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By the evening of January 6, 2021 I had received nearly a half dozen queries from friends overseas. “What is happening in your country? Are you okay?”
These are people from countries with a long history of autocratic, authoritarian regimes. They are usually in the news for the corruption rampant at the highest levels of their governments. They recognize authoritarianism when they see it.
They wondered how the United States had devolved so quickly into what we Americans would previously have thought of as a third-rate, third-world, authoritarian dictatorship. How could this happen, they asked me after I assured them that my safety was secure.
As a historian of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president of the United States, it pains me to acknowledge that the reason is today’s Republican party.
I’ve noted that today’s Republican party is no longer the party of Lincoln, and has not been for a long time. I explained the history and metamorphosis of the Republican party in more detail. In the last four years the party has gone even further. They now are the party of the Confederacy. They are the party of Putin. They are the party of dishonesty. They have impeached themselves. They have committed treason.
The Republican party no longer even tries to hide its disdain for most Americans. They don’t hide their focus on white supremacy, on promoting the “superior” caste. Elected Representatives defended white supremacy on the floor of the House. The Republican party helped organize and fund the attack on the Capitol.
This became abundantly clear on January 6, 2021. Normally a perfunctory, ceremonial task, the joint House/Senate counting of the already many-times certified electoral votes to confirm the election of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was this time going to be an exercise in sedition. Current Vice President Pence, to his limited credit after enabling Trump for four years, refused to succumb to Trump’s treasonous threats to throw out valid votes. More than half of Republicans in the House and 13 Republicans in the Senate decided to violate their oaths of office to placate a psychopathic Trump’s delusions, all because they knew they needed Trump’s delusional and Anti-American cultists to support these politicians’ future political ambitions. These Republicans knowingly instigated and reinforced what they knew not to be true, solely for political expediency and fear of a psychopath.
Now four people are dead after a mob instigated and encouraged and instructed by Trump rampaged the Capitol and attacked sitting Congressmen, Senators, the sitting Vice President, and hundreds of staffers. Capitol police were injured. Offices were ransacked.
So now what happens?
After ridding the building of Trump’s mob, Congress continued through the night to complete the vote counting. A few Republicans backed down and they reduced the charade of baselessly challenging the votes after they saw how their political theater had caused the attacks. But more than half of Republican Representatives and a dozen Republican Senators followed through on their own attack on democracy.
Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) should immediately resign. If they refuse, the Senate should vote unanimously to expel them and ban them from ever holding federal office again.
All the other Republican Senators who participated in this sham attack on democracy should also resign immediately. If they refuse, they should at the very least be officially censured and removed from any committees they sit on.
Every Republican in the House of Representatives who voted to reject the vote of the American people should be immediately expelled from Congress and barred from holding future seats. If the House refuses take this necessary step, then these Republican members should be censured, lose their committee assignments, and be barred from leadership positions forever. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy should immediately resign his position.
Vice President Pence should immediately coordinate the removal of Trump from office using the 25th Amendment. This must be done today. Vice President Pence should assume status as Acting President immediately upon fulfilling the requirements of the 25th Amendment. Doing so will keep Trump from pardoning himself and his family, which would continue this national nightmare for many more years.
The House of Representatives should immediately bring charges of impeachment against Trump, to be voted on in the House immediately. Trump has provided ample evidence of sedition and treason, so no prolonged debate is necessary. We all know already.
The Senate must convict Trump on those impeachment charges immediately.
Trump must be charge with treason, inciting violence against the government, and a host of other seditious and violent instigations.
Every mob member that can be identified from the myriads of video and photographic evidence as having violently breached the Capitol should immediately be arrested and charged with the suite of felonies for their crimes. The two men photographed violating Speaker Pelosi’s office and the Senate floor should immediately be arrested for those charges and others related to theft of the mail and endangering public officers. They and other leaders of the attack should also be tried with manslaughter for their roles in the deaths of four people.
The West Virginia lawmaker who led one portion of the mob into the Capitol must be immediately expelled by the West Virginia legislature. He should also be arrested and charged with breaking into a government building and endangering the lives of federal lawmakers.
Soon to be former Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should resign his leadership position immediately. He should consider resigning from the Senate entirely. While he spoke out against the coup attempted by his fellow Republican Senators, he is the single most guilty of directing the party to the place it has arrived. Similarly, former Speaker Newt Gingrich should be called out for beginning this insurrection years ago with his dishonest attack on democracy during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, in addition to his continuing attacks on government and support for Trump’s treason via his media presence.
While politicians are naturally hesitant to hold each other accountable, the Republican party has reached a level of sedition so extreme that they must be punished for their Anti-Americanism. The above actions may seem extreme to some, but they are necessary to start the process of restoring America’s place in the world. A place that the Republican party has destroyed through anti-democratic and white supremacist policies over the last several decades. Trump didn’t appear in a vacuum. He epitomizes the autocratic, oligarchic promotion of the Republican party since Reagan. His overt brand of racism and casteism simply makes obvious the white supremacy and casteism pushed by the Republican party for many years.
Trump didn’t create the Republican party. The Republican party created the conditions that allowed Trump to rise to a natural position of authority. Both must go.
I reassured my friends in those foreign places that the United States would not become the kind of authoritarian nations theirs are known for. They assured me that the United States already is such a country. And we have secured that position in the last four years.
Enough is enough.
On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will become the President and Vice President of the United States. Pence should attend the inauguration ceremony of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris to demonstrate the “smooth transition of power” that, until now, has been the hallmark of American government. Trump should be in jail.
Only then can we begin to rebuild America.
[NOTE: Edited to add the list of House and Senate Republicans who chose insurrection. See below and CNN link.]
The Senate voted 93 to 6 to dismiss the objection raised by Republicans to Arizona’s results, and 92 to 7 to reject the objection to Pennsylvania.
These are the senators who voted to object to some of the results of the election (and the states they objected to):
- Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (Arizona, Pennsylvania)
- Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (Arizona, Pennsylvania)
- Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall (Arizona, Pennsylvania)
- Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville (Arizona, Pennsylvania)
- Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (Arizona, Pennsylvania)
- Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy (Arizona)
- Florida Sen. Rick Scott (Pennsylvania)
- Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis (Pennsylvania)
The House ultimately voted to reject an objection to throw out Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden, but over half of the House Republicans backed the effort. The challenge failed by a vote of 282-138.
The GOP House minority leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, and his deputy, Steve Scalise, were among those seeking to overturn the results.
[Note: Added the following quote from Abraham Lincoln]
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!
Hot White Snow 
Related post: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-meet-their-monster/ar-BB1cxker?ocid=msedgntp
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Very well said, and I agree. Although some might say the Republican Congress members had a right to question the validity of the election, I believe they did so for purely selfish political reasons, or else their interpretation of the law is seriously flawed. In either case, they should hang their heads in shame. It’s far beyond time for strong censure of these backward-thinking hypocrites. And as for trump (I just cannot bring myself to capitalize his name), he is a dangerous man with a criminal mind. I just hope we aren’t too late in stopping him.
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Members would have a right to question if there were evidence of a problem. There was none. No legitimate evidence was presented in over 60 court cases. Every state elections official certified their elections and confirmed their security. The electoral vote was certified and confirmed as secure. Trump’s own election official and attorney general confirmed election security and zero evidence of substantive fraud (after which Trump fired them).
Republicans willfully attacked our elections based on what they knew to be blatant falsehoods. Indeed, they should be ashamed. And yet they still voted to reject valid votes even after what they saw yesterday. Every single one of them should be expelled. Some of them may even be culpable for yesterday’s riots. Trump most certainly is guilty, on tape encouraging the attack before, and supporting the attackers even after people had died.
Pence had no authority to discard the will of the voters, but he does have authority to coordinate the use of the 25th amendment to save our country from this danger to our national security. Should he fail to do it, Pence will himself be complicit in treason.
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I agree 100%.
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We’ll see what happens. Haven’t seen anything yet.
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This is the inevitable result of what I was writing about way back in November of 2017 with “Hell”. For the “conservatives” among those in my more-or-less immediate circle, the ensuing discussion at the time was whether the Republican Party was salvageable, or if it was time to move on. Three forms of consensus followed, pretty much equally divided: that it was best to stay in the party and try to change things from within, that the train was completely off the tracks and it was time to create something new, or that it was time to move funding to Democrats for pragmatic reasons (business purposes). I suspect that as of right now, many of those in the first camp have since moved on. For those who haven’t, they need to make it absolutely clear that they are ready and committed to changing things from within.
The Republican Party in its present form has utterly imploded. I refuse to label all Republicans as “traitors”, simply because I know that this isn’t true. But that a substantial segment of the party has endorsed what is effectively sedition and traitorous behavior, and that an elected leader has decided to declare himself Dictator-and-Chief by virtue of mob rule necessitates that those who are not party to the crime, and that’s what it is, make it clear that they understand both the meaning and the spirit of the US Constitution. And there isn’t some half-way point in this regard. As statespersons and leaders, anyone in any elected office needs to make it clear that they understand what just happened, and that it was utterly “un-American” in every sense.
Unfortunately, creating an alternative to the Republican Party seems unlikely due to the ways in which both the Democratic and Republican parties have managed to fix themselves to the teat of preferential campaign funding, both from the government and from large donors. Consequently, Democrats will also need to consider whether or not they want to continue this if they want to be a part of allowing for some type of meaningful and viable replacement for the Republican Party. The alternative is a one-party state, perhaps in some oscillating form. And that’s something I don’t even want to consider.
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Absolutely agree with your description of the dilemma, and that the time has long since passed for honest Republicans/conservatives to stand up against Trumpism and “conservatism.” The party needs to adamantly recant white supremacist views. Whether they can do that and continue to exist epitomizes what the party has become.
I’m not sure how much I care whether the Republican party disappears or renames itself or evolves into something else (as the Whigs did to become Lincoln Republicans and the Southern Democrats/Dixiecrats did to become today’s Republicans). Labels are meaningless, as proven by people who claim to be the party of Lincoln and then carry Confederate flags. What I know is that the Republican party has to stop being what it is.
Without having thought too much forward about the party labels, I assume the Democratic party also would need to evolve in some way. While I don’t think they have the same problems, or the magnitude of problems, as the Republican party, the future will need the Democrats to be more aware of its own diversity of voices. All of us as Americans will need to stop playing the victim and take responsibility both for our own success and for the systemic discrimination that impedes that success (in poorer whites as well as minorities of every stripe).
While minorities will have work to do as well, the problem in this country is entirely due to the insecurities, the prejudices, and the fearfulness of us white people. Those deficits have been intentionally exploited by oligarchs and conservatives the entire span of our nation’s existence. We need to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves, our history, and our continuing lack of moral fortitude, most blatantly by those who hypocritically claim those as traits while proving the opposite every single day.
Soapbox off.
P.S. Thank you for your thoughtful insights, as always. Other conservative friends of mine have argued convincingly that there are many conservatives within the administration that continue to keep things from getting worse, just as the early leadership included many who probably kept us from total Putinization. I’m glad they were there to save us. As you say, the time has come to go public with condemnation. The time has come to neuter Trump for good before he can do irreparable damage in the next days, then pardon himself and his family for the crimes he knows he has committed.
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First, I’ll apologize right here for this over 1,200 word comment. Reading through your article and comments, however, I feel the need to make something very clear. Granted that I live on the opposite side of the country, but I don’t buy into the “racist” narrative as the explanation for all of its woes, and I think it’s a simplistic cop-out to blame every wrong in America on “racism”. I won’t claim that racism doesn’t exist in the US any more than I wouldn’t claim that the American flag never gets used to justify patently un-American attitudes. But the US is suffering from something far more undermining to the both the spirit and strength of American culture. And to pin everything on racism simply averts attention from the larger, structural problems in American culture.
We are not, and have never been a mono-culture in this country, and this is something unique to the US as a long-term successful nation (though Singapore might be an interesting study). The first American colonies largely represented religious groups that had self-segregated due to mutual territorial conflicts. President George Washington’s letter to the Toro Synagogue effectively addressed this history with the offer that the new nation could be built upon a mutually beneficial alternative. “…the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” What Washington was saying was that this new country offered a meritocratic alternative, that an individual could be judged by her or his or own commitment to the welfare of a nation built upon *laws* rather than the some particular racial, ethnic, or religious standard. And just the fact that this alternative is openly and sincerely offered by both the spirit and the laws of this country means that we can, at the very least, openly discuss and improve upon wrongs. “Institutional” racism, by definition, doesn’t allow this.
Japan is a mono-culture. Despite the fact that Japanese really cannot physically or otherwise distinguish themselves from ethnic Koreans who were born in Japan and who speak fluent Japanese, those Japanese citizens who trace their roots in Japan to Korea under Japanese rule are known as “Zainichi” and are treated differently *under the law*. “Zainichi” implies little more than being a permitted resident, and these pre-WWII ethnic Koreans and their descendants in Japan have had to fight for virtually every ordinary right allowed any other Japanese citizen, even being allowed to use a Japanese name. This is what *institutional* racism looks like. On New Year’s night, my husband and I watched video coverage from several Japanese celebrations. During a street scene in Shibuya, some Japanese Nationalist jackass near the camera mic was repeatedly shouting loudly in Japanese that this should be the year that the cockroaches are sent home. I felt a visceral sense of anger while explaining to my husband what he meant. Most Japanese would just have been embarrassed; but I’m an “American”.
America isn’t dying because some dumbass racist politician whipped up a frenzied cluster of demented thugs in DC. It’s dying because people are willing to mindlessly suck up to whatever/whomever spouts a message that justifies not taking responsibility for their own lives. We’ve become a victim culture. And “race” is certainly a convenient justification… regardless of one’s race. Hell, everyone has one. And since we’re all victims of something, it’s not our fault that our lives suck. So we turn to whatever message suits our particular group, and then justify looting the system. It’s simply failure-enabling tribalism at its worst. And frankly, I’m tired of hearing every Republican, or anyone else who tries to point this out simply shut down as a “racist”, even though that’s not even what they’re talking about.
The town schools here need everything from teachers to custodial staff. The school district is so desperate for substitute teachers that all you need is a high school diploma! And race is not an issue; the district’s last Superintendent was Black, Hispanic before her. Down the hill today, Wal Mart and Costco have “Hiring” signs in their doors, with long lists of openings. I had to wait ten-minutes at the sporting goods store checkout until the bike-mechanic finally came over and took my money with an apology that they were desperately short-handed and the only other person there was fitting ski boots. Radio ads are going constantly for everything from starting warehouse jobs to experienced truck-drivers. And meanwhile, my friend in the nearby bigger city who lives in a low-income apartment complex that’s going bankrupt because no one is paying rent anymore notes that her only other neighbor who works is a Hispanic guy downstairs who runs his own heating/cooling repair business, but that he keeps having his truck vandalized.
And when I finally get back home… there’s a $600 credit-card in my mail.
So some financial service with a lobbyist in the right office managed to get a hand into the election-year, “Will vote for credit?” till. I’ve never been so f-ing pissed to be handed money… that I’ll inevitably have to pay-back-with-interest in taxes while also covering for the social welfare systems the US won’t be able to afford! We’re no better than the drug-addicts lining the streets of the country’s urban centers, shooting ourselves up with a quick fix of government credit. It seems to me that what’s really been institutionalized is an acceptance of “poverty”. So how do I feel when I see some “protester” storming the Capitol… or vandalizing a neighborhood, looting a business, burning down a building, destroying a police station, or violently occupying a section of a city to make a political point or to imply that someone else owes them something simply because they want it?
I don’t differentiate my take on violence or anarchy. I wrote here that while I supported the peaceful protests in Hong Kong, I felt that a few violent protesters both destroyed the message sent by 2-million peaceful marchers and lent justification to the Chinese government for what has ultimately happened there. (And BTW, while we were distracted here, they proceeded to make mass arrests of elected officials, activists, and an American attorney.) In my opinion, the guards at the Capitol would have been entirely justified firing into the mobs smashing down the doors. And likewise, anyone using violence to make a political point… which is the definition of “terrorism”.
In a nation of laws, that’s just not how it works. And when we allow violence and destruction, for whatever reason, then it shuts down the message. Either people stop listening, or they get censored. Discussion isn’t always pleasant, and we have to accept that there are always going to be those people shouting about the cockroaches… I’ve been on the receiving end. I know what it’s like. But if we close the door, whether by condoning violence, banning the messages we don’t want to hear, or simply throwing in the towel, then it destroys our ability to openly discuss and improve upon the real wrongs, the ones that prevent that meritocratic alternative in a nation built upon laws. When we exchange that for an excuse to simply give up and demand that some arbitrary group of “privileged” provide a quick fix for the “oppressed”, that’s when I’ll be pulling out the Japanese passport.
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Thanks for your thoughtful comment, as always. I probably agree with most of what you said, although perhaps not all of it and think you may be conflating separate issues that need separate discussions and separate solutions.
My post talks about treason, not institutionalized racism. It’s like people arguing that confederate statues shouldn’t be removed because it would lead to the same for Washington and Jefferson statues because they were slaveowners. Confederate statues are being removed not because Confederates owned slaves but because they committed treason in order to protect slavery; Washington and Jefferson sought to help create a new nation based on “all men are created equal” despite their personal hypocrisy. So too with the people storming the Capitol.
In any case, I’m not sure “institutionalized racism” is the correct terminology, in part because of the examples of Washington and Japan you point out. But the US has a long history of systemic racism. Once that was institutionalized in the form of slavery, but beyond the Civil War was systematized under Jim Crow segregation (which could also probably be considered institutionalized), KKK intimidation, FHA housing practices, redlining, white flight, and other ongoing forms of macro- and microaggressions that continue to keep minorities fighting out of holes not of their own making.
That doesn’t mean they get a free ride, but it’s a little hard to argue that eliminating systemic racism is a free ride when we have no problem creating huge debt to give tax breaks to millionaires who didn’t need it or even notice they got it. There are no more freeloaders in the minority ranks than there are in the majority ranks.
I too think the $600 (and the $1200 before that) was wasted on me, but it wasn’t wasted on people who lost their jobs because of COVID. One of those was my brother, a man close to retirement age but not yet eligible who lost his job to COVID and then lost his unemployment eligibility to the combination of mental disability and a nightmarish bureaucratic system. To millions of Americans, the combined stimulus checks are woefully lacking – the equivalent of six weeks of minimum wage pay for a year and counting of COVID disruption. I personally have no problem with an additional means test for such funding. They already have the $75,000 cutoff (which means McConnell is blatantly lying when he complains the Democrats are trying to feed money to “their rich friends,” this from a guy who has tirelessly worked to give billions to billionaires, including his own family). But it makes sense to have a further test – if you never lost your job/income to COVID, you shouldn’t get a COVID check.
Anyway, I’m not sure where you see the “acceptance of poverty.” In a sense, there has always been poverty and always will in every nation, with the possible exception of 100% welfare states like Brunei that share the oil wealth to everyone. The goal in the US is to provide a safety net, some minimal level of existence, while also providing a path to rise above that minimal level. We don’t do a very good job at either, but again, you have the people who most complain about the safety net being the same people who block the path to rise. The result is a large percentage of Americans who are forced to run a 200 meter dash over voluminous hurdles while others run a 100 meter dash with zero hurdles and complain that the other group isn’t smart enough or is too lazy to beat them in the race. We have people in this country who argue that everyone must be responsible for their own rise, but these same people are perfectly happy to stack the deck in their own favor.
The actions at the Capitol this past week reflect two separate but related issues. The mob consisted of almost entirely white “conservative” Americans who felt no compunction attacking their own seat of government and threatening bodily harm to their own elected representatives (some even semi-joked about hanging the Vice President). They did so believing that they were immune from retribution because they belonged to the “right” group. So yes, many there were racists. Others were simply delusional morons. But they all believed the Capitol police were “on their side” because they were white and “patriots.” This was from a group prominently waving Confederate flags and wearing Nazi slogans promoting the genocide of 6 million Jews. This is in contrast to the use of military to tear gas a peaceful protest last summer so Trump could get a photo op for being “tough” on black people.
Which gets to the other separate but related issue. A sitting president was allowed for months by his own party to blatantly lie about election security, building a campaign of terror tactics and promoting a rally against his own government. They then did nothing while he actively and literally gave them marching orders to go to the Capitol, planting the seeds that his own VP would fail to save him from the “election fraud” he completely fabricated and promoted. Not one honest person didn’t think this would become violent, and yet Trump’s handpicked lackey he just put in charge of the Defense Department blocked use of the National Guard to protect a joint session of his own government. One can speculate how much he lobbied the military to assist him in breaching the Capitol given that the 10 previous Defense secretaries felt the need to issue a letter the day before saying that the military is not a tool to overturn the election. So we have treason, and still the Republican party is hesitant to act.
But perhaps I digress. No matter what our Founders’ ideals were, we have always been a nation where the wealthy and the white have had the power. We quickly created a caste system with the white population as the dominant caste and the black population as the (enslaved) lowest caste, with poor whites convinced that they are dominant because they are white. [It’s more complicated than this, but even other Europeans who were initially discriminated against, e.g., the Irish, Italians, and later eastern Europeans, learned that they could join the dominant caste if they identified as “white” and treated “blacks” as the lower caste, i.e., they played the game. Over our history, every time blacks (and Native Americans and Hispanics, etc) seemed to gain some level of equality, there was white backlash. Repeatedly and predictably. Hence, Trump after Obama. It’s who we are and no amount of “everyone who works to get ahead, gets ahead” changes that.
I agree we are a nation of laws, but also acknowledge those laws aren’t equally applied. I don’t think anyone is suggesting we “allow violence and destruction.” There were a significant number of “BLM protesters” arrested last summer and tried for violence and destruction, although many of those causing the violence and destruction were identified as Proud Boys and other white supremacist groups trying to start race wars. Not surprisingly, these same groups were the most prevalent at the Capitol last week.
As for the discussion, I fully agree we need discussion, even and especially that which we find uncomfortable. I’m finding it, however, increasingly difficult to find anyone capable of such a discussion. Our conversation in just these two comments has run on for thousands of words and yet we’ve barely scratched the surface of what the discussion needs. We’ve probably even talked past each other more than addressed each others points. We need a larger, longer, more comprehensive national discussion. That’s hard to do when you have a large percentage of people who live in an utter fantasy world where everything real is “fake news” and everything they believe in is blatantly false, and often ridiculously crazy. People act on these delusions, as we saw this past week, and some people promote them for personal gain with no respect for what we are as a country. How do you have a discussion with people trained to dismiss reality? And they have been trained. The most egregious are those trained by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and hundreds of right wing radio hosts who lie for entertainment and money. [Left wing radio keeps failing; they can’t seem to make a profit because left wingers, with some obvious exceptions, aren’t so willing to fall for utter crap like those who have authoritarian inclinations and willingness to concede to such.]
I’m not sure if you were referring to the decisions by FB, Twitter, and the like to shut down Trump’s social media. But these are private companies that can do what they want to do (and in facet, Justice Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion last year in which conservatives argued that private companies aren’t restricted by the first amendment and can ban whomever they please, just as stores can say “no shirt, no service” and bakeries can refuse to make a cake for gay weddings). FB et al have actually been under fire from liberals for years because they have allowed inflammatory, racist, seditious, etc rhetoric to continue unimpeded. They gave special leeway to Trump in deference to the office. But they also this week realized that some language and behavior was so egregious that it incites violence. Trump’s attempts to continue inciting violence after the Capitol attack were a straw too much even for generally right-leaning social media companies.
Sorry this got so long, but you did have a lot to unpack in your comment and I’m not not for being succinct. 🙂
BTW, I don’t think anyone is demanding some arbitrary group of “privileged” provide a quick fix for the “oppressed.” Given our history, that’s obviously not even possible.
But we do need a serious dive into our laws and practices and societal norms with the goal of having an ongoing public discussion focused on moving forward. We should look at welfare practices to see if we are prolonging poverty rather than simply providing the net; there has to be a ladder back up, not a permanent lounging in the net. But similarly, we also need to look at corporate welfare, which far outstrips poverty welfare when you add up direct incentive payments to corporations, tax breaks to billionaires, and legal loopholes that all the very rich to avoid taxes, ship jobs overseas, externalize costs to taxpayers (e.g., for health and safety, environment), and other means to increase their profits not trickled down to job growth or workers. The same deep dive needs to be done with health care, climate change, education, transportation, etc., especially since the people the Republican party put into cabinet departments were tasked with destroying the mandates their departments had, not making them achieve their goals better. And yes, we need to address racism, casteism, blatantly dishonesty of elected officials and political parties, and all the rest.
Now, how do we do that after having trained everyone to dismiss anything they don’t want to hear?
P.S. You raise an additional interesting complication. China seems to be going back to some blend of Maoism and Putinism, and Hong Kong is just the proverbial iceberg tip. The UK has Trump v.2 as prime minister. Then there is the Philippines, Turkey, Russia, Brunei, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the “Stan” countries, half of Africa, and a ton more of various flavors of dictatorships. Not to mention a trend toward authoritarianism and isolationism among “free western” nations. The US might be a mess but it’s one of many messes enveloping the world. Like Obama before him, I don’t envy Biden and Harris for what again will be an administration starting off trying to clean up the disaster let to them…and the global mess that makes it even harder.
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Thank you for the intelligent response… I truly value them, especially in this age of QAnon and narrative-as-news. I’ll try to keep this under 1000-words (running two conversations right now, and it looks like I’ll be getting a Covid vaccination tomorrow morning as a “first responder”).
Perhaps I should have said “self-inflicted poverty”. And of course, the US history of slavery, as well as the destruction of a native population are indeed undeniable and shouldn’t be dismissed. But as a practical matter, we also live in a 21st-century world.
Don’t take me wrong… I’m happy to see Trump on his way out and a Democratic law-making body being given the chance for at least the next two years. But I don’t know that they will be able to solve any of the largely *self-inflicted* social problems in this country any better than anyone else. At some point, “citizens” simply need to take responsibility for their own fates.
Where poverty is truly the result of something unpredictable, whether Covid shutdowns or an unforeseeable medical need or the like, I agree that a good government steps in. This is why I think the US needs a serious national health-care plan, and not just another scheme to fleece taxpayers so that insurance, pharma and HMO’s can make a buck. But at some point, individuals still need to take personal responsibility, whether for their own health, financial welfare, education, or simply not destroying each other. No government program program can substitute for self-inflicted poor health, poverty, ignorance, or crime.
So I see government facilitation of a reward to unnecessary joblessness as counterproductive in the same way that crime is facilitated when police aren’t allowed to provide a consequence to anarchy… the latter of which has been mostly justified by cries of “racism” over the last year. Both are simply ways to entitle personal and communal irresponsibility. At some point, the individual just has to get off his or her butt, think a little, and do something constructive.
Just an FYI, a lot of this was prompted by a recent exchange with an acquaintance who is living long-term in Japan and married to a third-country national. They were planning to leave for the US, but ended up trapped there due to his wife’s foreign passport and Covid restrictions. They’ve actually changed their minds about the US. He commented that even Vietnam is far safer and more secure. The only benefit he sees to the US is “opportunity”, though he’s not so sure about that anymore. Pretty sad.
Cheers to you though!
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Since this is getting hard to read in the comments, I may use it as a basis for a future post(s). I mostly agree with you, although I do think a premise or two is mischaracterized. Deserves a fuller response when I can.
About your last paragraph. I have foreign born friends who decided going back to their home country was a better alternative than staying in the US. That foreign country rarely (read: never) comes to mind when people think of democracy or opportunity. Sadly, that’s not the only such country that I’ve had people reach out to me from. That’s how bad it has become here, all in the last four years.
Cheers back.
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I think that the last four years have been just a natural culmination of the previous fifty years. Sad, but one could see it coming from a long ways off.
But the sociopathy and imbecility of Trump has also been clear for fifty years.
Purging a good 20% of the leadership will help the GOP, but there will still be a pent up demand for such fantasy and demagoguery. Education will take a long time.
Further, much of the GOP has been just happily and ignorantly complicit; so they need help as well.
Some sort of justice is needed for the perpetrators, but maybe Nuremburg-type trials might be a little over the top. Not to say that I personally would get too upset by them.
It would be good to look at examples of other countries that have emerged from such stuff. I think they abound.
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I agree that there must be accountability. That’s a first step to make future fascists within Congress rethink their actions.
The rest is going to be hard. Throughout our entire history we have had white supremacist/authoritarian/oligarchs/religious zealots calling themselves conservatives. They see conservatism as a means to conserve their power by convincing white people that their dominant position in the social hierarchy is threatened by “others.” “Others” over the years has meant Federalists, abolitionists, “northern aggressors,” slaves, free blacks, New England elites, educated elites, Yankees, liberals, antifa, Muslims, gays, crackheads, and whatever other “other” they find convenient to demonize in order to con poor whites into protecting the power of rich whites.
Given that mindset has been endemic to this country for its existence, and was carried here from our earliest European settlers, it’s hard to determine how to “educate” people away from it. We have a special kind of bigotry born and raised in this country that we’ve so far been unable to grow out of us. It’s reinforced daily in our culture, now as it has throughout. And every time we seem to make progress, there is white backlash against the very idea of anyone “below them” gaining access to equal rights under the Constitution. This is on us white people. We have met the enemy and he is us, to steal from that great philosopher Pogo.
Interesting idea to look to other countries for examples, and ironic given that prior to Trump other countries looked to us as an example. But then again, so did the Nazis look to us to learn how to completely oppress an entire race like the Nazis wanted to do to their Jewish citizens. To be honest, I’m having a hard time thinking of other countries that have emerged from this kind of stuff. Any examples you can think of that I can wrap my head around?
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Peaceful reconciliation is rare I reckon. What was in my mind at the moment was how Germany reconciled; complicated but seemingly successful. But one could look at Franco or Cromwell, though mounting heads on pikes is a bit extreme. Still strife though. Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka are more modern examples. It may be easy to overlook how racist empathy fuels many conflicts worldwide, but I am certainly no authority.
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Nor am I any authority on this aspect of world politics. One question is, who is it that is reconciling? The point came up in a dialogue I had last fall with a well-traveled, well-informed, well-spoken somewhat conservative economics expert who brought up the idea of reconciliation between the North and South after Reconstruction (after the Civil War). What he said was true, but that reconciliation was being warring white people, who decided to make peace with each other to the disadvantage for formerly enslaved black men and women. It set off 100 years of continuation subjugation and oppression, slavery in another form, until the 1960s civil and voting rights acts. But here we are again more than another half-century later still doing what we did then in yet another iteration of oppression of non-whites to keep maintain white dominance. While certainly today is better than chattel slavery, it hasn’t achieved anything close to applying the Constitution to all Americans.
Which suggests we have a long road ahead of us.
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Ultimately, I think it is left to the next generations….but that is kind of depressing.
Social integration in public education helps. Otherwise one is left with a slow burning truce.
My Mom taught US history in a small town in rural Alabama in the 50’s. She was fairly ambitious and noble, but it was just too much to deal with the ingrained attitudes and lack of resources. Education has been sort of a familial obsession.
I think things get better, just not in a straight line and not as fast as one would like. And the dips seem like they will never end sometimes.
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Thank you for sharing David. We are trying to stop the Florida GOP but the DOJ are corrupt here. Hoping that if enough people come out and vote, even by mail we can stop them from having a decades hold on Florida government.
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Unfortunately, there are quite a few states that Republicans know they will win no matter how egregiously Anti-American they become. Too many Americans live in a fantasy world created by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and thousands of right wing radio jocks with no compunction about blatantly lying for profit.
The only fix is to overwhelm Republican voter suppression and dishonesty with massive voting output.
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This year I stood outside Lucas Oil Stadium for two hours with my youngest son in order to vote. It was his first time voting, having just come of age. Upon presenting our ID’s and documents (as did everyone else in the line of hundreds of regular people), he was asked if he were indeed a first time voter. He shyly nodded and said yes. A small chorus of cheers came from the poll workers and normal folk exercising their constitutional right. A quick tear came to my eye. I thought of this moment again as I watched in horror as Trump’s Orcs stormed the Capitol. They were holding the flag of the country they were trying to destroy. They were trying to attack, physically harm and destroy ,my son’s first vote and the votes of all of us who TRULY love and believe in this country. Trump is evil, pure and simple. His orcs are evil, pathetic and simple minded.
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Thanks for this, and thanks to your son for voting. It’s critical that everyone vote and we have an embarrassing track record as a nation in that regard. Nice to hear there was a vote of appreciation from the crowd. We need to all vote in every election, even primaries.
I’ve been in the Capitol and offices on quite a few occasions, and I kept holding my breath during the desecration on Wednesday. Many more people could have died that day as the attackers threatened to hang VP Pence if they could have found him. All incited by the man Republicans put in the oval office. It was worse than a sad day for our country, it was an awakening. My worst fear is that we forget what happened, just as we’ve normalized four years of anti-Americanism.
As other commenters and I have expressed in other comments, there are a lot of motivations for the people who broke in. Some are purely evil, like the guys wearing Nazi propaganda glorifying the murders of six million Jews in WWII. Others are psychologically delusional cultists following their leader’s orders. And then there are the elected Representative and Senators who helped create this mob by treating Trump’s lies about the election as reality, knowing full well that they were lies. Those elected officials must all resign immediately or be expelled from the Congress.
So I hope you and your son keep the faith in the process because it is by voting that we can remove those who violate their oaths of office. And it is by voting, and citizen participation, that we get our elected officials to act to better our nation rather than destroy it.
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