The paradoxical limits of Murc’s law

Murc’s law is named after the insight of the eponymous LGM commenter that, in American politics, only Democrats are assumed to have agency. Republicans are like rocks rolling down hill or perhaps sharks eating seals: they do what they do because that’s just what they are, so there’s no point in holding them responsible for anything, since they could not do ottherwise.

This remains generally true. Still, the law contains within itself a kind of pragmatic limit, which is this: American politics operates within a frame in which the party of the government is the Democrats, while the Republicans are the party opposed to the government. This holds without regard to which party happens to be in power at any moment, because of the basic ideological commitments of the two parties in contemporary American life: The Democrats think the government should do things, and the Republicans think it shouldn’t (“The most frightening words in the English language are I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” “We want a government small enough to drown in a bathtub,” etcetera etcicero ab aeterno).

Now obviously this is a gross generalization, given that Republicans have lots of uses for government — redistributing wealth upwards, regulating sexual and reproductive behavior, invading uppity countries and so forth — but I’m talking about a basic mental frame that underlies the fundamental identities of the contemporary parties as ideological entities.

It follows that there is one thing, therefore, for which Republicans will be ascribed moral and political agency — one circumstance in which, almost as a matter of logical necessity, Republicans will be held responsible for their actions — and it is this: Not having a government. If the government is shut down, that is because the party that is against the government has succeeded in achieving its reason for existence, which is to not have a government, or at least one that actually works.

This is why Republicans actually do get blamed for government shutdowns. The American voter, who is admittedly a big dumb animal that can be taught almost nothing no matter how many times you smack it with the stick of FAAFO, is capable of grasping this one thing: If the government isn’t working, it’s because of the Republicans.

Which is what’s happening right now. Even the stupidest man in America, Donald Trump, understands this at some limbic level of feral cunning, although I have my doubts whether the Real President has emerged sufficiently from his more or less continuous ketamine haze to grasp this simple truth.