Edwin Landseer: The dog and the shadow (1877)
Engraver: Charles Cousen

"Our antibodies should vanquish this evil infection."

The oath guides the oath-taker to swear to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic, without offering any instruction about how to identify an enemy. The most insidious enemies arrive unrecognizable or, worse, in deep disguise, so they seem friendly. Everyone assumes that they'll know one when they see one, but never having seen one, they have no experience from which to draw. False positives might be common, but false negatives seem far more worrisome. The literature has explored every variation, from the fox in the hen house to the demon born as the son of the American ambassador. Once they're through the door, defenses seem as useless as The Maginot Line. Once the infiltration happens, one faces a wholly different problem. One that might not have a solution, for then it's no longer an attempted intrusion but a full-blown infection, and we're usually loathe to take our medicine. We reason that we did not deserve this illness, that we had generally always been decently intended, but our pleas fall beside some more profound point. We're no longer independent from the threat. It has become us, so to live up to our oath, we must figure out how to defend against ourselves.

When the president commits treason, the defense must stretch beyond what would have once passed for reason. The law also presumed that a dog would bark, that we'd manage to notice when our enemy stalked, and many did notice. Still, this enemy employed a new Political Technology specifically intended to divide and confuse. It appealed to a particular class, those profoundly dissatisfied with their democracy. Those who honestly felt they had been deliberately dealt a weak hand. They felt no particular love for their fellow citizens, especially those they felt acted as though they were better than them. It couldn't matter that many of those feelings amounted to projection, essentially imagination overlaying perception. The Political Technology encouraged their delusion. Appealing to what P. T. Barnum insisted was renewed every minute; suckers seemed to be appearing at something closer to one per second. The notion of revenge, as if that might constitute justice, also seemed attractive to those who felt displaced. They were being betrayed; though it appeared they were betraying themselves, so much the better to solidify their fate.

They had seen him in action before. He had been prosecuted, though not nearly to the full extent of the law. He was rarely found innocent. It had always been a flaw in the system that some could delay proceedings by pleading absurdities. In the interest of extending fairness, grievous injustice prevailed. He should have been jailed several times over, but he wasn't. He was heavily fined but failed to pay up. He slandered his opponents but wasn't jailed for his deliberate indiscretions. He was undermining the very system he aspired to head again. His supporters, themselves dedicated enemies of the state under the guise of "reformers," assisted in proliferating the lies. No, he had never once been wrongly prosecuted. No, he wasn't singled out for persecution. Yes, he had organized and attempted an insurrection. Yes, he had violated the Constitution so often that it almost seemed not to matter. His status as an enemy of the state was normalized until many came to view him not as an enemy but as the only true friend, maybe the only one capable of making the place truly great again. (That was Political Technology® talking.)

Once the history of this time has been written, the future will have witnessed the downfall. We do not know today how that story will play out. The enemy quickly took possession of the state but violated our Constitution by doing it. The Supreme Court narrowly defended righteousness, having been only partially corrupted by an earlier advance guard. We questioned who might be left to enforce the law, given that the administration had quickly been converted to defend lawlessness, but we persisted. We appreciated those blue-state attorneys general who conspired to preserve our fragile union in court with skillfully crafted motions and lawsuits. The logic of their arguments strongly contrasted with the fun house mirror reasoning the overtaking enemy employed. The economy steadfastly refused to conform to the aggressor's insistences. One might easily confuse the public, but the markets are not so easily influenced. People stopped buying and stopped investing until the smoke started clearing. This response ultimately proved undermining for an enemy relying almost entirely on smoke and mirrors. They had no alternate strategy but waiting. They spent their penny quickly before running out of money.

The still-loyal opposition agreed to take no prisoners. They'd let the aggressors have their perverse way in the belief that nobody could be a better opposition than they could, themselves. They partially succeeded in bringing the wealthiest society in the history of this world to its knees, but it managed to stand and even hold its ground. The infection spread. Some states dropped all pretexts and began violating the Constitution, too, though with the Justice Department compromised, no Federal authority took responsibility to reign in those bad actors. Enter those blesséd attorneys general! Who'd imagined before the crisis how powerful those long-touted notions of states' rights would prove to be when wielded by able lawyers? Arguments in favor of states' rights had prolonged more wrongs than righted wrongs, so it seemed especially ironic when this unacknowledged source of power began wielding what the enemy certainly experienced as a genuinely terrible swift sword. Democracy defended itself against the potentially lethal infection with the equivalent of stem cells, vicious bastards against which those insurrectionists seemed helpless.

But I'm ahead of my story again. Nothing's yet been decided. The enemy remains beyond the gates, and No Dog was Barking as they entered. The antibodies have been aroused, and those who believed in potions and spells seem poised on the edge of learning something and defeat. Defeat will take some time, and plenty of pain will accompany their ouster. Some days, it will seem as though we've already lost. We can only lose if we convince ourselves we can. Of course, Political Technology® will continue to chip away at our dedication and courage, producing another of those times sure to try men's souls. This was what we signed on for when we took that oath to defend our democracy and ourselves against all enemies, foreign and domestic, even when the invasion involved NoDogsBarking. That oath was our vaccination. Our antibodies should vanquish this evil infection.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz