The Monkey Trap
How political purity and old grievances are locking us into a losing strategy.
The first clue was in a parking lot some time after Covid, but some time before we stopped shopping at Walgreen’s for fueling fascism. I know, because that’s where I was, for my Covid booster.
A woman in a Toyota was trying to back into a parking spot and struggling mightily. She was missing that part of her brain that allows you to reverse your controls while your car is in reverse.
While she backed in, pulled out, adjusted, backed in again, adjusted, I simply parked my car and went inside.
I went to the counter and luckily, there was no wait. Ten minutes, in and out.
When I got back outside, the woman was pulled in, backwards of course, to the parking spot, but her driver’s side was pinned in inches from the car next to her, and she was trapped. She was too close to pull out of the spot. Too close to get out of the car. Trapped.
“Typical MAGA idiot,” I thought to myself.
Then I saw it:
It wasn’t just a Toyota. It was a Prius. And the bumper stickers? Coexist, Biden/Harris, “My child is an honor roll student at some middle school … “
What stuck with me was that she had dozens of chances to stop.
She could have pulled forward.
Started over.
Parked normally.
Abandoned the plan entirely.
Instead she kept committing to the original decision until she ended up trapped by it.
All she had to do was pull into the spot, forward, like an adult, go inside, do your business, come out and leave. That is the correct strategy for going to Walgreen’s.
It’s logical. It’s rational. It’s smart.
Pull in. Go in. Come out. Pull out. Leave.
That’s what I did. I left and went home. For all I know, she might still be there five years later. I don’t know. I don’t shop at Walgreen’s any more.
And before I get to my point, backing into parking spaces is irrational.
I have neighbors with three cars and three drivers. Every evening they perform what appears to be a carefully choreographed parking ballet. Cars pull out of the driveway, circle the cul-de-sac, reverse direction, back in one at a time, readjust, pull forward, readjust again, and eventually settle into their assigned spots.
The whole production takes twenty minutes.
To save maybe twenty seconds tomorrow morning.
I watch this spectacle almost daily, and every time I find myself asking the same question:
What calculation are they making?
They are spending minutes now to save seconds later.
That is not sound logic. You see that, right?
There’s an African parable about a monkey trap.
A hunter places fruit inside a hollow coconut. The opening is large enough for the monkey’s open hand to fit through, but too small for a closed fist.
The monkey reaches in.
Grabs the fruit.
And becomes trapped.
Not because the hunter tied it up.
Not because the coconut is locked.
Not because escape is impossible.
The monkey is free at any moment.
All it has to do is let go.
But it won’t.
Most people hear that story and conclude that the monkey is stupid.
I hear it and think about politics.
Because the monkey isn’t trapped by ignorance.
It’s trapped by attachment.
And in this election season I watch intelligent people grab hold of something they cannot bear to release — a grievance, a purity test, a single issue, a personal feud — and convince themselves that holding on is strength.
But often, it isn’t strength.
It’s avoidance.
Because it’s easier to fight the wrong fight.
It’s easier to fight the Democrat who disappointed you than the authoritarian who terrifies you.
It’s easier to fixate on one disagreement than confront the collapse of the entire system.
It’s easier to win a symbolic argument online than face the real battle that demands discipline, fear, and sacrifice.
In the past, the cost of that mistake was a Bush or a Romney. Bad, yes — but survivable. If one of them were in the White House right now, I wouldn’t be typing this. We’d grit our teeth and live to fight another day.
But this is something different.
If we fail the test in front of us — the test of rationality, of reason, of basic strategic thinking — the cost isn’t four bad years. It’s everything. Everything fragile, everything decent, everything we care about, everything that depends on a functioning democracy and a livable planet.
Most of us feel that in our bones now.
Which brings me back to the monkey trap.
The monkey isn’t trapped because the hunter is clever.
The monkey is trapped because it won’t let go.
It can’t step back.
It can’t see the bigger picture.
It can’t choose survival over attachment.
We don’t get that excuse.
We’re supposed to be more evolved than that.