It is said that all philosophy come out of Plato. Apparently all punditry too, since his allegory of the Ship of Fools seems to perfectly describe today’s Ship of State and the government shutdown engineered by its hapless captain and pigheaded crew.
Plato’s captain of the Ship of Fools is going deaf and blind and has little skill at navigating. His vain sailors crowd around him, each demanding to be given the helm. If the captain chooses one or another, his rivals throw the latest favorite overboard.
The sober-minded, reliable sailors who understand the art of navigation are dismissed as dreamy stargazers. And since the crew can’t cooperate and ignore the able seamen, the ship comes to ruin.
In Washington, our feckless captain boasts of being a master negotiator, but can’t bear for anyone else to get credit, has too feeble a grasp of the intricacies of policy to be able to find a middle ground, fears the wrath of his base if he actually compromises, and therefore listens to the last, most zealous crewman to get his ear. He decides nothing and lets the crew feud while he send mocking tweets from his cabin rather than come up on deck and steer.
His fractious crew is really two crews, made up of Ds and Rs, but the Rs control both Houses of Congress, the engine room and the sails. Still, they need some Democratic votes to pass a budget, and pressing issues such as DACA and CHIP on which time will soon run out.
Clearly, the sane solution is to compromise, but both sides have demonized the other and worry more about any agreement looking like a sign of weakness than about the risk of wrecking the ship. So, instead of settling for half a loaf, they get no loaf at all, and allow the government to shutdown. This is like running a ship onto the rocks rather than cooperate in sailing it safely to port.
For their part, the Ds fraction of the crew feels betrayed. The captain promised that if they sat down with the Rs and negotiated a deal, he’d sign it and take the heat. So, they made such a deal, and he threw it back in their faces, and now is accusing them of sole responsibility for his shutdown, and of risking lives with an unguarded border and an unfunded military.
Captain Trump’s claims are refuted by instant replay showing the Ds did offer the kind of deal he said he’d sign and it was spurned. In part this is because his own R crew’s bickering factions can’t agree on a plan, let alone allow a compromise with the Ds in the crew.
Unable to trust the captain or the Rs, the Ds are now inclined to let the rest of the fools try to solve a problem that requires more votes than they possess, hoping arithmetic will eventually persuade them to cooperate on a solution. But meanwhile, the Ship of State is dead in the water.
This would all be a hilarious commentary on human vanity and folly except for one thing. While the vainglorious President and fractured Congress are bickering, bungling, and calling each other schoolyard names, there are 320 million passengers aboard this particular ship. And it appears neither captain nor crew can be bothered with the fact that they are all lost at sea together and in danger of going down with the ship.