There’s a saying that “no one wants war,” but that’s not true. If it were, we’d never have had one.

People, like nations, make war because they think they can win — and maximize their power by doing so.

Smart invaders know how to pick their battles.

The Republicans have spent the past few years being smart invaders. They’ve identified when they have the power to impose their will on Democrats (and the nation) — and they’ve done just that every time.

At the expense of peace.

Democrats have tried to preserve the peace, for the most part, through compromise. To this end, Barack Obama nominated a moderate judge, Merrick Garland, to the Supreme Court in 2016. But the Republicans knew their Senate majority gave them the power to impose their will, and they did so, by blockading the nomination for 10 months.

Their stated rationale, at the time, was that Supreme Court nominations should not be acted on during an election year. Which was 100% bullshit.

That became clear this year when they decided to rush through a nomination less than a month and a half, much closer to the election. They’re doing exactly the opposite of what they did in 2016, right?

Wrong. They’re doing exactly the same thing: They’re identifying what they think they can do (and get away with), and they’re doing it.

Appeasement

Comparisons of Republicans to Nazis have been popular in some quarters, and I’m going to make one here. But it’s not a moral comparison, it’s a tactical one. Republicans are doing the same thing Hitler did when he took over one European state after another — after pledging not to — and British leader Neville Chamberlain let him do it. Instead of satisfying him, it made him more aggressive.

Hitler became convinced that Chamberlain and his supporters were “below average” leaders who were “no men of action.” In short, they weren’t going to do a damn thing so stop him.

No one likes to be compared to Hitler, but it’s hardly a compliment to be called a modern-day Neville Chamberlain, either. Democrats have followed Chamberlain’s strategy of appeasement in dealing with Republicans, and the results have been the same as they were when ol’ Neville tried them: disastrous.

Appeasement doesn’t work because the two sides have different views of each other. In the period before World War II, Hitler already viewed the British as their “enemies.” Chamberlain, however, naively saw the Nazis as allies, describing the Brits and the Germans as the “two pillars of European peace and buttresses against communism.”

Today, Democrats are clinging to the idea that the nation is unified: that Republicans and Democrats are two pillars of the republic. But the Republican base is operating under a different assumption: that Democrats are the enemy, and it’s better to allow Russians to interfere in an election than to allow the Democrats to win one.

Playing their game

Appeasement didn’t stem Nazi aggression or prevent World War II in the late 1930s, and it won’t stop Republican aggression or prevent an internal war in 2020. Democrats basically have two choices. They can continue to pursue appeasement and lose, or do what the Republicans — led by Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham — are doing anyway: Pick their battles and fight like hell every time they think they’re in a position to win.

Olive branches and compromise don’t work when the opposition is intent on waging war. Fighting back is the only thing that does.

This isn’t a progressive view, it’s a strategic one. I wish Obama’s choice of a moderate judge like Garland had been met in kind by moderation from Republicans.

It was not.

The Republicans have, in effect, declared war by choosing to push through this year’s nomination. They’ve committed themselves, not just to Donald Trump personally, but to his scorched-earth method. bombed Pearl Harbor, politically speaking. Democrats have two choices: They can roll over or they can fight back. That’s it.

If Democrats gain control of both houses of Congress and the White House, they should not play nice on the assumption that Republicans will reciprocate. They won’t. They’ve already shown they won’t. Just as Hitler viewed Chamberlain’s appeasement policy as weakness and opportunity, Republicans will view any future olive branches from the Democrats the same way.

Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico? A national holiday on Election Day? Motor voter laws? Universal mail-in balloting? Expanding the Supreme Court? Abolishing the Electoral College?

If and when these things become possible, I have three words for Democrats: Just do it.

The difference

But if they did so, wouldn’t Democrats just be “sinking to Republicans’ level”? Wouldn’t this amount to “going low” when they go low or “getting down mud” along with them? Wouldn’t this mean trying to make two wrongs into a right?

No. It. Would. NOT.

Under that rationale, the United States should not have declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor.

Some have argued that Democrats are just as hypocritical for changing their position on judicial confirmation as Republicans are. In 2016, Republicans were saying it was unseemly to confirm a nominee during an election year, yet this year, they’re doing just that. But aren’t Democrats being just as hypocritical in saying the Senate should wait on confirmation this year, after arguing that it shouldn’t four years ago.

Setting aside the fact that we’re a lot closer to the election this time than we were before, it’s a false equivalence. Here’s why:

Imagine a football game in which one team decides, unilaterally, to make a touchdown worth nine points when it has the ball on the opponent’s 1-yard line because it’s trailing by eight. Imagine that rule is adopted. Now imagine the other team gets the ball, drives to the 1-yard line, and expects that any touchdown it scores will now be worth nine points, too. But the first team, at this point, decides to make touchdowns worth six points again for no other reason than because it can.

This is war

This is what war looks like. It’s not a game. There are no rules in war, and Democrats need to recognize that they’re in a war. It’s not a matter of “if they go low, we go high,” it’s a case of, “if they declare war, we fight back.”

There’s another principle at work here: Peace through strength.

That’s the only kind of peace Democrats can hope to achieve against a Republican base intent upon following the rules selectively, simply because it can. The only recourse here is to show them they can’t. And the only way to do that is to pick your battles, identify the ones you can win, then fight like hell until the enemy surrenders.

Not for the sake of progressivism or for any particular issue — even climate change or equality or health care, as crucial as they may be — but for something even more important: the restoration of respect and civility: the only things that can hold a democracy together.

No one likes war, but it’s better than allowing yourself to be conquered and oppressed. Those are the only alternatives Democrats, and the nation at large, are facing here.

Time to choose.

Featured photo: Mitch McConnell by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons 3.0 license