly negotiating our beliefs.
How can you feel like getting up in the morning if you don’t have a sense of yourself as someone with the character to draw a line in the sand somewhere after all? We could sit around and calculate how much better our odds might be a year from now, but by then, is there going to be anyone left with the spirit to fight? part one: GROSS EXPORTSAmerica’s Christian Right Is Coming to the U.K.The Christian nationalist movement has undertaken a vast worldwide expansion. Hello, London? Texas calling. author: Katherine Stewart is the author of *The Power Worshippers*:* Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism *and *Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy*. part two: Trump’s DOGE campaign accelerates 50-year trend of government privatization. Nathan Meyers PhD Candidate in Sociology, UMass Amherst Listen online at www.wnhnfm.org/live. Listen anytime to the podcast at www.podomatic.com/podcasts/staff74238 <www.podomatic.com/podcasts/staff74238> podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/attitude-with-arnie-arnesen/id1634055179 tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie- <tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie-Arnesen-p1711842/> Arnesen-p1711842/ <tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie-Arnesen-p1711842/> Attitude with Arnie Arnesen,time to fight,James, Katherine Stewart, New Republic, Money, Lies and God:Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, Nathan Meyers, UMass Amherst, privatization *KEEPING THE POT STIRRED SO SCUM DOESN’T RISE TO THE TOP* – Anonymous
I’ve sort of struggled over the last couple of weeks to correctly capture the words necessary to demonstrate what I think is the most important principle of our political moment—the need to fight. The opposition, or lack thereof, to the slow degeneration of American political life into an erratic personalist kleptocratic system of governance, has been the subject of significant debate lately.
The inability of Senate Democrats to hold firm and force the shutdown of the government last week was based on a rational calculus about the long-term benefits of attempting a fight later predicated on the belief that the slow erosion of support for President Trump would make the fight easier at a later date.
In a frictionless void, Trump’s increasingly erratic policymaking would almost assuredly deplete his polling numbers—and by extension, his political capital—providing a better basis from which to wage a fight.
Politics, however, is not a frictionless void.
This moment has caused me to think quite a bit about a passage from Machiavelli’s *The Prince* where he provides two cases about the fate of a political community facing invasion from an outside power vastly superior in strength to their own.
In one of the scenarios, he presents the leaders of the community as making a rational decision to surrender without a fight, rationally preserving their lives and wealth at the expense of giving up their sovereignty. While they remained alive, Machiavelli was quick to point out that their sense of being independent people died with their unwillingness to fight.
In the second case, the political community decides to fight on despite their almost impossible odds—and are conquered by the foreign power. However, because they decided to fight, they kept alive an idea of who they were, and would one day inevitably become free again.
What Machiavelli was pointing out (and what many others have noted) is that the fight itself is as important as the odds of winning…
This gets me back to the point I want to make here about the necessity of the Democratic leadership putting aside rational political calculations and just *fighting*.
Politics is a realm that’s inhibited by passions ignited by myths and images of who we are and what we’re doing in the world. When our leadership is willing to dig their heels in and die on a hill—regardless of where that hill is—the rank and file feel like there’s *something to fight for. *
It’s almost a question of momentum, like a grand rugby match. The earlier and more tenaciously you dig into a scrum, the more willing those alongside you are to stick their necks out and just fight the thing out.
When people see others as willing to fight, *they* believe they can fight too. The will to fight doesn’t go out of a community unless the individuals in that community give up their faith in their cause. We merely need leaders who will push us to live up to that mental image of ourselves that we hold.
It’s also a story about who *we *are as people. I think there’s some form of psychological necessity in *knowing* there are things we are unwilling to bargain for. That we all have lines internal to us that we’re willing to fight it out over, and we’re not just constantly negotiating our beliefs.
How can you feel like getting up in the morning if you don’t have a sense of yourself as someone with the character to draw a line in the sand somewhere after all? We could sit around and calculate how much better our odds might be a year from now, but by then, is there going to be anyone left with the spirit to fight? part one: GROSS EXPORTSAmerica’s Christian Right Is Coming to the U.K.The Christian nationalist movement has undertaken a vast worldwide expansion. Hello, London? Texas calling. author: Katherine Stewart is the author of *The Power Worshippers*:* Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism *and *Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy*. part two: Trump’s DOGE campaign accelerates 50-year trend of government privatization. Nathan Meyers PhD Candidate in Sociology, UMass Amherst Listen online at www.wnhnfm.org/live. Listen anytime to the podcast at www.podomatic.com/podcasts/staff74238 <www.podomatic.com/podcasts/staff74238> podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/attitude-with-arnie-arnesen/id1634055179 tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie- <tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie-Arnesen-p1711842/> Arnesen-p1711842/ <tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie-Arnesen-p1711842/> Attitude with Arnie Arnesen,time to fight,James, Katherine Stewart, New Republic, Money, Lies and God:Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, Nathan Meyers, UMass Amherst, privatization *KEEPING THE POT STIRRED SO SCUM DOESN’T RISE TO THE TOP* – Anonymous
