When I was a kid, I remember watching the TV game show, Truth Or Consequences. In that show, a few of the members of the audience would become contestants who were then set up to perform some kind of stunt or participate in a contest. Sometimes the setup would include being asked a trick question before having to perform stunts. If they correctly answered the question, they would have provided the truth rather than having to experience the consequences of participating in a stunt or contest. The truth never seemed to be experienced (click here for an example).
Trump's presidency has created its own version of this game show. Only instead of offering a choice between telling the truth or suffering the consequences, we are told that if we follow our principles when it comes to limiting Trump's power, we will suffer the consequences.
Trump's power is currently being threatened in two ways: the possibility of impeachment, and the midterm elections. Both Trump and Giuliani have issued dire warnings as to what will happen should Trump be impeached. While Giuliani warns of a populist revolt, Trump prophesies that the US economy will collapse (click here and there). Nevermind that impeachment is called for when there is significant evidence that the President has violated the people's trust. What Trump and Giuliani are telling us is that the consequences of following our principles would be too great to bear.
Likewise, Trump has warned America that violence will be used to undo what his presidency has accomplished if the midterm elections give control of Congress over to the Democrats (click here). So again, if the election, which consists of Americans voting for those they believe best represent them, results in electing a majority of Democrats to the Senate and/or the House, dire consequences will be experienced.
Trump's game of principles and consequences is a call to his base to focus on being pragmatic to the point of forgetting principles. That is not too different from Dick Cheney's call to get into the tactical gutter with terrorist combatants who do not follow international law. The message from both has been that the world is too dangerous for those who are good to live by their principles. And that description of the world is perhaps too easily accepted by some who felt that their principles were getting in the way of what they want to do in the first place.
But in calling us to be pragmatic rather than principled, Trump and his team are calling for us to have a simplistic view of the world. Those who are different are evil and so we are told that we must be governed by practicality provided that Trump and his team are the ones who define what is practical. And since much of Trump's base consists of many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians, Trump's call to being simplistic is not a difficult message to sell. After all, many of us religiously conservative Christians want to believe in a simplistic, black-white world. Many of us fear complexity because that means that we could be both sincere and wrong. Many of us prefer to believe in a world where our sincerity is the only guide we need when making choices. To believe otherwise is to admit that we have to pay more attention to this world than we care to.
Of course the irony of Trump's message to his base is that his base pride themselves on living by their principles. It is one of their characteristics that allows them to think of themselves as being different from, and even better than, the rest of the world. But in forsaking their principles because they don't live in some utopia, those from Trump's base prove that they are no different from the rest of the world that they so easily look down on.
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