Saturday, October 3, 2020

Difficult to resist

Well, we have that rare kind of news event that crosses over the semi-permeable membrane between the news and my movie blog: Donald Trump has coronavirus.

Because I'm a dutiful editor, I can easily find a movie tie-in.

I'll get to that in a moment.

First, though, I want to say it is has been hard not to go on social media and gloat about this, given the man he is and the science he has disregarded with maximum disdain. I did actually post something on Facebook about Trump's potential exposure to COVID, only a few hours before he confirmed his positive test, based only on the Hope Hicks positive test. But the main reason I posted it was that I was out with my kids on an elevator that afternoon, where I saw a shape that could not help but remind me of a caricature of Trump's head in profile. See if you agree:

Worried that it was too obscure, I included this text to try to help people: "The man on the left did not. (Looks like DT doesn't it?)"

After he actually announced that he and Melania Trump had tested positive, I considered taking the post down, worried it would be viewed as insensitive. Or at the very least, I thought I should include a comment that contextualized the post. But I did neither. Trump would not have done that, and the tones of many other posts on social media were worse than my apparent flippancy. They can check the time stamp if they really want to know whether I was mocking the leader of the free world who suddenly might be very sick, but as I said, Trump would not care about such an appearance of insensitivity himself. You gotta fight fire with fire.

We had been planning anyway to watch the movie Irresistible on Friday night, without any knowledge of the events that were about to transpire on Friday during the day (Australia time). This is of course Jon Stewart's timely movie about a Democratic and a Republican operative at the national level who are both trying to win a mayoral election in a small Wisconsin town. We only had about five days left on the iTunes rental so now was the time.

The movie has a very pointed passage on what is supposed to separate Democrats (whom Stewart supports) from Republicans (whom he vehemently opposes). To his credit, Stewart relentlessly roasts both sides in this movie in the hopes of reaching a larger, greater good. The passage discusses the beloved Democratic adage "When they go low, we go high."

The smarmy Democratic campaign manager, Gary Zimmer (played by Steve Carell), approaches his mayoral candidate and the candidate's daughter, Jack and Diana Hastings (Chris Cooper and Mackenzie Davis), with an idea to reveal a scandal about his opponent, involving oxycontin and nepotism. The following exchange ensues about their morals:

Diana: "Come on, Gary. We're the good guys, right?"

Gary: "Yeah, we're the good guys."

Diana: "When they go low ..."

Gary: "... we go high."

Diana: "Unless we also need to go low, apparently."

Gary: "Only to keep those who would go lower out of power."

Diana: "So, when they go low, we go high ... -er, incrementally, in relation to how low they went."

Gary: "Regrettably, yes."

Diana: "When they go low, we go almost as low, but we feel worse doing it."

The conversation gets at the heart of political strategy. Or where strategy butts up against idealism.

They are both right, effectively. It's what I said earlier. You have to fight fire with fire.

But at what point are you just sacrificing the integrity of your own ideological position? The 2016 election taught Hillary Clinton -- and actually taught this character, specifically, as he is supposed to have worked on Clinton's campaign -- that she didn't fight dirty enough to win. He doesn't want to make that mistake again. After a few more backs and forths in the verbal exchange, Gary concludes, "I'm sorry, but sometimes good people have to do shitty things for the greater good."

But Diana is the idealist American needs right now. She knows that when you go lower and lower and lower, there is no bottom to how low you will go. And when you are deciding to go that low, often you cannot even tell if you will end up going lower than your opponent until after it's all over. In fact, going less low could, in this political philosophy, be a sign of weakness. If you go not as low, not as quickly, you are just creating another recipe for failure. 

The only way to really win -- even if you don't actually win a particular election -- is to relentlessly go high.

Do you know who did resist an impulse to gloat over Trump's diagnosis on social media, when he may have had more reason than anyone to do so?

Joe Biden.

Not only did he tweet wishes for "swift recovery" to Trump and Melania, without any "but" attached, but the campaign is also planning to pull all its negative advertising against Trump, at least temporarily.

Going high is not always the winning strategy, but I'm hoping in this case it will be. 

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