Pablo, don’t hit your little brother! “But mom! You hit him the other day!” The child’s response to the mother is a classic of childish cunning and a classic of adult cynicism. It has a name in English, Whataboutism, the translation of which in Catalan could be something like “I-tú-què”, plus an “ism” at the end.
The definition of the phenomenon would be the following: an attempt to divert attention from a damage, grievance or offense in the present with an episode from the past, to create a deceptive moral equivalence, to point out the accuser as a hypocrite. We see it every day in all contexts, but especially notoriously in politics. The typical thing is for the spokesperson of a political party accused of stealing or lying or not fulfilling promises made to answer, “Oh, and what about you? Who are you to criticize us? Do they forget that time when…?”
This is exactly the tactic that Donald Trump is using today, impeached this week for the umpteenth time, this time for the attempt to subvert US democracy when he held, no less, the presidency of the nation.
Trump’s response is: “and Joseph Biden’s son, what?” Hunter Biden lives under suspicion of exploiting his father’s name to obtain commercial contracts abroad. There is still no conclusive evidence against the son of the current president, but this has not stopped Trump from accusing the father on social networks of being corrupt, the Biden family of being “criminal”.
Trumpism comes naturally to Trump, a boy in the body of an orange cow, and it comes naturally to his friend Vladimir Putin, whose response to criticism of the war in Ukraine is: “And the Western interventionism, what?”
I see variations on the same play almost every week in the comments that are published under my columns in the digital version of La Vanguardia. “You talk about Russia and Ukraine but what did the Americans do in Iraq/Afghanistan/Vietnam, what?” Or “Putin threatens nuclear war, but Hiroshima what…?”
How to respond to all this? The temptation is to enter the debate. Saying something like “Hunter Biden is only accused of doing dirty business; Trump wants to destroy the pillars of the constitution of the United States of America”. Or, “Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq was a tyrant; Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is a democrat.” Then, surely, the counter-answer would come: “But Joseph Biden knew that his son was a criminal”; Or “Zelenski wanted Ukraine to join NATO and Putin responded with a purely defensive invasion.”
As for the insolent boy’s mother, she could say to him: “Yes, Pablo, but I gave your little brother a whip because he threw the scrambled eggs on the floor…” To which the startled Pablito would reply : “Ah, but you said it: my little brother is no saint. I hit him because he hit me first…”
Once this path has been started, the Ituqueista has already won. He has achieved his goal of diverting attention from the initial issue, postulating the notion of moral equivalence, raising the possibility that the opponent is a hypocrite.
How do we then not fall into the trap? easy Don’t answer Or say: this is another topic. We can deal with it another day, if you want. But right now what we are talking about is this, not the other. Tell me what is your answer to this particular aggression, today’s, now’s, that you have just committed, my dear Pablito/Donald/Vladimir and if you don’t have an answer, shut up, or admit your mistake and promises never to do it again.
The problem is that in the personal sphere this logic can be useful, but in the political sphere, difficult. When you enter public land, you enter tribal land. Members of the Trump tribe or the Putin tribe want, desire, need to believe that their idol is right. They cling to his arguments, however demagogic they may be, and convince themselves that he is the victim, not the aggressor.
The good news is that, while lies and evasions pay off in politics, they are useless in the legal arena. Vladimir Putin will save himself. He will not have to defend himself before a court in The Hague. But Donald Trump has it complicated. One day not too far off he will be put on trial for something very close to treason.
If he tries to base his defense on the Hunter Biden case, the judge will tell him, as Pablito would be told by his mother, to shut up, not to screw up the troche.
