Insurrectionbait

While the nation is obsessed with deliberating whether January 6 was an insurrection…

the ‘right wing’ of the Republican Party is creating one in slo-mo.

Above photo: Recall this picture as ‘a noose intended for Mike Pence.’ Now — one year later — look at this picture as a gallows framing the US Capitol. Courtesy Andrew Caballero-Reynolds for OurQuadCities and Getty Images

Some say that January 6 was a “dress rehearsal.” While this is a tempting appraisal, in one sense it is misleading:

The ‘insurrection show’ is now playing on Main Street. We don’t need tickets; we already have our seats.

Whatever the next stage in America’s politics, we may miss the transition, or at minimum we will not find the “tipping point.” (1) As a nation, we are finding it a challenge to restore Voting Rights that have already been taken away. Grasp this for a moment:

This ‘fact’ doesn’t support the notion that we are a nation divided.

We are a nation rent asunder.

Why else is ‘violence’ the overriding concern? That the means may entail violence: violence requires execution as well as coordination. This we learned from January 6 and we are still rubbing our collective eyes.

There were ‘guns’ on January 6; they just weren’t in front of the cameras.

In my state, Michigan, the ‘dark money’ is on overturning a free and lawful election. (2) Remove the protections and one removes the incentive(s) to vote. There won’t be Proud Boys at the polling site. There won’t be a ‘polling site.’

For many ears that this column will sound like a jeremiad or rhetoric or ‘negative thinking’ (I am particularly fond of this one) or… whatever…is another ‘cumulative fact.’ (3)

It’s hard to organize scared people.

Ask the generation(s) of ‘Jim Crow.’

January 17

1-https://www.npr.org/2020/07/30/897345056/experts-game-out-what-might-happen-if-the-election-goes-off-the-rails

2-”Trouble in Michigan,” Medium

3-Jonathan Stevenson and Steven Simon, “We Need to Think the Unthinkable About the U.S.,” Opinion, NYTimes, January 14