The Jan. 6th Trump insurrection has not abated but mutated like the coronavirus. It is popping up in skirmishes around the country, particularly in the South. Where else?
Federal occupation troops left the South a dozen years after the Civil War ended. But before then, Southerners beaten and humiliated at having to share political power with former slaves, staged an orchestrated reign of terror and mob violence intended to restore, if not slavery, white hegemony. Reconstruction would be undone by Redemption. The South lost the war but won the peace. Jim Crow would last one hundred years.
Perhaps Jan. 6th was not the beginning of the second civil war of which The Three Percenters, The Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and have others long dreamt. Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday, November 8, 2016 launched their war to make America “Great Again” after the eight years of the Obama administration. Jan. 6, 2021 was their Gettysburg. Jan. 20th was their Appomattox.
Beaten and humiliated again, now comes the Confederates’ second attempt at Redemption.
Redemption 2.0 manifests as proxy fights over vaccination, and in resistance to mask mandates in schools at loud, angry protests at school board meetings. In North Carolina. In Tennessee. Even as the Delta variant of the coronavirus fills hospitals to overflowing not just with adults, but now with children.
Eric Boehlert tweets of the mask protests, “once again it’s only parents protesting masks required for students … if students cared wouldn’t they show up??”
Charlie Pierce recounts some noteworthy history behind Williamson County, Tenn., where such an angry protest took place this week. The county just south of Nashville is “the wealthiest in the state and one of the 20 wealthiest counties in the country. (Its county seat is Franklin, most notable for being the place where Union General George Thomas smashed a Confederate Army under John Bell Hood to rubble on November 30, 1864.)”
Pierce notes that these protests are not spontaneous but organized in advance. “Their purpose is clear, at least to them.” He adds, “This is how a country going mad sounds.”
As I’ve said, if you had being witness to a mass insanity on your bucket list, you can check it off now.
Politics of the powder keg
Jeff Sharlet (“The Family“), a keen observer of the right, believes insurrectionists are fantasizing about a rematch. On Wednesday, he issued a Tweet thread arguing that trying to appease people staging these pop-up protests will only allow tougher Covid variants to emerge that result in the deaths of “untold numbers of Americans” and more abroad:
I’m for vaccination as mandatory as the law allows and for looking at means within the rule of law to expand that possibility. I’ve been reporting on the Right in books & for national magazines for 20 yrs. I understand how dangerous this position is.
The risk of legal mandatory vaccination is further rightwing violence and political disintegration. Those who want to “go slow” are praying the center will hold. From my perspective as a journalist covering the Right: It won’t. It *didn’t.* …
We don’t have to get into silly self-satisfying arguments about the Right’s ignorance or cynicism to understand that appeasement right now is a liberal pipe dream & even a form of narcissism, a refusal to look at the Right as it openly presents itself.
A little while ago I drove slowly across the country visiting rightwing churches & individuals. What I found confirms a change I’ve been observing for the last 5 yrs: It’s really, truly, not issue-driven. What the Right wants, fundamentally, is a fight….
Which, of course, is a core principle of fascism, albeit in its rapidly mutating, inchoate American form: A longing for redemption through violence.
So trying to finesse policy differences or even “cultural” differences (read: white supremacy self-aware or not) isn’t noble, or pragmatic; it *misses the point.* The point, of much of the Right now, is conflict for its own sake, a belief that fighting will make them whole again.
Which is why I’m for making vaccination as mandatory as law will allow. Anything short of that as an attempt to avoid a fight will, I think, actually enflame much of the Right, since they believe they need to fight to be authentic.
So let’s proceed with trying to save untold numbers of Americans in the short term & trying to stop a vaccine-crushing variant from rising up & spreading globally in the only-slightly-longer term. Let’s do so fully aware of the conflict this effort will engender.
How bad will the conflict be? The good news, so far, is not as bad as the Right wants us to believe. Consider: much of the armed rightwing base believes falsely that Biden took power by coup. Are they in the streets? No–they’re telegramming, tweeting, watching TV.
I’ve talked to many militant rightwingers who say “If X happens, it’ll be civil war!” Then X happens. & they move the goal. Don’t get me wrong: this is staggeringly dangerous. But it shouldn’t be paralyzingly so. We need the strongest legal position for vaccines.
I don’t know where I stand on mandating vaccinations, but I have no problem with mandating masks.
Stubbornness is next to godliness in certain quarters of the U.S. Most of the time, it has no impact on the wider community. This time, it can get people killed. Lots of people. More than in skirmishes with cosplaying “patriots.” And not just in this country. The fourth Covid wave is becoming deadly. The rest of us are tired and out of patience with the militantly obstreperous, with paramilitary poseurs, and with “leaders” such as Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) and his seemingly genocidal non-response to the spread of Covid in Florida. Their fetish for freedom ends at my nasopharynx.
They want a fight?
