“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength:
one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”

Booker T. Washington

 
Alright, so the working title for this post was “A House Divided”, which probably would have been a little less daunting than the final title, but it is my intention here to pursue a discussion that goes beyond the problem and toward solutions. Besides that, I had another post called “A House Divided” already about four years ago, and I don’t want to start repeating myself anymore than I already do!

The sidewalks of Washington have endured not a few scuffling feet over the course of the last week. First the inauguration of Donald J. Trump and the throngs of his supporters, only to be followed the next day by the larger than expected Women’s March on Washington where President Trump’s detractors were out in full force. Next came the perennially well attended March for Life whose views, at least on the subject of abortion, are diametrically opposed to the Women’s March faithful. Hundreds of thousands of people making the pilgrimage to the Capitol to demonstrate something we all already knew; we are a house divided.

We are always to one extent or another “a house divided”, but it’s been awhile since we were this fractured. The emotional slogan, slash hashtag, “Not My President” has replaced “Never Trump” as wishful thinking dissolves with the dawn of reality. Donald J. Trump is President of the United States. He was far from my first choice, but neither was the last President; yet in both cases, despite disagreements, disbelief and embarrassment, the President of my country duly elected is my President, just as are my senators and governor who I never voted for. If Trump is not your President, that begs the question… who is? The few anarchists, I suppose, have the political consistency to so declare; but the rest of us who proclaim the nation to be governed by the rule of law are consigned to accept the consequences of that Law, even when we find those consequences repugnant. The last time large segments of the population decided an elected President was too repugnant to be called their President they found a more acceptable substitute, Jefferson Davis.

If today’s Progressives were divided from the Union by the Mason Dixon line, as they were in the Civil War, there would be a very good chance we would be looking at a redux. Instead, the electoral map shows that the nation is divided along isolated county lines, with strong progressive support found in urban centers with their concentrated population. There are a few islands of college counties; but pretty much the rest of the nation is overwhelmingly red. This would make the radical choice of Civil War unlikely from the Progressive side, as it would be even more hopeless than was the Confederate cause, and of course unnecessary from the point of view of the party in power, which has historically been the party that advocates the preservation of the Union anyway.

While we are on the subject, it should be remembered that there was a President who was elected despite 60% of the nation voting against him, whose approval ratings at the time of his inauguration have been estimated at about 25%. His own party reviled him, critics insulted his appearance and lack of political experience, and his chances for re-election were considered impossible until the Democrats nominated a singularly horrible candidate to oppose him, and still he barely won. So hated was he that he had to sneak into Washington for his inauguration in secret, disguised, to avoid assassination, a fate that eventually befell him at the hands of John Wilkes Booth. The press hated Lincoln, “the obscene ape from Illinois”, he was labelled a dictator, a “simple susan”…

“As to the politics of Washington, the most striking thing is the absence of personal loyalty to the President. It does not exist. He has no admirers, no enthusiastic supporters, none to bet on his head…”

Richard Henry Dana

 

There were riots against him in New York City, which aside from the Civil War itself were the largest insurgency in our history. Lincoln’s election was never attributed to his own popularity, as it was suggested that people only voted for him while holding their nose, and to keep others out. His unpopularity festered until that Good Friday in 1865 when only his assassination transformed him from pariah to martyr, from tyrant to The Great Emancipator. I’m not saying that Donald J. Trump is Abraham Lincoln, but I am saying that, in many ways, Abraham Lincoln was Donald Trump.

Breaking things is easy, division is in our fallen nature. Union is more difficult, and putting things back together is often a Herculean task. We will never know if Reconstruction would have been successful under the direction of arguably our greatest President; what we do know is that it was doomed without him. Washington lacked the political will to effectively put the nation together again, and Democratic control of the South was cemented for decades through Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan. Early political victories for southern Republicans electing black representatives were quickly swept aside with devious strategies by the white Democrats without appreciable interference from Washington. With the coming of the industrial revolution the plight of the southern black man, and for the poor urban whites as well, became not significantly better than the days before the Emancipation. Darwinism was extended to Social Darwinism, where wealthy industrialists justified their impoverishing of whole segments of the population as “survival of the fittest” and part of the evolution of the species; helping the poor and lower classes was going against the laws of nature. The problem is obvious, the impoverished still survive, they have children, they increase, and eventually they rise up to “eat the rich”. Even in nature the most vulnerable are guarded by their herd. Yes, they are sometimes lost, but not willingly sacrificed. We as a nation, in our zeal to push down our conquered enemy, failed to lift up his victims, and we continue to live with the consequences even now.

The electoral map is a road map to the future, and what could be a strategy for war can be turned on its head to become a plan for peace. We are at the end of a battle, and with the proper actions, it could be the end of the war, or at least a turning point. The opposition to conservative government is almost entirely located in well defined, concentrated population centers. And make no mistake, aside from a few ideologues the opposition is more an opposition to poverty and a lack of opportunity than to the demonized conservatives themselves. If a rising tide lifts all ships, then it damn well better lift the more vulnerable as well. If we need to patch a few holes in our less sea worthy vessels, it behooves us to do that. Fix the cities, win the war. Our principles can’t be abandoned to please the opposition, but our values need to find a way to liberate their victims, to use our strength to lift up, to preserve our citizens from the predators of poverty and the poverty of spirit.

For the most part, there was no real reconciliation to be had with the leaders of the Confederacy. Reconstruction did not insinuate a return to the status quo for pro-slavery politicians. Despite some popular devotion to these, they were the vanquished, and finding common ground with those diametrically opposed to you can be an exercise in futility, especially for those devoted to your destruction. Likewise, in today’s climate of polarization in Washington, working across the aisle will be rare, if that is defined by cooperating with those who keep their power and money by opposing you. Their constituents are a different story, and Republicans should be open to finding common ground there. I have of late been called out by a few readers for being uncharacteristically less than gracious in my approach to progressive detractors. It has been said that sarcasm does not always translate well into print, and if wit was sacrificed to meanness, I indeed apologize. As Christ reserved his harshest criticisms for the Scribes and Pharisees, false leaders, the elite of their day, I feel no compunction in leveling criticism at those who use position to mislead. Likewise, we ought not suffer bullies to proceed unchallenged. If the best defense you can make for your own position is to insult the first lady’s accent, criticize Kelly Anne Conway’s attractiveness, or compare Donald Trump to a farting butt; then you have defined the respect you deserve. If you need to resort to hyperbole, allusions to Hitler, fabrications and unjustified recriminations, then you have relegated yourself to the fringe, and take your place along side the most outlandish conspiracy theorists; you have removed yourself from the conversation. You are still welcome to our television screens, our twitter feeds, our FaceBook pages, but we will address ourselves seriously only to those you no longer serve. By all means, though, share your crude insults, don your outrageous costumes, make your fantastic claims; we find you… entertaining. With the demise of the Circus, we will need more clowns.

 

 

On a personal note:  a few of you have done me the honor of sharing my posts with your friends and contacts, and it has resulted in an up tick in readership of late.  Thank-you so much, and for any of the rest of you, if you like or are challenged by these posts, I’d love if you shared them as well!

 

Kevin Cail+