As the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott once correctly noted, the lifeblood of modern nation states is what he referred to as “the politics of crisis.”
As succinctly as anyone ever has, Rahm Emanuel distilled to its essence the political value of crisis when he memorably remarked: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” for a crisis “is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
Emanuel, being a Democrat, became for Republicans the proverbial poster child for the worst kind of political opportunism. The truth of the matter, though, is that he differed from them only insofar as those crises upon which he and his party chose to exploit, if not concoct, were different from those over which Republicans obsessed. Crisis is the butter to the bread of any and all modern politicians, irrespective of party.
Around every four years or so in America, particularly during a presidential election cycle, the politics of crisis becomes the politics of the Apocalypse.
Consider: Donald Trump, his enemies are forever warning us, is a “threat” to “Democracy” itself who has every intention of canceling the United States Constitution.
There will be no more America if Trump is reelected.
While Republicans and conservatives will rightly recognize this talk as the rank demagogic rhetoric that it is, they would be well served to remove the boulder from their own collective eye, as they are no less guilty of engaging in the same Apocalyptic style of politics. Did not Elon Musk, while speaking at a Trump rally recently, say that unless Trump wins, we may never again have a free election? No Republican, and least of all anyone from the Trump campaign, challenged him on this score.
Do not Republicans, like Democrats, characterize every Presidential election, and certainly this election, as “the most important election of our lifetime,” the last chance to turn the country around?
The point is this: To hear Republicans and Democrats tell it, the gravest existential threat to America is that posed by the other party. America is hanging by a thread, and unless citizens vote against that party, the country promises to go the way of the dinosaur.
America’s Founding generation, the generation of 1776, seceded from England because of what its members took to be its intolerable oppression of the American colonies. When it became clear that the Motherland wasn’t about to allow a peaceable separation to occur, the Founders sacrificed all and fought a war for their independence.
Evidently, Republicans and Democrats alike agree that the Founders were justified in shedding blood, both their own and that of the British, for this cause.
And, evidently, both agree that the other side is guilty of offenses against the American people whose egregiousness far eclipses that of the offenses with which the colonists charged the King of England.
So, if partisans in both camps genuinely believe what they say, then why, a thinking person must ask, has no Republican or Democrat with a remotely high profile (or any Republican or Democrat with any kind of profile) at least called for secession, a peaceful divorce of people who, supposedly, have long ago proven that they are forever mutually incompatible?
It’s possible that there are multiple reasons for why, despite truly believing that secession and war are the only two alternatives to the untenable course that the country is now on, Republicans and Democrats who accuse one another, in their own idioms, of being anti-America, prefer not to advocate for either secession or war.
Or it could be that neither Republicans nor Democrats believe what they are saying about their opponents, that this is all rhetoric, hype, that they are spewing for the sake of advancing their parties’ interests. It could be that this is just standard, Apocalyptic politics without which no American presidential election cycle would be complete.
In any event, and irrespective of the answer at which they arrive, this is a question that is worthwhile for reasonable people to consider.