We are a violent people, we Americans. Our character, and thus of the nation, for we are a democracy, was forged and curiously has been periodically renewed in violence. Curiously, American violence has been familicidal, child against parent in the Revolution; brother against brother in the Civil War. Of course we deprecate violence; we know that the Revolution was violent, that the Civil War was violent, slavery was violent, school shootings, lynchings, hate killings--intellectually we know all this; morally we condemn all of it.
However, violence is so much a part of the American character that it is in our national DNA. Americans are not uniquely afflicted with the violence gene among the world's peoples. The truth is homo sapiens is violent species. (Almost unique in that--humans are one of the very few species that kill their own rather than only the other and none other on a scale that we homos do.) Neither are Americans quite unique in accepting our violence and seeing a "good" side to it, renewal...Well, let me pause to think about that for a moment...To be safe, Americans are a couple or few standard deviations away from the mean on national acceptance of, and seeing blood renewal in, familicide. We seem to need it.
We are a half mad people, we Americans. To the revolutionary generation the violence of independence was seen as renewing, perfecting, the best of British institutions. Make Britain Great Again! The Civil War was seen--totally deprecated, the Civil War was; awful, horrible, horrible thing.-- as making a "more perfect union." I'm sorry I just laughed out loud to myself. Read Lincoln's Second Inaugural, I'm not going to dwell on this, so just this one snippet: "Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came." Acceptance. Alright fine, I'll just bend over. If rape is inevitable lay back and enjoy it!
Democracy seems to require violence. Isn't that strange? Democratic theory is that democracy does away with political violence! But there is a deep flaw in democratic theory, the tautology that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Democracy is an endless, closed loop. The only way to solve the problems of democracy is by extra-democratic means, that is by intervention from outside the closed loop of representative elections, that is, by political violence.
We are now in national crisis. The present crisis is as existentially threatening as was the Civil War. What do Americans do in crisis? Shoot one another. We recoil. Are things really so bad as all that? My 401k is doing well, we had a Super Bowl and everything. The Guardian, British medium The Guardian, The Guardian had an article on the surreal normalcy of American life in the time of Trump. Right? And the band played on. Alright, you can rape me.
I do think Americans will submit. I do not think there will be large scale political violence by the Resistance. Trump will be reelected and we'll just go with the flow.
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies" lol.
