JANUARY 15, 2021 – On Wednesday I watched about a half hour of the House impeachment “debate.” All the talk can be summarized this way:
PRO IMPEACHMENT: “Trump shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue—I mean, the Capitol!!! Get him OFF. THE. STREET!—before he shoots us all.”
ANTI-IMPEACHMENT: “First, Glory-to-God. (!) Second, you Democrats are hypocrites. Where were you when society’s black sheep were burning down our cities? . . . Violence in the Capitol?—bad—but only seven days remain before the ballot burglar takes office, so chill!”
After all the repetitive one-minute speeches and procedural “yielding” to “gentlemen” and “gentle ladies”; after all the equally redundant indignation expressed by pundits and commentators, I listened to the full, riveting speech by Steve Schmidt, former Republican strategist and advisor, who is a founder of The Lincoln Project. It was the most focused and sobering assessment of Republican failure I’ve encountered. If you haven’t yet heard it, you must, irrespective of your political persuasion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDpfxqxuPyg
As I ponder Schmidt’s indictment of Republicans and his warning to us all, I again find myself questioning the viability of our nation. Despite its adaptive traits, our foundation is too brittle, too anachronistic for our current needs. What are they? First up: physical survival amidst the pandemic. Next: rescuing the one of every six Americans from starvation and homelessness. Close behind: avoiding broader economic depression. Chronically: freedom from mob rule, authoritarian rule, and a culture of falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
The Confederate flag on parade inside the Capitol symbolized our nation’s congenital division over slavery. That sordid defect led to our bloodiest conflict and the legacy of Black bondage is writ large upon such Constitutional anachronisms as the electoral college, the bicameral national legislature (a model duplicated by all but one state), and the continuing obsession with “states rights.” These defective features of our political framework and culture now endanger our survival.
To salvage ourselves, we must go beyond abandonment of ignorance and alteration of attitudes. We must reform our governmental structure; we must think within the conceptual framework of a modern “Constitutional Convention.” “Voting the bums out” (or “in”), imposing term limits, “getting the vote out” (or keeping it away), “getting money out of politics” (or pouring more in), and en masse exercise of our First Amendment rights are salves and pills that target disturbing symptoms, not fundamental causes.
Our foundational problem: we’ve become a nation of 330 million people with ingrained and disparate views and deeply rooted, conflicting interests. Given our siloed information sources, our susceptibility to snake oil, and our unshakable religious fervor, we can’t see that our national divide plays out not on some vast plain bordered at one end by an abyss but upon . . . the Devil’s Tower—a cliff in every direction. Unless Americans grasp this reality, we are destined for the fate that surrounds us: a long, hard fall.
Our crises are acute, and time is short.
Today, call me pessimistic—but blame it on Schmidt—the man, not the beer.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
