The Glonzo Strategy
Sometimes You Just Need to Win
Alexander the Great, victorious over Darius at the Battle of Gaugamela, Jacques Courtois, 17th century
Sometimes you have to fight your way into handicapping your political adversaries. It takes large-scale mobilization of energized activists who relentlessly press their interests to win over less committed voters—a long and tiresome trek toward sapping your opposition of political capital
Othertimes your adversaries promise the voters Glonzo’s head.1 Then they promptly deny that Glonzo ever existed. I mean honestly, why are you even asking about Glonzo? Glonzo is boring. Also the Democrats made him up.
In this instance Glonzo happens to be files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The GOP made sweeping promises to their base that once they assumed power they would release all the information related to Epstein to the public. It is worth briefly recapping the timeline for anyone that somehow doesn’t use social media.
They careened from a flashy (and underwhelming for their base) release of Epstein files to various influencers, to a terse memo that declared the issue closed, to a comically angry Trump interjecting in a cabinet meeting that Epstein was never important to begin with. Trump, increasingly sweating through one version of events after another, is now claiming Obama and Hillary wrote the Epstein files.
Now, as of today, the attorney that prosecuted the Epstein case has been fired.
Honestly I could care less about the Epstein stuff. I’ve never particularly cared about this as an issue and it has always seemed relatively shut and closed to me.
But the voting public? Oh man. The voting public cares quite a lot. At this point it feels like they care more about the Trump administration’s response to the files than they do about the files themselves.
So what am I getting at here?
There’s this concept from Clausewitz called a “center of gravity” which has been interpreted in various manners—but the definition used by the American military (and the one to which I subscribe) uses the idea to define the locus from which an adversary draws their strength. When you seek to defeat an adversary you want to strike at the heart of where they pull their will to fight.
Clausewitz talks quite a bit about the notion of how people overtime have tried to humanize warfare. He accepts that it’s a noble undertaking, but asserts it is a deeply mistaken notion to try to obfuscate what the core aspect of war is—killing.
Similarly, many of us like to think of politics as some sort of Aristotelean pursuit. Wherein politicians seek to embody virtues and steer the polity towards a higher good. It’s a nice notion. I would like our politics to be predicated on the ennobling of the broader political community.
But to channel a French observer of the Charge of the Light Brigade—it is beautiful, mais ce n'est pas la politique.
Like Clausewitz, I prefer winning.
The shambolic Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein affair is an opportunity for anyone opposed to Trump to drive a stake into the heart of their political coalition.
Maybe it’s slightly misaligned with the platonic ideal of civic republicanism to resort to pressing your political rivals over matters that likely amount to little more than a conspiracy theory—but the consequences of the MAGA movement continuing their march through our institutions is unconscionable.
They’ve cut USAID support to foreign countries that will kill millions. They’ve dismantled the Education Department. Billions in dollars have been cut from scientific research. They’re sending masked men into our cities. Our alliances are being undermined around the world. Hospitals around the country will be forced to close. Ukranians see their military aid cut and restored on an almost daily basis.
If you want to see this all stop, breaking apart the coalition that supports Trump is the only way forward. You need to make Republicans remember that he is a lame-duck President and that they need to look towards their own political survival. You can only worry about reconstructing what is deeply broken in our political community if you actually gain power.
It’s possible Alexander the Great felt bad about exploiting a gap in the Persian lines at Gaugamela—driving his cavalry wing straight into Darius’s face. Maybe he would have preferred a straightforward contest of wills in which both armies engaged in a noble clash of arms face to face.
However, I am sure that Alexander was more than able to console himself when he found himself master of the entirety of the Persian Empire. Otherwise, the British cavalry’s Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava can attest that fighting beautifully means nothing.
I agree. Do whatever it takes. They would. They are not a political opponent, they are your mortal enemy.
There are certain moments where a distinction comes into sharp relief. Means and ends. Between a category of people who believe in such a thing as "dirty" power that spoils even the idea of its wielding, much less anything that one might do with it, and those who very much do not.
Losing isn't always worth the beauty. Winning is sometimes worth the stain.