Marc A. Thiessen, Ingénue

Democrats’ strategy

appears to be insane

That’s the way the headline reads in my local paper. The column, by Marc A. Thiessen, Columnist, begins

    WASHINGTON ‒ Good news for the incoming House Democratic majority! They have something President Trump really, really wants: money to build a border wall. Trump is desperate for this money. Mexico won’t give it to him. Only congressional Democrats can. Without their consent, he can’t deliver on one of the key campaign promises he made during the 2016 election.

    There’s a name for this in classic negotiating strategy. It’s called “leverage.” Good nego-tiators use leverage (something they have, which their adversary wants) to obtain what are called “concessions” (something their adversary has, which they want). The result is what experts call “compromise.” This is how the civilized world gets things done.

So far so good, right? A little snide perhaps, but so far so good. But Thiessen is about to enter never-never land. The Democrats are going to throw away their leverage because they will “never - under any circumstances” give Trump his wall. For two reasons: “Because he wants it and they despise him.”

     Never? Under any circumstances? And does the President believe this? Then, the leverage is gone. Democrats are insane. But in negotiations, “never” doesn’t mean “not ever, ever, ever,” does it? Especially if this is, as Thiessen is careful to point out - especially if this is really no biggie, the wall.

    It would be one thing if Trump was demand-ing that Democrats make some great moral compromise. But he is not. Democrats say they are for border security. They may think that a wall is a costly and inefficient way to secure the border, but there is nothing inherently wrong with a wall.

There’s nothing inherently wrong either - we all know this - with spending money we don’t have on something that won’t work. Hell, it’s Christmas.

     Besides, check this, a dozen years ago a number of Democrats voted for what was called “the Secure Fence Act.” And, there’s no difference, is there, between a fence and a wall? (Certainly, no “moral difference.”)

Put wrong - and right - aside, however, any so-called moral differences. After all, we’re talking about negotiations here, compromise! Think of what the President would surely do.

    [Democrats] could give Trump the $5 billion he is asking for to begin construction of the wall, in exchange for a path to citizenship for nearly 2 million “dreamers” ‒ illegal immi-grants who were brought to the United States as children through no fault of their own. Trump would negotiate on his basis in a heart-beat.

     Then, when Democrats take the majority next year, they could offer him the remaining $15 billion to $20 billion he needs to finish the wall in exchange for legal status for the other 11 million people here in the country illegally. The wall could buy legal status for every illegal immigrant living in the shadows ‒ a longtime Democratic priority.

Again, Trump would do it in a heartbeat. He’s all for keeping here “the vast majority of illegal immigrants,” the ones he calls the “good ones,” those over 5’10” with straight teeth and sandy hair, hairdressers, streetcleaners, dental hygienists; he just wants to get rid of the “bad ones,” you know rapists, murderers, drug dealers, those with brown skins that learned Spanish before they learned American.

     Now I’m being snide - or facetious. But now I’m not. I am envying Marc Thiessen his naïveté, his certainty that the Democrats (and, I’m afraid, I) don’t really share. Here’s how the column should begin, in our view:

     WASHINGTON ‒ If there is anything we know about this President, it is that he is al-ways ready to negotiate in good faith, he is always ready to compromise, and a deal made is a promise kept.

Of course. Of course!

Diversionary Tactics

In today’s New York Times, Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss begin their opinion piece (“Why Is Israel Scared of This Young American?“) by admitting the partial truth of Andrew Sullivan’s description of them as “Zionist fanatic[s] of near-unhinged proportions.” “It was cheap shot,” they contend; the description should not have contained the word “near.” Otherwise, they say, “we happily plead guilty as charged.”

     They go on to say that “even unhinged Zionists can level criticism at Israeli policies,” and they proceed to do so but with great, and illogical, reservations. Consider this paragraph, which makes use of a form of Schopenhauer’s 18th way to win an argument: Divert, divert, divert.

Israelis have good reason to see the B.D.S. campaign as a thinly veiled form of bigotry. Boycotts of Jewish businesses have a particularly foul pedigree in Nazi Germany. And the same activists who obsessively seek to punish and isolate Israel for its occupation of the West Bank rarely if ever display the same passion for protesting against China for its occupation of Tibet, or Russia for its occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Let’s take the last sentence here, because I see this kind of argument used over and over and over and over again. That someone isn’t making another argument says nothing about the argument that they are making. That Stephens and Weiss themselves don’t argue that Russia should be excused for its occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine or China for its occupation of Tibet - that they wouldn't make such arguments - doesn’t mean in any way that any argument they might wish to make for Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank is suspect.