Civility or Civil War

Civility or Civil War

Democratic member of Congress Maxine Waters spoke at a rally last weekend.  She called on the crowd to harass Trump Administration members:

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them!”

The owner of the Red Hen Restaurant of Lexington, Virginia, asked White House Press Secretary to leave her restaurant.  She could not, she said, in good conscience serve the spokesman for the President who split families and took children.  The Trump supporter response has forced the restaurant’s closure for at least two weeks.

Stephen Miller, Presidential Counselor and the purported author of the child separation plan, was shouted out of a Mexican bar in Washington, DC.  Protestors gathered outside his apartment complex. Protestors also gather outside of Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Neilsen’s home, broadcasting the cries of babies being removed from their parents.

President Trump is no stranger to threats and intimidation.  Through his tweets and in his political rallies, he has slandered, sworn, and threatened a variety of people.  According to the President, Maxine Waters is “low-intelligence,” and NBC news commentator Chuck Todd is a “sleepy eyed son-of-a-bitch.”  In a recent rally he pointed out CNN’s Jim Acosta, who was then verbally attacked by the crowd.  Trump has offered to pay the legal fees of audience members who beat up protestors. He has suggested violence against gang members in police custody, and found “good people” among white supremacists.

The “Resistance” to Trump has taken on a new tactic.  While mass marches and demonstrations continue, some have taken the attack personally to the Trump Administration.  In response, many, both “Trumpsters” and others, have cried foul, saying that this lack of “civility” is beneath the goals of the resistance.  They quote Michelle Obama (in response to the Trump campaign)  “…when they go low, We go high!”

Those in favor of the new tactics, cite American history.  They view themselves as the modern day Abolitionists, fighting an ultimate evil. As the Abolitionists might have done anything to end slavery, including fomenting revolution as John Brown did at Harper’s Ferry, so many feel today.  They see the President committing the ultimate immoral action of using children as political pawns.  They feel that “stolen” children are beyond the rules of civility, and must be met with “the gloves off.”

The resignation of Justice Kennedy makes that desperation even greater, as their most important rights are now on the block:  from women to LGBTQ to organizing as workers.  In some ways the Kennedy resignation nullifies whatever results of the future November election might be; regardless of the outcome the conservatives will remain in control of the Supreme Court. It doesn’t help that the Democratic leaders in the Senate like Dick Durbin are whining about being the minority, one vote short of control.  They offer no hope.

So what should the analogy be?  Is our era equivalent to the pre-Civil War times?  Is this what we must do to maintain morality, recreate the Abolitionist movement of the mid 1800’s to stand against Trump’s actions?  And if we are in that sorry a state, does it mean that there is an inevitable conflict coming among Americans?

There is the theory of revolution:  revolutions among the people don’t occur when things are at there worst.  They occur when things get better, and then dramatically change to worse.  It’s a “darkest before the dawn” idea. We went from a progressive era, represented by the Obama Presidency, to this present.  Are we at the darkest moment of this era, or will the “Resistance” be even more aggrieved in the future?  Are we facing a second American apocalypse, or is this “counter-revolution” to progressivism a last gasp?

Enough questions:  my answers are also taken from American history. While we have from time to time had extremists in control of the government, we have also ultimately rebounded back from it.  In 1968, when the nation was rocked by assassination, anti-war protests, civil rights demonstrations, and the cultural revolution of the “age of love;” the nation chose Richard Nixon as President.  It seemed like a complete reversion from the hopes and dreams that John F. Kennedy had provided.

It was an ugly time, and would continue to be so through Watergate to the end of the Vietnam War.  But there ultimately was a “dawn” after all of the darkness.  In the same way, the darkness that “Resistors” see now, may well change. There is November, and the opportunity to regain Congress.  There is the Mueller investigation, and the opportunity to find out what really happened in 2016.  There is still hope.

And if there is hope, there is power.  Despite Dick Durbin’s message of futility, the Resistance still can make a difference, and make a change.  The chanting crowds in the restaurants and at the homes of Trump officials are emotionally satisfying, but they are ultimately signs of weakness and hopelessness. Stephen Miller won’t be changing his mind because of confrontation, in fact he probably went to the Mexican bar looking for it.

It’s not about civility, it’s about directing energies to create change.  We have November, focus on that.  As the two famous phrases from the civil rights movement say:  “keep your eyes on the prize” and “we shall overcome.”

 

I watched “Selma” this week.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.  It’s about moral courage in an important and desperate cause – and sounds eerily like today.