When the Tables Turn. And When They Can’t.

A helpful tip for navigating the moral fog of modern politics

Photo by Sebastian Pichler on Unsplash

There’s a question I’ve found that’s useful to ask each time the country gets embroiled in a new political drama. You’ve probably heard it before.

“What if the tables were turned?”

It’s a simple enough hypothetical, but part of what makes it so valuable is that it can’t be universally applied. There are plenty of situations that are so outlandish that imagining a partisan reversal simply doesn’t work. There are political offenses so exaggerated, so transparently corrupt, that they only make sense coming from one side of the aisle in the country we know today.

The question, “What if it were Biden accepting the private jet from Qatar, and promising to hoard it for himself when/if he leaves office?” simply holds no weight. It’s a non-starter. The scenario could never feasibly come to pass, and even the most devoted Trump supporters would have trouble building a case that our former leader would ever do something so flagrantly corrupt.

It’s equal measures difficult to envision the alternate timeline where Biden would have stoked a riot over Twitter and then encouraged that same mob to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.” He never called the free press “the enemy of the people.” He’s never threatened to revoke credentials from news outlets for covering him critically. And for all his flaws, most would be hard-pressed to imagine him outright refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power or threatening an illegal third term in office.

But there are still those situations that arise where it’s not so hard to envision if things had only gone a slightly different way. Even in our polarized country, there are significant developments that fall into an ambiguous gray zone. The tribal lines blur often enough that the “what if the tables were turned?” question holds more merit than many stop to consider.