The Peasants Are Revolting!
“A violent coup!”
“Domestic terrorism!”
“A day that will live in infamy!”
The popular response to yesterday’s chaos at the U.S. Capitol has been almost as amusing — and almost as pitiful — as the chaos itself. The fact that so many, commenting online from the safety of their homes, genuinely felt that their beloved country was under threat — even if only in some vague symbolic way — is further testimony to just how naïve, sheltered, and dangerously — yes, dangerously — histrionic Americans have become. Or, perhaps, have always been…
I couldn’t have been the only one delighting in the surreal spectacle of America’s sacred chambers of congress being overrun by an inept rabble of comic hayseeds as our elected bureaucrats and oligarchs cowered for their lives.
And if I was, I shouldn’t have been…
Not because I, in any way, support their collective cause (or what they, collectively, claim their cause to have been), but because a) like anyone still in possession of a discerning eye and a robust sense of humor, I knew their outrageous performance (for that is all it was) posed no threat to anyone other than themselves, and b) like anyone with a healthy distrust of authority and a genuine belief in the idea of power to the people, I found their actions inspiring. My only objections were to who was rebelling, and why…
But Americans have reached a point where we can no longer differentiate between motive and act. And we have become incapable of appreciating the value — even if it’s only entertainment value — of any political action not undertaken by our own chosen party. Which, in recent years, has often led to the embrace of some curiously inconsistent attitudes and opinions…
It was eyebrow-raising, to say the least, to see so many so-called liberals demanding a swift and unforgiving paramilitary response to the protests — some even calling for violent suppression and executions for treason — while simultaneously griping (however correctly) that similarly aggressive BLM protests would be — and, in fact, have been — brutally and efficiently suppressed. Certainly, there is a grotesquely racist inconsistency evident in the police response to both protests — one in dire need of redress — but, at the end of the day, either you’re in favor of a police state or you’re not. Yet, across the political spectrum, we seem to have forgotten that you can’t have a Bill of Rights, civil procedure, and due process for those we agree with and a repressive police state for everyone else. In some cases, we seem to be actively clamoring for just that.
Leftists, liberals, and Democrats like to accuse Trump and various Republicans of twisting their constituencies into packs of deranged fanatics, but they’re blind to the ways in which the exaggerated specter of Trump and “Trumpism” (as though he could be associated with any kind of coherent political ideology) has similarly turned them into shrill, paranoid reactionaries.
It takes no great complexity of thought to realize that the problem is not that the police response to yesterday’s circus was too soft, but that their response to far worthier protests has been obscenely, egregiously harsh. A fact worthy of fiery protest, in itself…
But something even stranger has been happening to leftists, liberals, and progressives since long before Trump reared his ugly, orange head: Despite a healthy history of sometimes incendiary civil disobedience, and despite several administrations’ worth of horrific political actions, both at home and abroad (all of them far worthier of this type of open revolt than the post-electoral tantrum thrown by our spoiled-brat-in-chief), the left-liberal crowd has come to embrace a simpering commitment to propriety and peaceful protest, even in the face of their obvious futility. Though many posted about being ashamed of America after yesterday’s fracas, they ought to be ashamed of themselves for allowing a bunch of gullible bumpkins to beat them to the kind of action they should have undertaken ages ago.
What happened yesterday was not a coup. (If you want to know what a real coup looks like, google “United States” and “South America.”) Nor was it an act of treason or domestic terrorism. At least, not in any way that should have been taken seriously. In many ways, it was an aimless explosion of profound dissatisfaction. Like a funhouse inversion of Andrew Jackson’s notorious 1829 post-inaugural White House reception, where, instead of riotously welcoming a President they felt, for once, represented their interests, the lumpenproletariat were riotously protesting what they genuinely believed to be his unfair ousting. Yes, they were the more deceived, but ask yourself, my lumpen-liberals, if you truly believed a Democratic President was being illegally driven from office, would you be prepared to go so far…? If not, the problem might be with you…
In many ways, Trump’s army of credulous yokels actually has one up on all those moderates and liberals so eager for a return to political “normalcy” and the status quo: They, at least, know something is terribly wrong, even if they’re terribly wrong-headed about what it is. And though they might routinely blame immigrants and minorities for their woes, in this case, they actually came after the right people, for once, even if they did it for the wrong reasons.
I have no desire to see Trump remain in power, or to witness a right-wing populist takeover of the American government, but the fact is, it’s a good thing, every now and again, to remind our elected officials that their positions of power are entirely dependent on popular support and protected only by a collective illusion — or is that delusion…? — of sanctity. In a great political and historical irony, we have come to regard our (allegedly) democratically elected officials with the same reverence we once reserved for monarchs. Which is why, far from being horrified by yesterday’s circus, my honest feeling was that this sort of thing doesn’t happen nearly often enough.
Some of the greatest moments in American history — politically, culturally, aesthetically — have been the result of unruliness, disobedience, disruption, and misbehavior. Also some of the worst. But you can’t have one without the other. And while it’s true that not all rebellions are created equal, it’s nonetheless important to keep a clear head about what it is that we’re so righteously condemning and what we’re demanding as a solution. Yesterday’s act of rebellion may have been performed by America’s worst, but the spectacle was America at its best.
