Soon after Trump’s dark inaugural speech described a broken and decaying America, and millions of women protested all things Trump the next day, I began to see what soon became a favorite bumper sticker. As just a single word — “Resist” — I could supply my own mental image, like the voice of Charlie Brown before the animated specials, or the appearance of Nurse Ratched before the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
I interpreted “Resist” to mean using Constitutional, nonviolent means to show opposition to policies and actions that harmed the American people and government. I saw it as synonymous with “Good Trouble” as used by John Lewis to describe his multiple arrests and courageous stands over decades of civil rights work.
During Trump’s reign, most Democrats in Congress did their best to “resist” but had limited options. A few Republicans made a rare “resistance” statement, including John McCain’s last Senate vote in 2017 that preserved essential health care for millions. He resisted a secretive and partisan legislative process used by Republicans who sought to destroy President Obama’s achievements rather than work towards helping Americans with little or no health care.
I didn’t see the word as one motivated by hate for a person, and imagined that it could include support for positive measures for all Americans, regardless of the party that originated them. I see the initial pandemic relief bill in this way, a thin lifeline during extraordinary economic disruption. The same needs to happen very soon as food and shelter become even more tenuous for so many as the virus attacks again.
In my mind, resistance did not rule out coexistence on a personal level. I simply cannot live a healthy life in a society as bitterly divided as we have been. For most of my life, I’ve had great respect for the broadest range of American people, seeing them as helpful and caring as individuals, with pride in their work, families, and pursuit of the American dream. With all of our faults and failings, we have been a good and great country, helping to bend the arc of history towards justice. As contentious and divided as we’ve been at times, we’ve always managed to come together to fight a common foe.
I’m both pleased and relieved that a (peaceful) transition of power is coming. But I can’t expect the losing Republican Party or its principled supporters to give up their right to “resist.” A call for “healing” and “unity” often comes from the winners in a struggle that expects losers to abandon their positions. The resistance of a minority is what the messy process of democracy is all about; it is the counterweight that brings balance to communities and governments.
But principled resistance does not include obstruction. Mitch McConnell has expressed great pride in his ability to obstruct and manipulate the Senate, blocking Supreme Court hearings and refusing Senate consideration of bills passed by the House. I fear his intentions for the coming Congress, when Biden’s plans are placed on his desk, just as they were in 2020.
The self-satisfied and self-described “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, and our power-mad recent president are both products of the win-at-all-costs strategy used successfully by Newt Gingrich in the early 1990s. These tactics allow no room for compromise, and personal attacks can be substituted for policy positions at any moment. Gingrich has often been characterized as a “bomb-thrower,” and his tactics as a “scorched-earth” approach. These military metaphors can be exciting until extending them to the results of “bombs” and “scorched earth.”
“Bombs” result in death and dismemberment of the targets, who in modern political terms are neighbors in our communities. “Scorched earth” summons images of medieval wars, General Sherman’s horrific “March to the Sea,” and saturation bombing during World War II and the Vietnam War. A now disputed quotation from the Vietnam War in 1968 had a U.S. officer stating that “We needed to destroy the village in order to save it.” Whether the quotation is accurate or not, some elected Republicans seem content with the rationale: they are willing to destroy our Constitution in order to save our country–for themselves and the upper 1%. If we (Republicans and Democrats) believe we are at war with our neighbors, we could see the gradual, then sudden, fall of the United States as a world leader and an enlightened civilization.
We need to support peaceful resistance, open our arms to principled coexistence, but avoid the path of disastrous obstruction.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer and author living in Greenfield. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.