About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
Everyone’s mad at Joe Biden. Why? Biden is honest, kind, competent, has vast experience, and is (thankfully) sane. The big lie is that he is old and not up to the job. In fact, he accomplished more in his first year than any president in memory, and he did it for the majority, not the privileged few. That was at home; abroad, he reestablished our ties with NATO, left Afghanistan, took out the head of ISIS, and is in the process of staring down Putin. So, what’s the problem?
I’ll tell you: all that sanity and decency is not good theater. Joe is ordinary Joe, and after years of Trump, we bore easily. We never took Trump seriously, not really, because after all, there were never any consequences. Love him or hate him — get pumped up, furious or depressed, it doesn’t matter — he was entertaining. He created fear and tension or joy, but never ennui. We just watched and wondered at all those special effects, just like the movies.
It was easy to dismiss him because he rarely made sense; no specific assertion seemed to matter; no single tactic seemed likely to succeed. In fact, it all seemed silly, and yet … the goal was the gradual destabilization of the United States; the cumulative effect was meant to obliterate democracy.
So, the lies and absurdities were not so funny. They led to the eruption of violence and normalized threats of violence. The lies killed, swiftly in our streets and schools, and slowly in our hospitals. Trump and his followers are persistent about the slow undoing of the underpinnings of democracy. His particular “entertainment” is eroding our basic trust in government, experts, and truth itself. The violence upended majority rule and basic safety.
Now what?
There is a constant drumbeat in all forms of media that this is a tipping point; it’s the end of something and a slide into something else. Fox News lauds dictators and coddles insurgents; MSNBC sounds the fire alarm while repeating “this is not a drill”; The New Yorker and The Atlantic run features on the threat. In her new book, “How Civil Wars Start,” Barbara F. Walter contends the United States has already gone through the first two of three steps toward dissolution: “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict.” The next and last step is “open insurgency,” Walter’s name for civil war.
Others say it is over, it was largely a bloodless coup, and democracy lost. They point to a study, a global data series called Polity, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, that classifies countries on a scale from full autocracy to full democracy. The U.S. once rated a 10, full democracy, is now a 5, an anocracy, that is, a mix of democracy and autocracy. The world’s oldest continuous democracy is no longer the U.S., but now Switzerland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Beside the loss of prestige and influence in the world, the decay of our democracy opens us to the possibilities of civil disobedience, persistent violence, and growing instability. Those who contend it is over, merely ask us to “look around” and acknowledge, do not deny, what we see.
The Polity data set is a predictor of violence and instability. The 2021 study concluded: “The USA has dropped below the ‘democracy threshold’ (+6) on the Polity scale in 2020 … Further degradation of democratic authority in the USA will trigger an Adverse Regime Change event.”
Then what?
In the end, they cannot beat us, but we can let them win.
We must stop wondering if these folks are dumb or crazy. The leaders are smart, focused, and committed to personal gain: money and power. Stop trying to understand or accept them. They are not our friends, they do not have our best interests at heart, and they do not share our values. Drop the absurdity of bi-partisan legislation. The two parties believe in two different forms of government and two different beneficiaries of government.
Stop listening respectfully to lies and nonsense; fight every word. Differentiate between the ones doing the convincing and the people convinced. Once differentiated, do not sink to their level of lies and violence, but use, without hesitation, our laws and values. Name the criminal and the crime, and invoke the law swiftly. Silence them. Do not think for a moment it is their right to freedom of speech. It is black-letter law that no one can shout fire in a crowded theater. Anyone who does is criminally and civilly liable.
They do harm. Those who convinced folks not to get vaccinated are vaccinated, but the ones who were convinced are now suffering an epidemic of the unvaccinated. Worse, we conquered other viruses such as smallpox, polio, and measles, but so many are unvaccinated that COVID is now endemic. It will be with us forever. Fight every lie with education, facts, humor, satire, and most of all, entertainment.
Take cues from the Irish. Fisherman Patrick Murphy said, “we aren’t gonna move,” and the Russians lost. If the Russian Navy fought unarmed Irish fishermen in little wooden boats, the international outcry would have been deafening. If the Russian Navy gave a few fishermen wide berth, it would look weak. All the Russians could do was announce they would not enter Irish waters. Great theater. Match Trump theater with better theater, like the Irish, and…
Do it locally.
Stop talking to Manchin and Sinema — go local. Stand for every individual’s right to vote and the honest tallying of all votes in the states. Learn from the students and parents who fought the book burners in Virginia. They showed up and stood up. It was a tableau demonstrating majority rule. The Board of Education, like the Russian Navy, backed down.
Alexander Hamilton said, “Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.” They truly stand for nothing but themselves. We have the better storyline. We fought a revolution for right and the rights of all — for truth, justice, good health, and equal opportunity. We cannot fight nonsense with logic, but we can trump their theater with better theater. That is what Jesus, Gandhi, and King knew.
They cannot beat us, there are too many of us, but we can let them win by misunderstanding the threat and those threatening us. By underestimating our own power — by not embracing our story, our leaders, and our laws.
