Tuesday July 26, 2022; 10:41 AM EDT
- In World War II history, "a bridge too far" refers to a military plan of attack that was too ambitious. Troops captured a string of bridges but the fifth and final bridge in the plan turned out to be "a bridge too far," meaning "something in a plan that was too difficult."#
- The soldiers charged with the duty of carrying out that plan struggled mightily, sacrificed hugely, but their sacrifices were not enough for the last goal to be achieved. Back then, the phrase "a bridge too far" acknowledged these things.#
- Some of the Jan. 6 attackers on the Capitol, sent home by Trump with his expression of love that afternoon, probably think that they were like the W. W. II soldiers involved in a plan of attack that was too difficult, too far, for that moment in history. The old meaning.#
- Language changes, of course. Nowadays we still hear of something being "a bridge too far" but it tends to refer to ethics. "Yes, I'll withhold data about our product but I won't lie directly to a customer's face. That would be a bridge too far."#
- So, two very different meanings, and they are at risk of blurring. One is about superhuman sacrifice, and the other is about what bad thing one will or will not do for the sake of power or wealth.#
- One way to look at the Republican Party is to ask when, if ever, will they draw the line, saying: Ethically, this goes too far. "Yes, we will look the other way during our own and Trump's excesses," they seem to say. Just a handful now say the Jan. 6 coup was a bridge too far.#
- It's good that some testified in the TV hearings. For them, something about the coup was, ethically, a bridge too far. (If it had succeeded, well, who knows.) But, ethically, bridge after bridge in Trump's time should have been, for them, a bridge too far. But wasn't.#
- Republicans speaking up now, finally, testifying finally, carried out the second meaning, the ignoble meaning. This is why Jeffrey C. Isaac gives Liz Cheney only two cheers in this essay about her work on the Jan. 6 panel, which I am largely paraphrasing in this blog post.#