“I believe people should just, just be ready to get out on the streets with pitchforks and torches with how low the liberal media has become. People need to decide ‘Am I going to put up with this? Am I going to tolerate this, taking somebody that gives money to churches or cancer research and use that as a hit piece in the media?’ I’m appalled. It’s disgusting.” – Tim Michels, Trump-endorsed Republican Candidate for Governor of Wisconsin
Frankenstein
The old black and white movie “Frankenstein” had the original sequence. The mob, torches in hand are exhorted to track down and destroy the monster by their leaders. The bloodhounds, bayed on the trail through the night. And the women in their shawls clutched the young children, watching their “men” go off to destroy the Frankenstein. I remember as a young kid, trembling at the spectacle of the Doctor’s creation. No, I didn’t see the movie in the 1930’s theatre. I watched it on black and white TV’s in the early 1960’s.
That mob was scary in the 1931 version. They were more humorous in the Mel Brooks version, Young Frankenstein. That came out the year I graduated from high school, 1974. It was still in black and white. That was Brook’s intentional choice, to recall the original. But in 2022, pitchforks and torches are in “living color” and are symbolic of American politics today. Tim Michels, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Wisconsin governor is calling out the mob against the “liberal” press.
His campaign staff scoffed at concerns; “only political hacks and media accomplices would freak out about Tim using a figure of speech.” And if it was ten years ago, before Charlottesville, before the Insurrection, maybe we could buy that. But it’s not. We know exactly what torchlight marches look like – “Jews will not replace us”. And we know that today’s “pitchforks” are metal flagstaffs, often with “Trump” emblazoned on the guidon. There’s no scoffing in 2022 about violence in politics.
Random Violence
Saturday night in Wilkes Barre the disgraced former President promised “full pardons” for the January 6thInsurrectionists. And he prophesized that the current investigations into his own actions would produce “…a backlash the likes of which our country had not seen before” (BBC). He called the FBI and the Justice Department “vicious monsters”. The specter of violence weighs on every decision. It looms large when the Department of Justice brings charges against someone, or when the actual President, Joe Biden, speaks tough truth to the Nation, as he did on the campaign trail this weekend.
Biden intentionally called on citizens to defend our Democracy, not through violence, but by casting out the “MAGA Republican” ideology. Criticism of Biden was foreseeable. Some said “Biden ran as the ‘uniter’, now he’s a ‘divider’”. Others cried out, “He’s calling 71 million Trump voters Fascists”. The President is not calling half the electorate Fascists. He recognizes that Republican Party is divided, between those who are true Trump “believers”, and those who know better, but follow the “false prophet” just to get elected. But he is warning that fifty million Americans are convinced as “MAGA Republicans”. He isn’t calling for them to be “cast out”. He calling on their leadership to recognize their threat to Democracy, instead of conforming to an ideology for convenience sake.
Hard Truth
It is a divisive stand. But it’s not creating division, it’s simply recognizing our current political reality. In Biden’s view of leadership, the President of the United States has a duty and obligation to tell the Nation when things are wrong. Biden would say, he promised to tell the truth, even when it’s hard. It would be foolish to ignore this “elephant in the room”. And in true Biden fashion, he is speaking from the heart.
It does indicate a change in the “Good Old” Joe who got elected in 2020. Biden truly believed he could reach out across the divide, as he did so many times in the US Senate. But after two years, the reality of Trumpism has set in, even for Joe Biden. Just as the disgraced former President doesn’t seem to “fade away”, neither does his ideology. And it’s not just Trump himself. The far-right extremism that Trump represents is catching fire in many world democracies. Biden’s words are a recognition that this is not about one man, but a much more dangerous and seductive view of world governing.
Biden is telling America the hard truth. Trump, and his ilk, are countering with not-so-vague threats of violence. Either one could still be America’s future. It is our choice.
