Cravings Can Get You Killed

 

The Attorney General of Texas, using the cloak of his office and in effect representing all the citizens of that state of my birth, sued four other sovereign states for their election methods and results. Ken Paxton's suit went directly to the Supreme Court, and was joined by the attorney generals of 17 other states and by 126 Republican members of Congress. They were all convinced -- or said they were convinced, in order to impress their impressionable constituents -- that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

After The Supremes threw out Paxton's suit as a piece of ridiculous garbage, the mayor of a small Texas town near Lubbock, which is very near where I grew up in the Panhandle, announced that he was ready to go to war and so were the dozens of other members of the South Plains Patriots, an armed militia pledged to defend Trump's right to stay in the White House. That mayor said there’s “no way in hell” Biden won fairly. The only way he’ll believe it, he said, is if Trump himself says so. “Trump is the only one we’ve been able to trust for the last four years. As far as the civil war goes, I don’t think it’s off the table.”

Civil war.

That mayor -- need we say it? -- was speaking for God knows how many other Trumpists everywhere who have swallowed Trump's bullshit like it was a chicken-fried steak dinner with yeast rolls. I tend to believe their stated willingness to use ordinance against enemies of the state. But who would they march against first, especially in a state as large as Texas with Republican elected officials in every statewide office? Or would they go all the way to Michigan, one of Paxton's targets, and storm Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's home? Not sure what that would gain them. So maybe they mean to coagulate on the streets of Washington, D.C., like the Proud Boys did last weekend. The Proud Boys showed them how to do it, although with fists rather than guns -- fists and (oh yeah!) knives. They managed not to kill anyone in the Capitol, but perhaps it's only a matter of time. And they didn't nullify the election.

Maybe Trump imagines himself refusing to come out of the White House on January 20th, with hundreds of his armed supporters guarding the doors and the grounds against any attempt by Federal marshals to haul his ass out. It's a fantasy narrative worthy of Hollywood. Maybe the armed militias who are itching to pull triggers on something have that fantasy too. Some have visions of their own heroic masculinity. Remember the good old boy from Salisbury who stormed a pizzeria in Washington looking for the kidnapped children? He had a fantasy that he was a savior working for the Lord.

I both believe that mayor in Texas, and I don't. I grew up with guys like him. Our school yard sprouted bullies like our irrigated farmland sprouted cotton. Some of them loved shoving around smaller kids, more timid kids, girly kids, but punch one in the nose, he'd back off quick, cupping the blood in his hand and running for the school nurse. Granted, some of them would never back off. They had too much invested in the presentation. School yard fighting was a performance, after all, and the method actors of Texas toughness always had cheering sections of other guys who enjoyed the break from school boredom.

I doubt the prospect of armed rebellion (though if Trump actually called for his supporters to take up arms against the "deep state," Katie bar the door!). Secession is another matter. Now while a part of me wants to say so long, goodbye, don't let the door hit ya to those new secessionist-talking braggarts in Texas and elsewhere, there's no way that's happening either. Not that it matters really, but the Supreme Court in 1869 actually ruled (in Texas v. White) that secession was not only unconstitutional but also a fictional delusion. The guys like the South Plains Patriots don't know nuttin' 'bout no Supreme Court ruling and wouldn't care if they did, so they might try to stir it up. But carrying out even a fictional secession would be a mighty heavy lift, what with interstate commerce and all.

I still worry. Even without the extremes of Civil War and secession, there's every likelihood that the snipers among Trump's most devoted followers will eventually satisfy their craving to shed some blood.

The Obama Effect

Someone handed me an advertisement clipped from one of our Watauga County newspapers (not sure which one), picturing T-shirts promoting the "Watauga County Militia" on the front, with stylized mtns and the slogan "FAITH, FAMILY, FREEDOM," with this quotation attributed to Thomas Jefferson on the back: "Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God."

Available at Adam's Hardware in Vilas.

In black only (natch).

Immune to the Lessons of History?

In December 1832, following the landslide reelection of President Andrew Jackson, the governor of South Carolina appointed himself a military aide-de-camp who was "charged with the duty of raising, inspecting, and granting commissions to volunteer companies" of soldiers -- an armed militia, in other words -- to fight what the governor actually hoped would be a coming war with the United States government. (I've been reading Jon Meacham's new book on the Jackson presidency, "American Lion.") In that long-ago December, the Republic was still young (the Revolution had been fought -- what? -- a mere 50 years prior), and the Civil War was still almost 30 years away, so the Republic was also still naive.

Over 175 years later, the Republic is still full of public dunces willing to spill blood because of allegiance to stupid ideas and towering emotions.

In 1832, South Carolina had been declaring that it had the right to "nullify" any federal law it didn't like. President Jackson thought not. The micro issue at the time was some federal tariff the South didn't like, but its real fear was that the Federal North would take away its right to live comfortably on the backs of thousands of slaves. Although civil war was averted in the 1830s, it would take less than three more decades before that gross Southern inhumanity, and the self-interest of white planters who intended to go on profiting from human bondage into the full bloom of history, would force a settlement of the slavery issue once and for all.

South Carolina claimed the high ground of "states rights," the biggest and most important of those "rights" being the ability to keep other people in chains to grow your food, cook your food, coddle your children, and wash your filthy underwear.

The current presidency of Barack Obama is such a bitter pill for the Old South specifically, and for those possessed of the Old South mentality wherever they live, and even though it was a New Hampshirite who brought the most recent loaded gun to a presidential appearance, we fear that it is a majority of Southerners who are crying "fire" in this crowded theater, denying legitimacy, and making cozy with emotional gun-toters itching to spill blood.

You might take a look at "The Second Wave: Return of the Militias," a special report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Paranoid conspiracy theories ("the Federal government has set up 1,000 internment camps and is storing 30,000 guillotines and a half-million caskets in Atlanta," etc.), hatred of dark-skinned immigrants, 50 new militia training groups, and a mounting number of violent incidents. The proximate (and obvious) cause? The election of a black man to the presidency.

One man "very upset" with the election of America's first black president was building a radioactive "dirty bomb"; another, a Marine, was planning to assassinate Obama, as were two racist skinheads in Tennessee; still another angry at the election and said to be interested in joining a militia killed two sheriff's deputies in Florida. A man in Pittsburgh who feared Jews and gun confiscation murdered three police officers. Near Boston, a white man angered by the alleged "genocide" of his race shot to death two African immigrants and intended to murder as many Jews as possible. An 88-year-old neo-Nazi killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. And an abortion physician in Kansas was murdered by a man steeped in the ideology of the "sovereign citizen" movement.

I had an e-mail last night from another student of history (actually a retired professor of history), who closed this way: "The racism behind the anger at Obama's victory will be around a long time, I fear. And, as the white, rural, and southern demographic continues to dwindle, we will see more of this outrage as the measuring stick. Folks who are sensing losing, will go down fighting."

We can pray for calm and reconciliation, but those genes are obviously weak in our bloodlines.