For me as a historian, this is a momentous hour, a time to assess how over many decades we’ve arrived, a second time, at a grievous national impasse — an impending civil war. It differs this time only that the same contentious issue of white supremacy is national rather than sectional. Here is a look back.
In his Farewell Address, George Washington noted, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension … is itself a frightful despotism.” President Adams, too, concluded, “Division of the republic into two great parties (is a) great evil.”
In The Atlantic last January, political scientist Lee Drutman wrote, “If a consistent partisan majority ever united to take control of the government, it would use its power to oppress the minority. The fragile consent of the governed would break down, and violence and authoritarianism would follow.”
Laboring to create a non-partisan democracy, the Founders did not want to repeat mistakes of previous republics. But factionalism developed, assorted parties formed, and it’s now hard to imagine our political system without them.
Men of property, the Founders were acting out of personal interest, dedicated to a noble cause, and risking their lives and fortunes revolting against the King of England. But — continuing into the present — cursing this experiment in nationhood was the habit of white supremacy — first the justification of African slavery, then lack of recompense for the victims or full deliverance from bondage.
When a majority of Americans elected a man of color president, white supremacists — Republicans all — were outraged. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell openly vowed to do everything in his power to make Barak Obama a one-term president. Donald Trump followed, questioning Barack Obama’s place of birth, attacking his health care achievements, and trashing his official 69-page pandemic preparedness playbook.
It is argued the Founders had little choice. Mostly slaveholders themselves, these propertied men confronted Southern delegates representing states with a 170-year tradition of profit from slave labor. The moment’s choice was between principle or a union united around allowing slavery to exist, and not mentioning it in the Constitution they composed. North as well as South profited. The issue only became contentious 70 years later when the slave states insisted on expansion westward. Failing this, they seceded and when our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, challenged their move as illegal, that civil war began.
Political parties underwent decades of issue positioning with Republicans supporting ex-slave welfare and reconstruction of southern state governments. The Democratic party became the refuge for the former slave holders. The many, who had not been slaveowners, conscripted to fight in “the cause,” were drawn along. The solidly Democratic South existed, with brutal suppression of African Americans, until their own party’s northerners, pressing for civil rights, caused them to realign as Republicans hating such legislation.
When he did so some decades later, Teddy Roosevelt’s abandonment of his (Republican) party was because it had become the party of the wealthy and big business. And the Trump-Republican Congress’s 2017 tax reform was designed to aid corporations. Instead of promised hiring increases, these entities used their windfall to buy back their stock. Memo: the stock market is not the economy and its current celebrated recovery is meaningless for workers.
As I have previously pointed out in these pages, Republicans eventually ceased to be the high-minded party of Lincoln. In thoughtless loyalty, voting members followed along. To tear power from the Democrat Woodrow Wilson after World War 1, the Republican party, choosing the wrong side of history, fashioned isolationism, and failure to prevent the disaster of another war..
The Republican party’s strategy for achieving national control, the “frightful despotism” George Washington warned against, began with incremental control of local and state governments. Trump narrowly defeated an unpopular opponent, did little he’d promised, proved an abject failure, but maintained his following. He did so this month by conveniently labeling Democrats “socialists.”
This is the handle Republicans jerk to summon again their long-successful strategy to subdue union demands, control workers, and sway voters who fail to understand the meaning of the term. Democratic socialism is a political system concerned with people’s needs. Medicare and Social Security are socialist programs.
While we have more guns than people and can expect violence, this new civil war will be conducted with organized and aggressive Republican blocking of whatever President-Elect Biden tries to accomplish, even reducing the COVID-19 threat. Expressed by McConnell and cohorts, this is conflict between governance and autocratic power.
Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an author and historian currently at work on a re-examination of and challenge to the “American narrative.”