At Passover, Jews sing the traditional song, "Dayenu". The title is the Hebrew word meaning, roughly, "It would have been enough for us," and the lyrics go something like this,
If He had brought us out of Egypt, dayenu.
If He had executed justice upon the Egyptians, dayenu.
If He had executed justice upon their gods, dayenu.
If He had slain their first-born, dayenu.
If He had given to us their health and wealth, dayenu.
And so on for about ten more stanzas. It is an expression of gratitude to G-d for all that He has done for the Jewish people.
Please forgive me if I sound a tad sacreligous, but even though Donald Trump was not my first choice, and he is certainly no one's idea of the ideal president, dayenu is sort of how I feel towards him. Please let me explain.
I had the premonition some years ago, and in this political cycle I am thoroughly convinced, that issues are irrelevant to our political discourse. We are in a post-issues political regime.
Debating issues, e.g., education policy, is merely a distraction. Debate conveys the notion that education policy is maleable. This has not been true for a very long time. The Vested Interests (whom I call "The Education Mafia") have grown very large, very powerful, their roots run very deep in our society and in our politics, their ideology is ossified, and education policy will not change, now or ever, as it has not changed for the last thirty years, despite the evident fact of its abject failure. Education policy is what the Education Mafia want, and nothing will change so long as the Existing Order remains intact.
In other words, policy is no longer the problem. Policy has long since stopped being the problem. The problem is the Existing Order of ossified special interests.
You can repeat this idea many times. Large parts of the population want to restrict immigration, but restriction will not happen. Large parts of the population are horrified by abortion-on-demand, but abortion-on-demand will continue. Nobody cares, one way or another, about the statistically non-existent transgender "community", and people certainly do not want to re-organize their lives to accommodate it, but "they" will make you care. And so on. I am not arguing whether any one element of public policy is right or wrong, I am just observing that things are as they are, whether you like it or not, and that is how it's going to be until something radical happens.
Always, there is bound to be some wiggle room between what people want and what public policy is. In a democracy, however, when public policy becomes sufficiently disconnect from the will of the people, when that divergence becomes too great, we have a very serious problem.
We have a very serious problem.
The only solution I can imagine is that somebody, somehow has to break the back of the Existing Order. And, until that happens, please don't bore me with policy discussions. Such discussion are irrelevant and as pure a waste of time as one can imagine.
Enter Donald Trump.
In the 2015 presidential primaries, the Republicans had a number of hacks, like Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham, and several exciting candidates like Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker, men of real substance and accomplishments who held out the possiblity of real reform. I would have been happy with any one of them. My man was Ted Cruz.
However, what was of overarching importance was the defeat of the Establishment Republicans. I'm sorry that Cruz, Walker and Jindall lost in the process, but Donald Trump did not merely defeat the Karl Rove/Jeb Bush wing of the Republican Party, he humiliated them. Rove/Bush spent $130 Million and never got above 7% of the popular vote. This was deeply gratifying and, for this reason alone, I am grateful to Donald Trump.
If Donald Trump had only defeated the Rove/Bush wing of the Republican Party, dayenu.
If the Republican Party is destroyed or radically reformed because of Trump, dayenu.
And now, if Donald Trump can do the same with Hillary Clinton and the criminal front group that is the Democratic Party, dayenu.
No comments:
Post a Comment