When politics is compared to chess, as it always has been, it used to annoy me. The unoriginality of the comparison. The laziness of it. Find a better metaphor, the writer in me would say. Yet, lately... I find myself drawn to the game to explain our political situation. (thread)
2/ Chess is a deceptive game but not in the way you'd think. It's widely considered a "smart person's game", but it's not. It's fairly easy to learn, and with only a little practice, you can become better than 99% of folks who know how to play. But there's a catch...
3/ See, starting out, you'll quickly get better at chess over time, but there comes a point when you hit a ceiling. Maybe you'll overcome it with more practice, but there are more ceilings. And to reach the top .005% or whatever of skilled players requires dedication and guts.
4/ Guts? In chess? Yes. When you get good at chess, you're mastering sequences of moves. Anticipating what your opponent will do. And that's hard. Because in chess, after just the first move by each player, there are 400 possible positions on the board.
5/ By the fourth move of each player, there are 288+ billion different positions possible. Just four moves in. That's a lot of strategy. So, you learn tricks. The basics. You weed out most of that with skill. But pretty soon, you're memorizing entire opening lines.
6/ World-class chess grandmasters dedicate themselves to a core repertoire of openings. Because the possibilities are so vast and time is finite and the human brain is limited, there is a literal study of theory in chess. What may or may not work but no one really knows for sure.
7/ These grandmasters, some of whom have spent six or seven decades (eight!) studying chess, will come across a good sequence of moves in a known opening that has never been done. This is called a "novelty". There are actually prizes for these discoveries.
8/ To try something that has never been done before at that level of chess takes a lot of guts. You're accepting a risk that your opponent, another world class player, will be more prepared than you.
9/ Going outside the usual order of a known opening with a grandmaster is begging to be blindsided. And yet, it often pays off. You outmaneuver this world-class player. Your seeming hastiness is actually smart strategy.
10/ That is the deception of chess: with just a week studying tactics, you'll be better than 99% of folks who have ever played the game. Very little effort. But the unpredictably of chess strategy as you go higher is infinite. Universe upon universe of undiscovered positions.
11/ And so, you win at chess, in part, by being bold. Being aggressive. The less aggressive, the less you attack, the more your position folds in on itself, the more your opponent exploits your lack of courage. You have to believe in yourself. If you don't, you lose.
12/ The other part of winning is ascertaining predictability. In a game of unpredictably, you correctly predict what your opponent will do. Even better: you force them to do it. Yes, that's right. You can force your opponent to make a certain move by putting them in check.
13/ The best chess players can force their opponents to make several moves consecutively. This is called a combination. It almost always signals the turning point in the game. And it's usually done by attacking the King, more often than not with a Queen. 💅
14/ The last two years in American politics have made me think of one of the most rare events in a chess game. So rare that I've only seen it a handful of times in the thousands upon thousands of games I've played or watched. It's called a "Windmill combination".
15/ A Windmill happens when one player, using two or more pieces, attacks their opponent's king in such a way that the king is perpetually in check, and the attacking player is able to repeatedly move the opposing king in a predictable pattern while capturing other pieces.
16/ See, the opposing player can't do anything. Because if the King is in check and nothing can block the check, it has to move to another square. The attack player then attacks it there, and it has to move back to the other square. It's forced. They're paralyzed.
17/ So, while the player is making the opposing king move between these two spaces, she proceeds to capture several other pieces consecutively. Usually two, sometimes as many as five or six. It's devastating. It almost always signals the approaching end of the game.
18/ For shits and giggles, here's a great example of it:
19/ The opposing player often gets in that kind of position because they weren't bold, and the opponent knew what they were going to do. It doesn't mean their opponent is smarter. Or even necessarily more skilled. But it does mean they have more guts.
20/ And courage is unusually democratic in nature. It exists in everyone, though they may not use it. It levels the playing field against bigger odds, sometimes overwhelming. It's also not necessarily good. Sometimes courage is of a ruthless, shameless quality.
21/ In chess, it's not rare to come across someone who is less skilled, certainly not as smart, but they have guts and use them. I've seen good chess players lose games they had no business losing, to opponents who had no business winning, because they didn't have guts.
22/ I look at the Democratic Party, and I see a movement of leaders, though flawed, who are smarter, wiser, more humane, and who have more morality than the great bulk of the GOP. We are right on values, we are (usually) right on intentions, and we still lose where we should win.
23/ I didn't say courage (guts) is a good thing. Look at Trump. This half-assed, soulless person did things no one else has ever done. He found a novelty: a lack of ethics justified by racist, xenophobic, sexist, anti-LGBTQ sentiment. He exploited it. He was shameless.
24/ Our leaders keep looking at the leaders of the Republican Party, this godawful collection of individuals, as they foster hatred, drain our treasury, attack the weak, amplify the corrupt, and our leaders in the Democratic Party... just kinda keep playing it safe.
25/ I firmly believe Russia hacked our election + Trump colluded. I think James Comey was improper, at best, in reopening the investigation of Hillary's server. I think much of our media is often shallow and lazy and, yes, very sexist. But that doesn't tell the whole story.
26/ The other part of that story is that our leaders are not bold. Everyone seems to be playing it safe. Trump is utterly shameless in his approach, and the GOP is backing him up. Another scandal? The second one this week? Just like week. "Who cares? Democrats won't do anything."
27/ Think about it: the GOP ruthlessly slammed through a corrupt tax bill transparently written by K Street lobbyists because they felt it was a good enough gamble that our leaders weren't going to do much in response. Take a chance, they're thinking. Why not?
28/ The GOP has on its hands a "president" who has clearly engaged in widespread corruption, obstructed justice, and engaged in countless other impeachable acts. And they still stand beside him. Despite the ridicule. Despite the shaming. That should tell you something.
29/ The Republican leadership is banking on Democratic instability and fragmentation. They think we can't get our shit together. They think our leaders have lost touch. They think that Trump's base will be enough to save them.
30/ And is that so unreasonable? Between openly-racist voter ID laws and gerrymandering, the map is already skewed toward the GOP. That's half the battle. The other half is they believe moderates won't go for Democrats in large numbers. And you know what? They're kinda right.
31/ More Americans are pro-choice. More Americans support LGBTQ rights. More Americans oppose racist policies. More Americans oppose corporate tax breaks and support unions and a minimum wage and free college education.
32/ More Americans agree with Democratic policies. Hell, more Americans self-identify as Democrats. And yet... here we are, against this abomination of a human being in the Oval Office and his corrupt lackeys, and we're still somehow in a street fight over voter support. WHY?
33/ I'll tell you why: because on paper, we may reflect the values of most Americans, but in practice, our leaders are lackluster in fighting for them. No guts. Playing it safe. Hoping to god enough moderates break away to give us a slight edge. That's no way to lead.
34/ Our leadership doesn't inspire. They don't motivate. Activists on the ground, primarily, are showing up and getting it done. Demanding change on every level. Demanding justice. And our leaders, full of good intentions, seem to be asleep.
35/ Maybe you're frustrated reading this. You work in D.C. like me. You see how hard the leadership works. Great! But the perception is that there's no fight in our leaders, and when they use the national microphone to give half-measures, can you blame that perception?
36/ We have leaders who, even now, are so scared of offending moderates that they wind up alienating their base and lose both. The only two things keeping the Democratic Party afloat are: 1) the true grassroots organizers and 2) the cowardice and stupidity of Donald Trump.
37/ And more than I care to admit, I wonder what's going to happen if Trump wises up and learns to act and sound reasonable. What's going to happen the day he discovers the power of being held to low standards? That is a prospect that terrifies me. That is the day we lose.
38/ Because once Trump is gone, once Democrats are back in control, what is our message? What is our reason to be there? And if we don't have a good answer, some Trump-like person will be back. They have the playbook. If we fail to offer an alternative, someone will step up.
39/ And god forbid Trump wises up someday. That will be the Windmill situation. A perpetual check that brings on a paralytic hold of our future.
40/ Our leadership has got to start punching back. And hard. No more half-measures. No more soft spoken tactics. No more apologizing. Be bold. Be proud. Be aggressive. That is the only way we win this. /thread
