The Big Idea

It started as a joke. We had been arguing over the presidential primary. She was convinced the former president would be back. I thought the country couldn't fall for the same thing twice. But a lot of people have trouble shaking off abusive exes.

She was clowning the former president’s primary challengers, kept insisting they were clipping their own wings and creating their own course hazards. She claimed to beat him you had to emulate him. She explained one evening when we had decided to go on a late afternoon run. It had been a few months since the incident, and the media attention on me at least was dying down. Reporters didn’t run, and so she figured there wasn’t much exposure. Besides, we were nothing salacious. Just friends and political sparring partners.

-Everyone says he says things literally but not seriously, she explained once. But I think it’s a lot simpler than that. He doesn’t have principles, like you might, half-baked as they are, or like I might. You might be misguided but your concern for people you think are weaker---

-Marginalized, I corrected her.

-Whatever it is, your concern is real. So it motivates you to make decisions about your politics. It’s probably more self-interested than you want to admit. You’e weaker, sorry, more marginalized than some other people, so there’s a benefit to you to stand up for your own. I’ve got real concerns too. I don’t know about who’s stronger or who’s weaker, but I know together we’re unbreakable.

For a moment I thought she meant the two of us, but of course she was talking about her political philosophy.

-We could be unbreakable too, I said without trying to interrupt her. She smiled at me.

-Maybe, she said in a quieter tone. Critics say the smallest unit of fascism is the family, but really it’s just the smallest unit of political action. Individuals are basically powerless.

-On that we agree. That’s why class consciousness and solidarity are so important.

-Those are just words to marshal everyone under one banner. But it won’t be their banner. No, individuals have to work together while holding on their autonomy and agency. That’s my project. You call it fascism because you don’t understand it. People used to feel a bond to the place that they were from, a pride that they channeled back to the source. That leads to wealth and abundance and plenty. Wanting to bring that back, that’s not fascism.

We’d argued a lot about politics in those first months, but that was probably the closest she got to saying something that really resonated with me. It made sense, even though I understood how dangerously naïve it was. A lot of our arguments were more philosophical or academic, really in the weeds stuff. Even though that night it felt like she had started off doing a campaign speech, she got to me.

-We are where we come from, I said, to myself and to her. She leaned a little closer to me and put her hand on my knee.

-And we’re stronger together.

It was hard to argue. That was the night we first kissed.

-But the former president, he’s not like that, she continued. I mean, he gets it on some level. He’s proud of the country, genuinely. But for him, it’s a brand. And everything is transactional. So last time he ended up surrounding himself by people who took it upon themselves to thwart any goal he might have. And he wasn’t that difficult to nudge and influence. And sure, politics is transactional. But it’s not just transactional. I agree with him it’s a zero sum game. The idea that everyone can win is a loser. It’s how we’ve been losing. But it’s not enough to win in the balance. If you’re just tallying scores, you’re still playing somebody else’s game.

Maybe it had been the heady feeling after the kiss, but I got that and I told her so.

-That’s a pretty Marxist thing of you to say.

-Don’t do that to me, she said with a laugh and slapped me on my knee.

-It’s easier said than done though. How are you going to set up your own game if you’re playing someone else’s?

She looked at me like I had said something insightful. I didn’t feel that way. She went back to the former president.

-In a way that’s what he does. He says, forget this game everyone in Washington is pretending they play. There’s no game, there’s just scoring points, and we’re going to score more of them.

-But he’s just scoring to score, I said, trying to follow along.

-Right. And it works more often than not because scoring is still generally better than not scoring. But it’s not the most efficient.

She paused and looked to the distance as if she were calculating something.

-I bet I could do what he does and run for mayor. We had a decrepit machine politics mayor for decade. We’ve got a placeholder. Everything’s getting expensive and worse.

-Everybody says that, I said. I didn’t mean it dismissively. I’d gotten caught up in the narrative she was weaving. This is why she was such a popular politician. She had me by the hook, and so I wanted more.

-Do you know how much revenue this city brings in a year? Everybody could get a dividend check. Instead the city uses it to pay employees, most of whom don’t even live in the damn city, and very few of them actually involved in any of the things that bring city revenue in. Pay people instead.

-You sound like a red, I laughed.

-I could run for mayor on that and win in a cakewalk.

We both laughed. I didn’t think she was serious.

-Mayor Badger, I said, trying out the sound of it for her in a bit of a performance. Would I have to do anything you say?

-I bet you already do, she laughed, giving me a friendly push and sending me back on the couch.

That was the first night I spent at her place.