Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.
Robert Heinlein, Gulf (1949)
I emerged from my basement office and was shocked to see images of a Trump-incited mob storming the Capitol Building. I laughed; my psychological defense mechanism, because I am frightened to my core. Today I witnessed the death of American Exceptionalism as a shared civic creed.
This was not a principled insurgency. This was a mob deluded by a populist megalomaniac feeding the gullible conspiracy theories.
When have we seen this before? Was it Berlin, March 23, 1933?
Exceptionalism is an impolite word because people who do not understand its context hear it as exclusionary. But that isn’t the proper philological understanding. Exceptionalism – Lincoln’s ordaining of America as the last best hope on Earth. Regan’s City on the Hill hearkens to our nation’s Puritanical foundation. These speeches highlight aspirational and laudatory ideals that bind a people to a higher cause.
In part, I blame Obama. Obama implicitly derided the concept by saying, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” The idea that every national power considers itself ‘exceptional’ is probably a truism – but that is a weak understanding of the concept of Exceptionalism. The Right chastised him for that speech (and the Nation has the most succinct review of the issue).
Obama was too honest. He showed us, and the world, that America needs to continue to work – that we have yet to create the ideal society. He pointed too closely at the details of how we needed to improve. He revealed chinks in the armor. And while he articulately did so with the belief he could inspire us to improve, the rhetorical miss was this: by highlighting the work, the path to progress, the ideals were made mundane – became part of a ‘to do’ list. Inspiration reduced to a project. We were no longer Exceptional, just another work in progress. Well-meaning to be sure (since real work needs be done) but a dream made concrete is no longer an ideal.
Trump’s deluded mob believes in MAGA because they dream of an America where self-sufficiency means America can go it alone.
An insular return to a more rural, less globally integrated, less involved America. A tragic an ill-informed dream but a comforting one where manufacturing jobs would magically return to the shores of America and save small towns from their imminent demise. Hillary derided these dreamers, calling them “deplorables,” concluding “thankfully they are not American.” An understandable political flourish but one that demonstrates the arrogance of the elite who were tone-deaf and dismissed the real pain of millions. Trump capitalized on that pain and fear.
And thus: to Trump alone I assign culpability.
Trump: you are responsible for the actions of your minions – for they heed your call. You played on the fears of the masses. Your lawyers will parse the phraseology and make exculpating arguments, but the culpability is yours alone!
Trump ruined the true dream that was America – the fragile belief in Exceptionalism. Exceptionalism: not a boast but the illusion that one place is better than every other locale – a Utopia (Gk. ‘no where’). It was always an illusion, a goal, Fiddler’s Green, a dream, but a necessary one.
President-elect Joe Biden delivered a timely speech, but only after providing ample time for Trump to assert leadership. This was a gentlemanly act, and that gives me a glimmer of hope. I am guardedly optimistic that Biden’s reserve can restore America to a position of deserved prominence: a resurrection of Exceptionalism. But how?
We have in fact been here before, albeit the damage was perpetrated by a foreign government. On August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, British troops burned the Capitol and almost all other public buildings in Washington. The Capitol Building was set ablaze and only a sudden rainstorm prevented its complete destruction. Earlier still, Shay’s Rebellion was a spirited and principled insurrection by soldiers of the Revolution.
It was Shay’s Rebellion that elicited Thomas Jefferson’s oft-quoted quip about the “blood of patriots,” which is cited here with full context:
The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. yet where does this anarchy exist? where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? and can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. they were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. the people cannot be all, & always, well informed. the past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.
Thomas Jefferson to William Smith (1787)
I doubt seriously that the motivated Trump supporters can be set right to the facts (what are facts in an era of QAnon?) and therefore merit pardon and accept pacification. Today we had one death resulting from the riot (or was it four?). The number matters; the indifference to truth matters more. Is that sufficient manure to fertilize the tree of liberty?
With hope and trepidation, I wait for January 20, 2021 when President-elect Biden takes office. Biden’s burden is heavier now. Yes, there is the pandemic, yes, there is economic damage, yes, there is global uncertainty – but all those issues pale in comparison to the most critical agenda: restore facts as the basis for dialogue; restore civil dialogue as the basis for debate; prove that healthy debate can bring consensus, that consensus can lead to productive change and ultimately return to Exceptionalism. Where America emerges again to take its role as the preeminent example for others to emulate.
It all starts with leaders who have cultivated true character!
_________
Postscript? The future of American dialogue?
Old friends and some family members continue to believe in the inane narrative that Trump was the bastion of American values. And these believers are only entrenching deeper and further – a burrowing tick:
No, our friendship is not contingent on political views, because this is so far beyond politics now. I simply do not have the time for anyone that doesn’t share my beliefs.
No, Trump wasn’t perfect, but he was the only thing that stood between us and a shit country run by globalist communist. The Ty I used to know was a fighter. This is not politics; this is life and death now.
We had for a short time, a president that lit the White House in blue in support of cops, compared to the one before that lit it up with the rainbow flag. Which do you want for your two sons?
Would you stand face to face with one of the laid off Keystone Pipeline workers and tell them it is “just politics”? As the globalist puppet John Kerry just said, “They can learn to build solar panels now”
Have you read the democrat sponsored bill HR 127 yet regarding your guns?
But Trump was stupid they say, he was given all his money by his father. No, he turned millions into billions. Yet, our buddy Chris (Trump hater) is so much smarter. He managed to turn 1/4 million into nothing.
But Trump said, “grab a pussy”. Yeah, that’s what us alpha males say around one another. But the same stupid cunts elect a hair sniffing child groper.
My point is, you have become too comfortable in your suburban existence now my friend. Frankly, it is making you soft. The world is only going to get harsher. So, if you want to talk, I don’t have any interest in talking about comic books or movies.
I am sorry to hear about your roommate. I have lost 5 guys I went to the academy with already. 1 drank himself to death, 1 hanged himself and the other 3 blew their heads off. One of those caught his wife cheating with his best friend, went to the best friend’s apartment, walked in shot him to death and then stepped out on the deck and blew his own head off.
Be strong, the world is full of too many pussies. ~Your friend~
No doubt the last email, the end of a friendship. How is dialogue possible when facts are not a shared substrate? HR 127 is an over-reach (required registry) but even if enacted, it would not be much different from what Connecticut already imposes on him – and the mental health provision might have saved his fellow officers. And Keystone – what does one say to workers in a dying industry? The Luddites who broke auto-looms are not the model of Western progress. There are inevitable losers in the wake of economic creative destruction. Buffett summed it in 2001 when speaking at the University of Georgia:
What you really should have done in 1905 or so, when you saw what was going to happen with the auto is you should have gone short horses. There were 20 million horses in 1900 and there’s about 4 million now. So it’s easy to figure out the losers, the loser is the horse. But the winner is the auto overall.
The cult of personality. Why are so many so willing to cede their free will? I still don’t know. But I know this: I will never understand the willingness to follow.
