Hubris is dangerous. It offends the gods.
Be careful about running up the score.
I am not just talking about football and Greek literature. I am talking about the 2022 midterms.
I got the willies on behalf of Georgia when they beat Oregon in the season opener 49 to 3. For now it looks good for them. They are ranked number one now, right along with Alabama. I worry it will go to their heads.
Oregon, shamed, took it out on Eastern Washington in their second game, winning by 57 points in a total mismatch. At some point a win becomes shameful.
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| Ducks Celebrate |
In the big showdown of heroes in the Iliad, narcissistic and petulant Achilles defeated the noble Hector. Achilles dragged the body of Hector around the battlefield behind his chariot. It was the ancient warfare equivalent of a post-touchdown celebration where a player wiggles his butt at the opposing team. Homer wrote that the gods were disgusted, especially Apollo. He got Zeus involved. Problems ensued.
Midterm elections usually are a referendum on the party in power at the White House. It usually loses seats. Voters want a check on the excess of the newly-elected president and his party. That may still be the case in 2022, but things seem oddly different. The Democratic Party isn't powerful. They are a slow and uncertain three yards and a cloud of dust. They are kept weak by narrow majorities and disagreement in the ranks. In the House the Squad wants a new Great Society or nothing. In the Senate Manchin and Sinema block Democratic boldness.
The party running up the score is the GOP. They got their Supreme Court Justices and a reversal of Roe v. Wade. The Courts seem ready to find a legal justification for decisions that will please Republican partisans. A Trump-appointed judge ruled to delay investigation of classified documents held at Mar-a-Lago. The Supreme Court allowed the Texas bounty-system to stay in place. It put gay marriage and contraception back on the table. Several judges, and maybe a majority, seem open to state legislatures deciding to overrule the presidential vote in their states to appoint on their own authority their own preferred slate of electors. In red states legislatures were already banning abortion with trigger laws. An Indiana Attorney General sought to prosecute a doctor who gave a 10-year-old rape victim the abortion she wanted. The GOP agenda looks extreme, empowered, and motivated.
Lindsay Graham just made the stakes even higher with proposed federal legislation. It would preserve state-by-state ability to ban abortion from the moment of fertilization, but would ban abortion after 15 weeks in every state. His proposal reminds voters that there is no refuge in blue states. The GOP is on the march.
Meanwhile, this is still the era of Trump. Trump is center stage. He says outrageous things, so of course they are news. He says he should be reinstated as president today. He took documents to Mir-a-Lago and says they are his to take, or that they were planted, or that they are harmless, or that they were searched for by Deep State FBI thugs who prowled through Melania's clothes. He holds rallies condemning his former Cabinet members. He intimidates Republican officeholders and candidates into echoing him. It works. He isn't a has-been. He may be the future that GOP voters demand.
Mitch McConnell sees the peril for the GOP. His complaint about "candidate quality" is a reference to Trump-compliant candidates who headline the GOP. McConnell gets boos at Trump rallies. Trump calls him a weak RINO. It isn't McConnell's party. It is Trump's. Trump's popularity shows that restraint is unnecessary. Go bold.
Triumph feels so good. Republicans see the opportunity to roll back cultural changes of the past sixty years. Georgia football could not contain itself on opening day. Oregon could not contain itself in game two. Trump can never contain himself. He inspires a GOP without limits.
Homer warned us about hubris. It offends the gods. Here on earth now, Republican hubris frightens voters. It is the nature of hubris that humans do not take the warning.
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4 comments:
Republicans used to love blabbering about ‘American Exceptionalism,’ the epitome of hubris. Now they’re bent on undermining the very principles and institutions upon which the notion is based. Frankly, I’d be surprised if they’re even capable of comprehending what hubris means, much less how it applies to them. But that too is the nature of hubris.
Proverbs 16.18 Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. The USA is on very thin ice.
What you call hubris I would call self-righteousness, with the difference being that hubris, being associated with god-like power, doesn't necessarily have a moral component, while what we are seeing in Republicans is the assertion that they are not only moral but right, which therefore gives them agency to impose their will on others, especially women.
Trump is an example of hubris, to be sure. It supposedly leads to nemesis: "a downfall caused by an inescapable agent."
I like the concept of hubris here as applied to the self-referential arrogance of political figures. It is a bit uncharitable to hang that on the Ducks--or Georgia--even for purpose of illustration, however, because the College Football Playoff gods for better or for worse are not offended, and DO take lopsided scorelines favorably into account.
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