Better Safe Than Sorry?

It’s simply astounding to me how many people continue to be willing to sacrifice their honor and reputation to defend a man who has no redeeming moral virtues, and who is well on his way to well-earned self-destruction.

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) October 31, 2019

I used to teach an essay about process analysis.  It involved an explanation of the reproductive cycle of a pepsid wasp (I'm sure if I searched my blog for that species I'd find I'd mentioned this before).  The wasp reproduces by paralyzing and burying a specific species of tarantula and laying eggs in it.

The curious part of this process is that the wasp examines the tarantula to be sure it's found the right species, then goes off to dig a hole big enough to bury the tarantula.  Without shovels or machinery, you can imagine this is not a rapid process for the wasp, which is far smaller than the tarantula.  What's curious is that after the first examination, and while the grave is being dug, the tarantula tends to stay put, almost as if waiting for death.

It isn't waiting, of course; it just doesn't perceive the threat, because that doesn't come until the wasp looks for a break in the chitinous exo-skeleton where it can insert a stinger and paralyze the tarantula.  What the tarantula perceives is that is it is safe where it is.  Beyond the reach of its senses is the unknown, and there could very well be danger.  The safest bet is "better safe than sorry," and venturing beyond the space it is standing in may lead it quickly into danger.

(By way of illustration, in my youth I was visiting my cousin and we were crossing an open field.  We stopped at a barbed wire fence to step through.  I put a foot through the fence, and looked down to see a tarantula resting a tentative leg on the toe of my sandal.  My reaction flipped the tarantula a foot or more away, and my cousin grabbed a pipe and dropped it on the unfortunate.  I came to the spider, but he didn't know what was coming until it was too late.  Most animals in the wild don't have much better sense of the future than that.)

So do the people defending Trump have no better sense of the future?  Some, like Gaetz and Jordan and Nunes, are riding the horses they rode in on.  What choice do they have?  Others, like Cornyn or McConnell, don't seem to know whether to shit or go blind.  Politics, after all, can turn on a dime, and the forces that put them in office may still keep them there if they are careful enough.

But is this a sea change?  Or merely a shift in the winds for a moment?  I think it is the former, but it doesn't really surprise me if they think it is the latter.  Time will tell which of us is right.