Flatter, make nice, curry favor, snow, stroke, lay it on, cozy up, toady up, pander, brown nose, apple polish, suck up.   Crass or artful, over the top or subtle, whatever you call it, flattery is as old as we human animals.  Children learn it from an early age trying to get what they want from parents.  Students learn it to ingratiate themselves to teachers.  Employees learn it to garner promotions.  Fundraisers learn it to secure funds.  Preachers learn it to gain appointments.  All understand at a visceral level that flattery works.  We have experience.

And politicians?  For politicians flattery is a sweet, addictive elixir taken as a perk of power.  Without a substantial dose of flattery the vast majority of politicians tune out whatever comes next, insulted by its absence.  In fact, the omission of flattery disrupts the ordinary flow of getting acquainted.  Most politicians expect it, crave it, demand it and consider it their due.  

Ritual flattery is so much a part of politics that a common synonym of “to flatter” is “to politic”. Rare is the politician whose expectation to be flattered, especially by ordinary citizens seeking attention to a problem or redress of an injustice, goes unrequited.  Rare is the political gathering where mutual praises of extraordinary qualities and accomplishments of fellow politicians aren’t exchanged.

Flattery to achieve a purpose works in the right place, at the right time with the right intensity.  Miscalculation leads to  embarrassment of the flatterer with the mechanics of the effort outed and the objective laid painfully bare.  Rare is the politician who doesn’t suffer flattery exhaustion when tacit rules are repeatedly violated.  Flattery fails when motivations independent of the virtues and good deeds extolled appear as cynical manipulations of a vulnerable individual.  In this case flattery is demeaning of both the perpetrator and receiver.

By clinging to the goal at hand, the flatterer feels justified to engage in false and misleading expression.  The ends justify the means.  Regardless, flattery takes a toll on the flatterer as  integrity takes a back seat to strategic calculations.  The deal the flatterer makes with himself and co-conspirators is one of connivance accompanied by tacit negative judgments of self and others.

All politicians rising to the level of congressional leadership have long been immersed in this kind of deal making.    Their experience has paved the way for mastery of skills honed in their own rise.   They have developed strong stomachs for the application of strategic flattery.  As a consequence, such flattery of their President is no different in kind or motivation from their ordinary practice.

What is different is that the primary object of their faux affections, Donald Trump, is an outlier, oddly incapable of flattery exhaustion.  His flatterers have learned from trial and error that breaking rules of restraint applicable to even the most emotionally needy among them don’t apply to him.   With Trump there is no “too much”, no “over the top”.  Public displays such as those of recent vintage put on by his cabinet and orchestrated by congressional leaders, not to mention his Vice President, both confirm their insight and establish their abject complicity.  Together they blast through the guardrails of embarrassment already partially breached in past behavior.

It’s tempting to conclude that Donald Trump’s desperate need for affirmation comes from deep seated, irresolvable family issues buried in the past.  It doesn’t matter.  His insatiable appetite has a public consequence the workings of which are on display for all to witness.  There’s a Wizard of Oz aspect to national politics in the Trump era.  A small, insecure man behind a screen using media devices to make false claims to grandiosity.

Ultimately the Wizard was found out by Dorothy and her cohorts who accurately diagnosed the scope and scale of his machinations.  The Republicans in the US Congress are traveling no such yellow brick road.    But I suspect the majority, maybe vast majority, of ordinary citizens are.  Most of us would be deeply embarrassed by the exchanges between Congressional leaders, the President and his cabinet were we put in a situation remotely comparable.  Most of us would call it out for what it is because we don’t respect the abject sycophancy currently evident in our national drama.  We won’t behave that way ourselves because of how we were raised and the standards of behavior we try to embody.  In short, we know ass kissing when we see it and we don’t like it.

Taxpayers and voters of the Tri-Community and Copper Corridor, the part of Arizona where I live, will soon come face to face with what the Tax Cut and Jobs Act means for our communities. Based on demographics of the region, it’s clear that most local taxpayers won’t be major beneficiaries.   In fact, Eastern Pinal taxpayers will be big losers if adding a trillion + dollars to the federal deficit triggers cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Food Stamps.  

Rich people and big corporations aren’t located here so their gains won’t be felt here.  At best a handful of small businesses may benefit at the margins from changes in tax rules regarding treatment of pass through profits. Another handful who currently deduct contributions to churches and charities may gain from a doubling of the standard deduction.  But religious institutions and non profits themselves may be losers as local donors lose tax incentives to make contributions.

On the job growth front, Eastern Pinal County needs investments in infrastructure, education and training to both grow and access good paying jobs.  Tax cuts targeting big corporations and the super wealthy will produce none of the above.  Even a best case scenario put forward by corporate tax cut devotees fails to envision a surge in good paying jobs to replace those lost to mine, mill and smelter closures in places like San Manuel, Mammoth, Oracle, Hayden, Kearny and Superior. 

Many Tri-Community residents will recall that what closed the San Manuel mine, mill, smelter and refinery, when still profitable wasn’t the price of copper, labor contracts, environmental regulations, the corporate tax rate or some combination thereof.  It was demands made by a multi national corporation - BHP Billington headquartered in Australia - for an unattainably high return on capital investment and a tax write off that Congress is leaving untouched in current negotiations.  Of course, the well being of workers and their families never figured in these corporate calculations any more than the well being of ordinary tax payers figured prominently in congressional deliberations.   

The rock solid heart of the new federal tax cut legislation is not “middle class tax cuts”, which are uncertain and, at best, piddling, but huge cuts designed to make Corporate America more profitable than it currently is.  Ironically because 35% of US corporations are owned by foreign investors the payoff to them from this legislation is gigantic. The claim that going deeper into debt to aid big business serves the common good is ridiculous on its face.

Congress, as of this writing, is wrapping up the Tax Cut and Jobs Act before sending it to the President for his signature.   Unsurprisingly their most recent move is to make additional cuts to taxes on the wealthy.   
What we now know is that when the tax bill’s impacts are finally tallied through real life experience, there will be a few big winners and and lots of losers including our children and children’s children who will assume responsibility for the nation’s staggering debt load.  If the citizens of the nation can’t stop this massively unpopular legislation now, opportunities for redress at the next election in November, 2018 loom on the horizon. 

I expect Roy Moore to win Alabama’s Senate election this Tuesday by six or seven points. His “Evangelical Christian” supporters, a rock solid 35% of the electorate, will have it no other way.  They will bring him home to victory.  

I suspect Roy Moore could be caught having sex with an Alabama billy goat high on meth (both of them) and still come out victorious.  He could shoot a black man (or a Mexican) on Jackson Street in Birmingham and still vanquish his opponent.  

Tuesday evening his supporters will be celebrating his triumph over Doug Jones.  But not only that.  Together they will have vanquished the mainstream media, pointy headed academics, the LGBT community, Muslims and women complaining of childhood harassment, not to mention atheists and bedeviled Roman Catholics.

If all of this renders Moore’s candidacy a clarifying event we have the Almighty to thank.  On  December 12 when Hanukkah begins and the Virgin of Guadalupe is venerated, Alabamans will go naked into polling booths for all to see.