Zugzwang- A situation in a chess game in which a player is forced to make an undesirable or disadvantageous move. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Unfortunately, this definition does not do justice to the concept of being in “Zungswang” (German, pronounced: tsuktsvaŋ).  If you have played enough chess, you are familiar with the frustration of facing a position, sometimes occurring in the endgame, where legally you have to make a move, but any move you make sets you up to eventually lose.  This is not the same as being run around the board by a far superior opponent either.  One may be in Zungswang while having the same amount of material on the board as his opponent; perhaps his king and a couple of pawns.  

True Zugzwang happens when, if only you could take a “pass” for one turn, then you would be freed from your otherwise inevitable loss.  But chess, like life, doesn’t work that way.  It’s a turn based game and you are compelled to move after your opponent does.  The worst is when your opponent isn’t really a better player than you, but to the surprise of you both, there you are, now stuck and compelled to move yourself to your doom.  He sits there with this dopey smirk on his face, as you go through ten or more agonizing moves to fully consummate your defeat.  

This is what the political situation has felt like for many of us over the last four years.  For those paying attention, it seems like no matter what moves we make, our position just keeps getting worse.  Yet, unlike chess, we can’t just graciously extend our hands to our opponents and surrender; there is far too much at stake!  So we scramble, we debate, we do our modest parts, and in the end, we probably will second guess both ourselves and the leaders who (more or less) represent us.

If you are feeling the anxiety of Zungswang heading into this election, relax.  There are good, rational moves still on the board.  We may not be thrilled about them, but there is plenty of consolation to be had if we keep the right perspective.


Messy

To fully understand the context of our current, seemingly, Zugswang position, let’s break down the evolution of our national political situation as it has developed over the last four years.  

In 2020, a stronger than normal virus was exploited by a network of powerful elites who have a large amount of influence on global policy.  Was the virus planned?  We’ll never know, but considering that fact that there is always some sort of Bird Flu, Zika, or Swine Flu that comes around every year, elites with enough money and power to control the media, WHO, and compromised politicians didn’t need to design Covid 19.  They just had to design a reaction and a mechanism that would instill mass panic (cue the media) and overwhelming changes in policy (politicians) that could facilitate radical re-allocation of power and money world-wide.  Covid 19, no matter it’s origin, did just fine as an inflection point to accomplish mass change.  

The moment the shutdowns and forced masking began, this is where many Americans felt Zugswang for the first time.  On the one hand, you had the option to trust some sort of plan to “flatten the curve” and to bend a little bit to some rights violations.  You would then hope that the media was still somewhat honest and politicians weren’t really using the virus to change how elections were done forever more.  And by following this protocol, perhaps the virus would go away more quickly and we could get back to normal.  

On the other hand, you thought, if something truly nefarious was going on, the more you submitted to rights violations, the more normalized rights violations would become.  It was a tough dilemma, because you were compelled to make some tough choices in that very confusing and hostile moment.  You couldn’t just say “I’m not sure what to do here, I think I just won’t make a move.  Pass!”  You could either stay locked in your house and eventually wear a mask like everyone else at he grocery store, or you could push back and host a get together with 50 or more people and tell the Walmart greeter that masks were stupid.  Hopefully, you thought, maybe others would be inspired by your courage and follow suit.  Then, you and other like minded patriots would gradually get your country back to normal (not the “new normal”, but the real one) and we would all be better for it.

But as you and your patriot friends shamelessly and aggressively went back to real normal, in spite of the advice of the “seedy-c” (See what I did there?), you realized that this brought about a new dilemma.  It was an election year, and you and your friends were possibly driving the fearful “squishy-middle” voters over to the democrats!  Or at least the media was using your defiance to trick them further that way.  “See how those ultra-MAGA people want to kill grandma!  As they rattle off their conspiracy theories!” Mr. CNN newsman would say.  “Thankfully there is a good ole’ ‘moderate’ option this year.  Vote for ‘Scranton Joe!’”

Do’h!  They really are master manipulators, aren’t they?  

And it just kept on that way in the months to come.  When the riots happened, you had the choice to either stand with a self-proclaimed Marxist group with the explicit agenda of dismantling the nuclear family (BLM), or be a silent “racist.”  When the election was stolen, you knew that if America tolerated it, then it was just the beginning of rigged election after rigged election.  But you also understood that objecting would brand you a “conspiracy theorist” and probably a radical right wing domestic violent extremist.  

But even then, were we really in Zugswang?  No.  Refusing to mask and demanding that our politicians lift the lock-downs was the rational thing to do.  True, no matter what you did, the election was probably going to be fixed anyway, but we have more rights now because many Americans did not roll over in 2020.  

Thankfully, unlike chess, we aren’t just boring white or black wooden carved soulless game pieces limited to 64 squares and designated move patterns.  We are human persons who make moral choices that impact ourselves and our families, despite how the political results turn out.  In order to make moral choices, you have to make rational choices. Masking, social distancing, and quarantine for the healthy are all irrational concepts.  Even if any move seemed like a “losing” move, you can never lose your soul if you always make rational and moral moves.

Fast forward to 2022.  The chant “Let’s Go Brandon!” rang throughout American stadiums and at conservative rallies, almost to a fever pitch.  I remember quite vividly seeing one Republican candidate after another proudly slap the “Endorsed by Trump” tag on his campaign sign.  The forecast called for a “red wave” that would see Americans, finally sick of ever rising inflation and gross incompetence, come out in droves to vote for a great MAGA comeback!

It was only after that inebriation came to a sobering crash in mid-November that many Republicans now felt in Zugswang again.  Only months after the over-turning of Roe versus Wade, it seemed like the democrats were able to effectively use America’s underestimated demand for abortion against the Republican candidates (so these Republicans “reasoned”), resulting in a mid-term that turned out to be more of a “pink splash” than a red wave.  Never mind the dis-functional polling places throughout a few states and the two weeks that it took for all of the ballot drops to keep coming in that somehow shattered what the pre-election polling data had indicated… the Republicans must have lost because the “moderates”/“independents” found them to be “too extreme.”  
Sadly, it would be inaccurate to say that only some of the politicians buckled at the panic of feeling the Zugswang again.  Yes, there were plenty of mid-term losers and presidential hopefuls who were now singing a new “moderate” tune about abortion, but even our own deeply conservative friends were questioning if the Supreme Court had actually done the right thing in overturning Roe v. Wade!  They would ask, “Was it really wise to overturn Roe v. Wade so close to the mid-term?  Did that decision set us up for mid-term failure?”

If that’ not true Zugswang, then I don’t know what is.  Since when has the strategy for winning the culture war been, “Win, but don’t win too often or when the time isn’t ‘right.”? If that were worth taking seriously, then we truly would be “dammed if we do, damned if we don’t.”  

But, like saying no to the masks and the lockdowns, we can’t second guess what the Supreme Court did.  They evaluated whether there actually ever was a Constitutional right to “privacy” that would bar states from making their own laws on abortion.  I wish the Supreme Court had gone further, but I can’t say that what they did wasn’t rational.  They netted and advanced an objectively rational decision.  

Unfortunately, many of those leading politicians took the mid-terms as the inflection point to re-figure their strategies for the 2024 election.  Many of them chose to get more liberal. And it’s because they have changed their policies, in hopes that they can still “win”, that you may now feel like you are in Zugswang.  

How do you make a choice for Republicans who are only so conservative anymore?  How do you still vote for a Donald Trump who has now hosted a gay wedding, says that the federal government will pay for IFV, and is now okay with abortion up to 15 weeks?  But on the other hand, how do you just stand back and watch the most obviously straight up communist coup happen this Tuesday?  

You are conflicted, but this decision isn’t going away.  What do you do under such compulsion?


Responsible Citizenship

It has become hard to discuss Responsible Citizenship and voting with a clean conscience, not only because the Republican party has gotten more liberal, but because of division within the Church.  That’s just the fact on the ground.  There are Francis following Catholics, “Check the box” Catholics, nominal Catholics, Catholic Radio listening “right of center” Catholics, Trads, and a growing number of Sedevacantists.  The Universal Church is the least united I have seen it in my lifetime.  

Only 20 years ago, settling a dispute about Catholic teaching was as easy as pointing to Cannon Law or the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  In grayer areas (like new moral questions, say, on Bioethics), one could at least consult some recent document from the Council of Faith and Doctrine.  

We are now in a time where many enthusiastic and, granted, pious Catholics fully disregard the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Several Catholic Youtube bloggers have insisted that the Catechism of Trent is all you need.  Well, there goes the easy go to for final Magisterial authority on moral issues such as IVF, cloning, embryonic stem cell therapy, etc…  (Trust me, I checked the Catechism of Trent for all of those issues; they aren’t in there).

But if we throw out all sorts of “modern” Magisterial documents, then it becomes rather difficult to determine what responsible citizenship looks like.  And the further back a Catholic wants to cast doubt on what documents are valid, the harder it gets to find direction on that which is most recently relevant.  

If one rejects practically everything after the 1960’s from Rome, then it will be difficult for him to advance responsible citizenship arguments that have been extremely accessible and relevant to the most liberal to the most conservative Catholic, such as a “Non-Negotiables” argument.  

What is a “Non-Negotiable” responsible citizenship argument?  It is basically the argument most faithful Catholics used for around the last 20 years or so to prove that the democrat party platform was inherently anti-Catholic on it’s own (de)merit.  Here’s how it  worked: The democrats champion issues such as abortion, euthanasia, cloning, embryonic stem cell research and therapy, and gay marriage.  These are all so fundamentally morally disordered, and such absolute moral evils, that whatever other merits you could find with their party (if you actually believes that there are some) could not make voting for them justifiable.  At least, that’s the oversimplified explanation.  

And then when liberal Catholics would say, “How can you say those are more evil or important than caring for the poor and the death penalty!!?”  One could point to Vatican documents from over the last 60 years.  Most of us wouldn’t bat an eye when someone pulled out relevant and recent content from the Vatican that specifically answered new budding questions of the times.  You could point to lines where Pope John Paul II explicitly stated that abortion was an intrinsic evil, for example, in Evanglium Vitae.  You could allude to documents from the Congregation on Bioethics which condemned human cloning or Embryonic stem cell therapy, and even the most conservative Catholic in the room would approvingly nod while you made the liberal Catholic feel the weight of clear Catholic teaching.  

But if you throw out anything post 1962 from Rome, then you won’t find much Magisterial weight to support you in making a “non-negotiable” responsible citizenship argument, at least not to a Joe Catholic ripe for some in-house evangelization.  Human cloning and Stem Cell research weren’t on the table before 1962, so there was no way for a teaching office of the Church to map out, officially for the faithful, how the doctrine of the Church condemns these things.  And abortion wasn’t spoken of in Magisterial documents nearly as much as after it became so legal in the West, starting in the latter half of the 20th century, so good luck there as well.  I suppose you could cite the 1917 Code of Canon Law edition, but it’s hard to find much material past that.

As we all have gotten less and less on the same page as Catholics, Pope Francis cheerleader liberal Catholics feel a lot more emboldened now, by the way.  They have enough goofy cues from the Vatican (or at least they think they do), to justify throwing the non-negotiable argument back at the faces of conservative Catholics while screaming, “Seemless garment!  Capital punishment and social justice are equally important issues to all the rest of them!  Rawr!”  Sure, Pope Francis is quite responsible for much of that.  But without us using the power we used to be so comfortable wielding, without us simply refuting them with clear and obvious teachings from more recent Magisterial documents, we have more or less let millions of leftist Catholics get away with it.

Don’t think this isn’t a big deal, because we really could use some leverage to guilt them away from voting for New World Order puppets who want to make all of our kids poor and genderless right about now.  In fact, I argue that a little more faith in Magisterial wisdom, aided by some simple rational perspective, could help us all better understand our current obligations as faithful Catholic citizens.


Do What’s Rational

What about you, the reader who feels like he is in Zugswang over the compulsion to choose between the “lesser of two evils”?  Maybe you are so sick of that dilemma that you are seriously considering taking a “pass” on politics altogether and sitting this election out for reasons of conscientious objection.

My humble advice: it has never been about “choosing the lesser of two evils”. Unfortunately using that language confuses many, as it calls to mind Proportionalism.  To oversimplify, Proportionalism is a heretical moral theory that many Jesuits used to rationalize the use of artificial birth control from the 60’s into at least the 90’s.  Proportionalism was directly condemned by Pope John Paul II in Veritatas Splendor, btw).  The “philosophy” behind Proportionalism is that every moral choice is one of choosing between the lesser of two evils.  A true Proportionalist would go as far as to say that sometimes one must violate one of the ten commandments in order to prevent a “greater evil” (usually a Proportionalist here points to a temporal evil, not a moral evil) that would happen if one didn’t commit the sin.  For example, one might need to lie in order to protect someone from physical danger.  But of course this slippery slope leads to the justification of any sin, with the moral agent getting full autonomy to determine when his sin prevents some sort of perceived “greater evil.”  Be creative; one can easily use such a theory to justify fornication, adultery, murder, etc...

But for conscientious Catholics, they intuitively detect the dubious nature of such a moral theory, and they would like to avoid any sort of recourse to it.  I think there are Catholics who are so troubled by the increasingly left leaning nature of the Republican party, that they are afraid that voting Republican (more specifically for Trump) will make them guilty of justifying an act by appealing to Proportionalism.  

They wonder to themselves, “If I vote for this particular Republican, aren’t I choosing a moderate position against abortion and a pro-gay marriage agenda?  Of course, I’m happy that this candidate is not as abortion hungry as the democrats, and at least this candidate is against doctors being forced to perform sex change operations, but I just can’t shake that I would technically be ‘choosing’ a slightly pro-abortion candidate who accepts the evil of gay marriage.  If I vote for someone who is even a little bit pro-abortion, then wouldn’t that make me someone who voted in favor of abortion rights?”  Wouldn't voting for any such candidate, even if they run against a radical pro-abort, make me a hypocrite and a Proportionalist?"

Actually, voting for the best viable, albeit imperfect, candidates makes you none of that.  It just makes you someone willing to make a rational decision in a seeming position of Zugswang.  

I don’t care who knows it; I will be voting for Donald Trump again this Tuesday.  Having said that, I will be up front in saying that I have personal disdain for the man.  There were other Republican candidates whom he could have graciously endorsed, whom I believe would have been far more conservative and who would have had greater elect-ability.  But faced with the choices before me, I’m not actually choosing the “lesser of two evils”, I’m simply choosing the candidate who will help ensure the better chances for my family to live without fear of gross government overreach and blatant communism.  I’m choosing against the party that wants to bankrupt my children both monetarily and morally, and that is financially backed by trans humanist vampires above them and fought for by foolish angry Marxists beneath them.

I may be choosing the less traumatic future for those I love, but I certainly am not choosing to do a specific moral evil or to back a moral evil in and of itself.  Faithful Catholic citizens under far more corrupt governments have been holding their noses at the voting booth and have simply chosen the better political consequences for a long time now.  

Perhaps your conscience still compels you against voting for Trump and other Republicans this time around.  Maybe you are convinced that the election will be so rigged again (which very well could be true), that it’s all a moot point and that you should save your dignity and vote third party to preserve your principles.  I get it.  

Nevertheless, I hope you reconsider.  And if you are planning to skip the election altogether, please consider that future you would prefer for your children before you let Tuesday go by.  If anything, come to vote no on prop 139.  If you stay to vote “R” all the way down, many of your friends would appreciate your help!

Is this the best position to be in?  No.  Are our Republicans candidates drifting further away from a platform that represents us as faithful Catholics?  For many of them, yes.  

But at the end of the day, one party does not wish to compel your speech in the workforce, while the other vehemently does.  One party has gotten squishier on the pro-life issue, the other provided abortions at their national convention.  One party wants to say as little as possible about the LGBTQLMNOP movement, while the other wants to hang rainbow flags on the state capitol buildings and the White House.  One party is okay with your kids growing up and having families, the other won’t be satisfied unless your children grow up to all live in 400 square foot concrete block apartments.  One party will appoint judges that will let you keep your guns and your right to refuse vaccinations, while the other wants you to be locked in your home, New Zealand style, when the next “pandemic” comes around.  

Please get to the polls on Tuesday and help us out!

If you still aren’t willing to vote, or if you feel you have to vote third party, please don’t judge the rest of us too harshly.  We aren’t choosing the “Lesser of two evils,“ rather we are just trying to make the most rational choice we and our families can live with, from a seeming position of Zugswang.  

God bless,

Gadfly