Is
an insurrection percolating in the MAGA universe? A civil war?
One
thing I notice as I read the growing warnings that this is the case
is the assumption that suddenly the USA has become a divided nation,
a splintered democracy, when, in point of fact, it has always been
deeply – and for much of its history, good God, legally –
divided.
Indeed,
Jim Crow America was the prime model for a certain would-be European
dictator.
You
may have heard of Adolf Hitler. In Mein
Kampf,
the biography he wrote before he came to power, he “praises
America,” according to Alex Ross, writing in the New
Yorker,
“as the one state that has made progress toward a primarily
racial conception of citizenship,”
And
history.com,
citing James
Q. Whitman’s
book, Hitler’s
American Model,
points out that two laws passed by Nazi Germany in 1935 – the
Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood
and German Honor, known collectively as the Nuremberg Laws, which
laid the legal groundwork for the Holocaust – were inspired by
U.S. law at the time.
“America
in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the
world,” writes Whitman. “Nazi lawyers, as a result, were
interested in, looked very closely at, (and) were ultimately
influenced by American race law.”
OK,
the country has been changing over the years, but its blatantly
racist history cannot be ignored. Excuse me, yes it can. Just attach
some academic name to it – how about Critical Race Theory? –
and start stoning it to death. The problem, from the MAGA point of
view, is that this isn’t enough, bringing up the point
political scientist Barbara F. Walter made in a recent Washington
Post
interview.
Walter,
who has studied and written about the causes of modern civil wars
around the world, cites several factors precipitating an attempted
governmental takedown. One of them is the coming together of groups
who begin organizing, not around complex issues, but “almost
exclusively around identity: ethnic, religious or racial identity.”
You know: We’re better than you.
This
is different from, for instance, the civil rights movement, the
women’s rights movement, the environmental movement, all of
which were focused on complex institutional change – on
inclusion and awareness rather than me vs. you. Their aim was and is
the creation of fairer, more sustainable social structures, and they
have had an impact over the last half century or so – which is
part of the problem, from, say, the Jan. 6 insurrectionists’
point of view. The goal of that insurrection wasn’t complex
social change. The goal was getting Joe Biden’s ass out of the
White House and reinserting the MAGA monarch, Donald Trump.
America
was born as a slaveholding, racist country. African Americans,
whether slave or free, were three-fifths human. It was also sexist.
Women couldn’t vote; their job options were limited, keeping
them financially dependent on men. They certainly weren’t
allowed to choose to get a medically safe abortion if they got
pregnant (they always had the back alley, of course). While these
realities began changing politically and legally in the 1950s and
’60s, they remained psychologically embedded in part of the
country. As I have previously noted, this remains the national
divide, defined with a razor cut across the soul. White supremacists
fear their racism is being taken away.
So
it’s no surprise that an insurrection is brewing. The
insurrection has already, seemingly, captured the Republican Party,
whose members have either shrugged their shoulders at the Jan. 6
melee or participated in it. And while the Republican-controlled
Supreme Court has repealed Roe v. Wade, shattering women’s
choice and reclaiming legal control over their bodies, the Court,
along with Congress, have relaxed legal interference in gun rights
and the availability of military-grade weapons.
Civil
war! Civil war!
So
are we looking at the collapse of the American democracy? Well,
ironically, those who are in the process of helping it collapse think
so. The New
York Times
recently quoted none other than Donald Trump, who delivered the
keynote address at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's annual Road to
Majority conference last month.
“The
greatest danger to America is not our enemies from the outside, as
powerful as they may be,” he said. “The greatest danger
to America is the destruction of our nation from the people from
within. And you know the people I’m talking about.”
Uh,
the Jan. 6 mob? Apparently, he meant the Democrats. And others tossed
further big-screen glory at the situation: “The backlash is
coming,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said. “Just mount up
and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this
country. It is time to take this country back.”
His
words conjured up not just the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, but also
at least some of the country’s mass murderers, who have taken
it upon themselves to make grocery stores white again, to start
eliminating people of color, “illegal aliens” and such.
As
Katherine Stewart put it in the New York Times story: “Christian
nationalism isn’t a route to the future. Its purpose is to
hollow out democracy until nothing is left but a thin cover for rule
by a supposedly right-thinking elite, bubble-wrapped in sanctimony
and insulated from any real democratic check on its power.”
The
only positive I see in all this is the fact that the participants
feel a need to “take the country back.”
