JUNE 2, 2020 – How will the current chapter of our history read? There’s no script, no pre-determined outcome. There are signs, however, of what could well unfold.
Not to sound melodramatic—which means the exact opposite: to sound melodramatic—but current dynamics in our body politic prompt thoughts about revolution. And I’m not thinking ala the American Revolution (Phase I: 1775-81; Phase II: 1861-65). I’m thinking Russian, and even more unnerving, the French Revolutions.
An historical pattern consists of long-term oppression by power held by a small minority. As the oppression becomes unbearable, the oppressed become radicalized. Flashpoints lead to conflagration. Among the first victims: reason. The revolutionaries get their revolution, but many are consumed by its flames. As everyone in the middle runs for the exits, a whole new oppression takes hold. Houses burn; heads roll. The wheel of history turns, grinding into the blood-soaked earth, another generation of victims.
We could well be witnessing the expanding flashpoints of the next revolution. The flashpoints: Trump’s shameless, contemptuous, openly impeachable acts; the Senate’s inexcusable failure to counter Trump’s authoritarianism; Trump’s abysmally failed response to the greatest public health threat in over a century; a white cop’s murder of a black man over a supposed counterfeit $20 bill; mass protests and chaos in the streets, countered by tear gas and millions of angry tweets and posts; the appearance and rumors of appearance of trackless radicals on the extreme left and the extreme right, hellbent on detonating the next big bang, the next big revolution.
For us Boomers, our natural reaction is to look to November 3. Ever since Watergate, the electoral process has been our “go to” remedy. Then came the shocking result of 2016. “How can this be?!” asked friends who crowded our living room on Election Night. Our worst fears materialized exponentially in the months, years that followed.
We now look at Biden’s steady lead and exclaim among ourselves to “get out the vote!” But I take little heart in the lead or the entreaty. The lead is not 20% or greater. It’s half that or less. But unlike anything in our past, the polls are no longer reliable road signs along the treacherous course on which we travel. If the lead expands and Trump and his sycophants are at all consistent with their record, they will stop at nothing—nothing—to poison the process and manipulate the results, even to the point of derailing them altogether. (If you doubt this proposition, take a close hard look at Evangelical Christians—Christians!—who are able to stride in league with Satan because he delivered the courts.) If the lead narrows—well, then shame on us. Shame on us, for having allowed money, religious fanatics, and power-mongering Republicans to outspend, out-smart, out-maneuver, out-manipulate the democratic principles that formed our national order. Or perhaps it will be, shame on non-voters for not supporting an over-ripe banana because of its spots, thus allowing the devil incarnate to crater the Republic.
Bottom line: danger behind us, around us, ahead of us.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
