Civil War – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Resilience Is Our Strength But Also Our Weakness

Time to break a few things

There are two big conversations popping around the political universe these days. Both seem to miss not only the larger point, but the stakes.

The first is how the Democratic Party is trying to still figure out what it wants to be in the wake of progressive victories in recent primaries. The centrists are appalled. The progressives are ecstatic. The people are pissed off. The politicians are clueless. This post isn’t really about that fight, only to say that it provides some context to the second.

The second conversation takes place on the larger battleground heading into the midterms and beyond. No, that’s not the inevitable mud fight between what was once the Republican Party and the clueless Democrats. It’s yet another intra-party scrap on the Dem side.

There are those who think we need to restore to what we had before. Achieve some sort of balance again. There are those, like me, that think playing that game is not only equally clueless, but is trying to pretend we can put all of the dismantling and destruction aside and find some sort of way forward in some semblance of what we used to call unity. As I said, I’m not buying into that myth. Reconstruction didn’t work the first time around. It won’t this time either.

The reconstruction and balance crowd makes a sadly profound observation about the electorate. As pissed off as most people are, the movers and shakers are counting on the resilience of the American people. Sad fact, the bad guys now in power and trying to desperately hang on to it out of fear of retribution, continue to count on that same resilience.

Resilience doesn’t always mean a stiffer spine. Many times it means hanging in and taking care of the immediate business of living day to day. When that daily struggle is the focus, it’s no surprise the bigger picture gets lost, or muddled up over passionate issues that in the larger scheme of things mean less than those that take advantage of them push like dope.

Yes, we are a resilient people. We can withstand a lot. But that resilience also makes us far too compliant, hoping that the next election, or some court decision will change things the way they always have in American politics. Those legal and civilized ways of bringing change have often, albeit slowly worked, but we’re finding that given everything that is broken, those same legal and civilized tools can be used to quash that progress at a quicker pace.

While we haven’t yet launched into a full-blown shooting Civil War, the damage that has been done since the Confederacy rose again and took over the federal government under the leadership of a Queens, New York conman and pedophile (something that strikes me as ironic and on the surface just damn funny) is in many ways just as damaging as was the end of the first Civil War, if not more so, because many of the institutions and norms that helped the Union survive have been and continue to be dismantled.

At the conclusion of that war in 1865 there was a great debate about how to handle the states and its leaders that formed the Confederacy. One side wanted retribution and punishment, the other not so much. Equal to our resilience is our capacity for compassion and our compunction to think that dark hearts can be changed. The compassionate side largely won out in an attempt to heal the nation’s wounds. Sad to say, here we are again.

The difference this time around is that on top of the fight for freedom, civil rights, and equality, we’re fighting a government that’s largely owned by a handful of billionaires. Many of which were on the other side of things not too long ago. Money talks and bullshit walks. They’ve largely made their haul, so the only reason I can see for them to continue what they’r doing is they’re also afraid of retribution.

In a brief conversation earlier today with friend David Todd McCarty after reading a new piece of his called The Quiet Truth, I remarked that his citing of the quote from Confucius about a willow that bends being stronger than the mighty oak that breaks in the storm, got me thinking. Those willows are indeed resilient. That same story appears in many cultures, proving its own resilience. But I’ve come to believe the only way out of this mess we’ve allowed ourselves to be in is going to require some breakage. Breakage that must require building something new, not restoring the old.

We made that mistake after the American Civil War. The country literally broke in two. In attempting to heal it, we proved our resilience as a people, but unfortunately left two many places for the losers to hide and lurk in the resilient reeds. They have resurfaced a few times since in our history, but have always been beaten back. Each time accepted back into the fold with that same practical compassion and resilience.

They’ve been openly enjoying breaking things. We might not enjoy it, but we need to break a few things with equal desperation and energy, before too much more is broken.

(Image from Halinskyi Max on Shutterstock)

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Civil War Revisited

Hard times have come again

Twice a week, every week, I post the following on social media.

A Mastodon post from Warner Crocker that says, Your twice, now continuing, weekly reminder that we're still in a Civil War.

Set aside for the moment the arguments that some toss back at me that we’re not in a Civil War because we’re not fighting with guns and bullets. I find that argument naive, even if there’s a degree of truth about it. That said, it’s my contention that much of what we’ve been living through for the last decade is not only a continuation of the American Civil War that we thought ended in 1865, but an out in the open fight over the same issues. Denying that, I do find naive.

Yes, it’s about race, and yes, it’s also about so much more. But so was that conflict that’s bubbled and boiled since the founding of this country that finally spilled over into a conflagration at a time that men thought was the only way to solve that large of a disagreement. The question may have been called on the battlefields, but the larger questions were never settled.

I do find it ironic that a New York hustler and pedophile is leading the South’s charge this time around. The South could never rise again on its own, it appears.

But then as playwright Lanford Wilson says in his play, Talley’s Folly,

…there is New York City, isolated neighborhoods in Boston, and believe me, the rest is all the South.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Callais v. Lousiana, essentially dismantling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by declaring that we’re so over racism that we don’t need voting rights protections any longer has ratcheted up the fight and placed it squarely in the halls of state capitals. Given how the U.S. Congress has abrogated any real responsibility on and off for generations, it seems fitting and also ironic that the power will now reside in the states.

The new battlefields in those state capitals are all about redistricting and gerrymandering with states rushing into special sessions to cut out voters of one party or the other in some meaningless attempt to control who has the majority in that same inept U.S. Congress. I say meaningless, because that’s body that has essentially fought back and forth on this since the fighting ended in 1865.

However any and all of these redistricting battles turn out, and given the current number of states controlled by the forces that somehow still call themselves Republicans, what happens in Washington DC will be pre-ordained long before the swearing in of each new Congress takes place.

As long as states can continue to fight using political cartographers and gerrymandering pens as their weapons of choice, things might ebb and flow a bit, but not enough to radically alter the picture or turn back the clock for at least a couple of generations.

Of all of the terrible things that have happened since 2016, I think this just might be the worst of it. I hope I’m wrong. I doubt I am. Stephen Foster’s 1854 song that pleaded for relief, Hard Times Come Again No More, might just become popular again.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

Notice the good things amidst the bad.

It’s been a week. But I repeat myself. These days it seems like that’s always the case. Superman’s back. (Again.) So too are this season’s butterflies. Everything circles back. Today’s Sunday Morning Reading is a potpourri of topics of interest that stroke a number of chords, some familiar, some not so, some good, some not so. Either way, enjoy.

Photo 1693722379283 fd3627e18cea.

In That Was Good, Merlin Mann says that smart people always find the best reasons for being very sad. I can relate. He suggests the cure for that might be noticing some good things. Even the small ones. Check it out. It’s a good thing.

This week featured the news revisiting the subject matter of several plays I’ve written or directed in the past. One of those, Inherit the Wind, the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, is a semi-fictional retelling of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. This year marks the 100th year anniversary of that trial. Neil Steinberg has a terrific piece, both commemorating and commiserating. Given how short a distance we’ve traveled in this circle we keep walking in. Check out 100 Years Ago, The Scopes Trial Gripped The Nation, And Here We Go Again.

Twice a week on social media I post “This is your now weekly, and continuing reminder that we’re still fighting the Civil War.” Frankly, I don’t see it any other way for reasons I shouldn’t have to explain. I don’t often post interviews in this column, but I’m making an exception this week to post Amita Sharma’s interview with political scientist Barbara Walter who has helped forecast civil wars in other countries. Take a look at San Diego Political Expert Details Steps That Could Lead To US Civil War.

I blow hot and cold on Tom Nichols’ political commentary. I very much like his piece Damn You All To Hell! Find out his thoughts on how Hollywood taught a generation to fear nuclear catastrophe. It might have worked with that horror. Funny, yet sad, how it hasn’t worked with all of the goings on currently.

History is indeed always an incomplete picture that’s always evolving and struggling to take hold. In Texas Man’s Fight To Move A Lynching Marker Sparks New Battle For Truth, Christina Carrega pinpoints one of those moments of evolution.

Mathew Ingram says We Shouldn’t Blame AI For The Stupid Things That People Do. I agree. AI is the prime example.

Chris Castle takes on a piece of the Section 230 argument, thinking that a new theory of liability is emerging, grounded not in speech, but in conduct. Give a look at The Duty Comes From The Data: Rethinking Platform Liability In The Age of Algorithmic Harm.

And to round out the circle this week, take a look at David Sparks’ A Remarkable, Unremarkable Thing. Don’t let the small things go unnoticed.

(Image from Anya Chernik on Unsplash)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.