The Mugwump

To students of history and the great conflicts of the last century, the American claims of having won both world wars, now voiced with Trumpian certainty, ring hollow. The properly educated realize that there is a fundamental difference between being the reason that a war was not lost and being the reason that it was won. But the American psyche, reflected in the parochial, self-congratulatory polemics of its secondary school systems, is steadfast and unerringly stupid. So, let us introduce an artifact from those tumultuous times – the “Mugwump”. Although originally introduced in a political context to describe aisle crossers in the late 1880’s, it was used to describe the trait of trying to have it both ways and became synonymous with intentional indecision and a lack of principled commitment.

Perhaps truedr now that it was in the last century