The Nadirs
There are two major political parties in America. I would write their names here, but the words themselves cause otherwise good-mannered people to curse and spit on the ground, so instead let’s use names that are more onomatopoetic—that means names derived from the sounds each party makes. To wit, let’s call one party the Party of Truth and the other the Party of Lies. But here’s the catch. Members of each party believe their party is the Party of Truth and that their adversaries belong to the Party of Lies.
For example, right now the Party of Truth is in power.
Before that the Party of Truth was in power.
（Except it was the other party.）
You can see how this is going to go.
For short, let’s call one side Truthers and the other side Liars.
Which is which depends on you.
Margot grew up in the Party of Truth, back when it was called something else. Her father was a Truther and his father before him. The truths they believed were bootstrap truths, fiscal truths, truths about patriotism and free markets. Remy also grew up in the Party of Truth, except his parents’ party believed truths about hope and equality, about safety nets and personal sacrifice. In college Remy came to believe his parents’ truths were fantasies. There would never be equality for the masses, he realized. In the real world, there could only ever be personal achievement. So he switched from the Party of Truth to the Party of Truth.
And yet it’s hard to dispute that in the last few years, the truths themselves have gotten murkier. For instance, it used to be the Party of Truth that believed in reducing the national debt. But somewhere around 2016, they abandoned that truth in favor of the Truth of Massive Tax Cuts. As a result, the Other Party of Truth became the Party for Reduced National Debt. Which means that now, for Remy and Margot’s side, reduced national debt has become a lie, fought for by the Party of Lies.
Try to keep up.
Margot herself uses a different analogy. She looks at her party as a Bar and the other party as a Restaurant. This makes her a Drinker, and the other party’s members Cooks. The Cooks claim they want to serve food to as many people as possible. They act like all they want is a big, warm forever feast, a giant Norman Rockwell melting-pot-Thanksgiving, but the truth is what they really want is to tell their patrons where to sit and their suppliers how to farm.
Rules. Snobbery. Guilt. These are the dishes they serve.
In the Cooks’ restaurant, new diners are made to pay the bill for old meals because historical debts can never be repaid. In the Cooks’ restaurant, those with more are punished and those with less are praised. See, the Cooks believe that the rich should give their seats up to the poor, often forgoing their own meals entirely, so that those who didn’t call ahead, who didn’t make a reservation, who can’t afford to order an entrée or dessert, should get the all-you-can-eat buffet, free of charge, until the very function of a restaurant—to feed customers in exchange for money—has been repurposed and the people who have the most eat the least.
A Bar, on the other hand, is a place for adults to drink, adults who—because they’re adults—can make their own decisions about what to order and how much to consume. The Bar Margot belongs to used to be a Cigar Bar, where well-educated Christian family men and their wives drank brandy and discussed tax shelters and exporting American freedom to the tropics. But then, a few years ago, the Bar changed management. It became a Sports Bar! Now, the only thing the Drinkers inside care about is winning. And their enemy is everyone outside. The more drinks they have, the more damage they want to do, until their reason for living is not just to beat the other teams but to destroy them.
Sure, there’s still a small backroom where Drinkers who believe in moderation can sit, but the tone of the place has changed. In the main room, the customer is always right, and so the drinks keep getting bigger and stronger. Fights break out, but if the Bartenders try to cut people off, a mob forms and threatens to destroy the Bar, so they apologize and pour another round.
In the old days, Drinkers used to choose leaders who believed in small government and free enterprise. These days the leaders that get the most votes are the entertainers, the emotionalists. They buy round after round, telling the sad Drinkers that the world is a sad place and the angry Drinkers that the world is out to get them. Only in the Bar are you safe. Only your fellow Drinkers deserve a say. What do the Cooks know about suffering? All they do is eat their Sunday dinners and judge.
Now, personally, Margot is a moderate. She will have one or two drinks maximum. And she tends to believe that others should do the same. The problem is, her Bar has been taken over by the drunks. And though she doesn’t believe in drinking to excess, she thinks the moment you start making rules about who can drink and how much, you turn adults into children.