Imagine you’re a parent of two toddlers and have foolishly bought a toy from the devil (Who knows? Maybe the kids were your first sucker’s bet with Beelzebub).  After the transaction, you learn the details of the Faustian bargain: The toy will forever please them, but it cannot be withheld from them. They must be allowed to play with it.

You’re driving home with it, and the toddlers in the backseat begin to bawl over who gets to play with it first. What do you do?

I’ve asked several parents, including my mother, that question. Every one have said they would break the devil’s deal and smash the toy. But I suggest this as a counter if you had to abide by the terms: You decide which child is the more reasonable, and explain that the immature one gets it first, and the more mature one will get an equal amount of playtime afterward. A bitter pill for the mature child, to be sure. But the only way  to not veer off the road and through the bridge, killing you all.

That’s where we are now. Donald Trump is the devil. The border wall is the toy. And the parties are the bawling kids. Unfortunately, there is no parent in the car. So it’s up to the more mature child to swallow the bitter pill.

Yet neither kid is opting to take on the role. Trump would no sooner cave on the wall than he would read a book. And Nancy Pelosi said in an interview this weekend she would not concede “one dollar” to the $5.7 billion dollar wall bill — or 1/8 of 1% of America’s $4 trillion budget. That means the toy could be bought at a 99 cent store — with change.

Meanwhile, 800,000 American federal employees received a paycheck Friday that read $0.00 — along with news that neither side is willing to give an inch.

How dare we treat nearly a million Americans this way? The media likes to call these workers pawns in the showdown, but that’s bullshit. At least pawns stay sheltered in a box.

Not so for many Americans. After Trump’s bullshit address calling the southern border a “humanitarian crisis,” Bernie Sanders issued an online rebuttal. During it, he said he personally heard from a federal worker who had $100 left in her checking account; not enough to feed her kids for a week, let alone make a car or rental payment.

Yet not one Democrat has suggested just giving baby his binky, even though they could avoid a political loss of face by allowing Trump to declare a national emergency. They’ve even promised to fight the declaration in court if he were to do so. All the way to the Supreme Court, they vow.

Gosh, I wonder how a GOP-run Supreme Court would rule after months of a shutdown.

Pride apparently forbids giving an inch, even if that inch leaves 800,000 unpaid. That’s larger than the population of five states and the District of Columbia. Would they think that way if an entire state was left out of work?

Maybe they would. Chuck Schumer said last week that Dems would not allow Trump to hold Americans hostage.

Let’s play this out. Say a Mideast country kidnapped 800,000 Americans. And they demanded $10 billion, or they would behead each and every one of the hostages. Would a politician dare say “we do not acquiesce to terrorists demands” and tell the country to go ahead, chop away?

Of course not. We’d pay the ransom, get the people back, then bomb the offending country back into the stone age.

The Dems have been offered that metaphorical bomb with Trump’s threat. The emergency declaration puts the border fiasco squarely on his plate — and the plate of Republicans. And Americans get to work. Our government gets to run. Our national parks get to shake their current curse of becoming national toilets.

What more ammunition could Dems ask for in a 2020 election, when a tyrannical president and key GOP Senatorial seats are in jeopardy?

Republicans know this, which is why they’re cautioning President Dullard not to do it. Yet Lisa Murkowski, a GOP senator from Alaska, actually said this on the record:

“The real concern that I have is the precedent that this then sets because this border security is Donald Trump’s priority, (and) we don’t know who the next president may be. But it may be a president where their number one priority is dealing with climate change who says ‘I don’t care whether I have support of the Congress, I’m going to direct these funds to address this because I feel like this is a crisis,'”

Why wouldn’t Dems want this precedent set? Why not dare Trump to call one, just to goad him into a boondoggle? If global warming isn’t the true definition of a national emergency, what is? And Murkowski publicly marked her party as the one that doubts science, questions global warming. Trump and his lackeys have offered a gift neatly wrapped and bowed. Yet somehow, Dems are looking that political gift horse straight in the gullet.

I get the discomfort of swallowing a bitter pill. I take 16 pills a day for my transplants. Eight of them are bitter as hell. Over 19 years, that’s 55,480 bitter pills. If one doesn’t go down smoothly with water, it’s like sucking on rusted metal, and leaves an aftertaste for  about a minute.

But the greater gain is worth the bitterness. Dems should try swallowing just one.

In addition, they could try this simple exercise, since a brain scan is complicated: Take both hands, and put them on your hips. Then slowly move your hands along your body behind you at the same pace, until your fingers touch.

If you do it right, you’ll find a spine.