FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY? - By Jim Kent

For too many amurricans, history started from the first thing they can personally remember. One notices this when forced to listen to people my age bang on about the decline of religion because when we were young the churches were full of people with freshly scrubbed children in tow, or the decline of education because when we were young the PTA meetings were packed to the rafters with parents pleading to help out.

As it happens, those recollections are largely accurate, especially for fairly well-off white folks. But that period of history (still called the “post-war era,” which makes the point nicely since several wars have since gone postal) was profoundly unusual. In the US, mainstream churches had never been so full before, and not many moms had the spare time to sit through interminable meetings in the evenings—this was after many of them had labour-saving machines that actually saved labour but before they were able to get any of the better jobs.

Life was especially good for relatively well-off white guys, who were therefore baffled and annoyed when it turned out that some segments of the population were unhappy with the prevailing state of affairs. Many people who had carelessly neglected to be white males at birth felt slighted, and a lot of them were becoming, shall we say, testy about it.

The upstarts, who came to include their own offspring, were flouting immemorial custom, divine instruction and patriotic duty, all of which were assumed to be not only synonymous but also coterminous with the comfort zone of the old white guys. This terrified them, because history had clearly taught them and their forebears that they were the only ones qualified—indeed, entitled--to run things. As an old white guy of long standing (although I can no longer stand as long as I could) I understand why they panicked and are panicking yet, and why they’ve tried with some success to instill the same panic in others.

Some guys had got lucky and came from families who could handle significant social change with equanimity, and thought it was okay for kids and other strange life forms to have their own ideas. Most, alas, were not so fortunate. I had and still have friends and acquaintances who did not have such families, and on the whole they seem much less happy than those who did. They also tend to be more afraid of anything unfamiliar. As the world changes rapidly these days, they are highly susceptible to efforts to instill fear.

Some, e.g., have figured out that fear is a lousy neighbourhood to live in and managed to escape. Most of the rest are in the thrall of the fearmongers of the extreme wings of our two major political parties. They spend their time and energy shouting bumper-sticker slogans at each other, in the belief that anyone who is afraid of the incorrect objects is an existential threat to The American Way Of Life. Opponents have become enemies, never a healthy turn of events in any society.

The most effective fearmongers among us just now are the leaders of my own party. They have infected several other national populations with their toxins, but there is now evidence that some voters in the US and elsewhere are striving to remember how to think, and thus how to vote.

As has become their custom, US Democrats have diligently drawn the wrong lessons from current events and are working hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the impending off-year elections. A recent example is their reaction to the defeat of the almost perfectly awful Viktor Orbán in Hungary’s election a few weeks ago. [Full disclosure: I did some work with the Hungarian parliament shortly after they kicked out the Soviets and Fidesz was a well-behaved center-right party, so I have been more annoyed at Orbán than most of us. Budapest is still a great town, by the way.]

Orbán was not defeated because he was corrupt and power-hungry, and similar campaigning against our own Aged Incumbent will not be signally effective. He was defeated for two reasons. First, the opposition parties got together and agreed that beating him was more important than insisting on ideological purity. They had to lay aside, presumably temporarily, their pet policy preferences. This is never easy, and our Democrats still show no signs of being willing or able to take this step.  They want to win arguments, even if that causes them to lose elections.

Second, they persist in fulminating against the Aged Incumbent’s person and close associates for the excellent reason that my lot are destroying the philosophical, social and political foundations of our country. However, the Hungarian opposition alliance eventually figured out that one does not win an election by carrying on about abstractions like democracy or the amurrican terra incognita of history. They relied on concrete and observable facts, focused on kitchen-table issues—specific instances of corruption to which they could put a price tag, and specific prices in the grocery or gas station. How much did a specific corrupt transaction or a specific stupid policy cost each Hungarian household?

In an historically stable and successful democracy, you don’t win an election by trying to protect democracy. Nobody has any experience of anything else—remember when history started? You win by instilling either fear or hope. Fear is easier to generate, although people sooner or later find it wearing, and they start to prefer hope.

But hope does not derive from blithe happytalk or chirpy ditties from the sidelines, as our former VP never learned. I have great admiration for the stamina and athleticism of cheerleaders, but no game has ever been won by the cheerleaders. Hope comes from performance on the field. Our Democrats seem to think hope arises from energetic clutching of pearls along with sighs of resignation and helplessness for which the spectators are urged to provide a remedy. But no game has ever been won by the spectators, either.

No matter how much damage the erudite pontificators insist the Rs are doing to themselves, too many of the Democrats’ players on the field seem to rely on despair, and if absolutely necessary debate, to carry the day (the day is November 3^rd,if you’re keeping track at home). This will not work.

So if you happen to know any Democrat officeholders or candidates, do us all a favour and tell them to:

• stop fighting with each other, and remember how to compromise rather than turning every question into a test of progressive purity;

• run against the Republican party and not the current driver of the clown car;

• relentlessly point out concrete and specific mundane daily grievances, not cosmic apocalyptic abstractions, and

•  discuss realistic improvements they and their team will try to make when they are elected.

On recent performance, there is little chance that the Ds will undertake any of this, but give it a try anyway. As Mother Teresa pointed out, we are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful.