...meaning "from many, one", our national motto, has been on my mind since the election of 2016, and the events of yesterday (1/6/21) convinced me to write a post about it. By the way, I think 1/6/21 should be etched into our consciousness to an even greater degree than 9/11/01. Trump has admonished his followers to "never forget". In my opinion the rest of us should take his advice. Let me elaborate.
My take-away from Election 2016 was - this is who we (some of us) are. That is the only answer to the question many asked - how could a man who was known to have dodged the draft on the basis of a phony medical condition, repeatedly used bankruptsy to advance his business interests, lied constantly, stiffed contractors working for him, bragged about sexual assaults etc., etc. have any chance of winning the presidency? The fact is that enough of us admired these traits sufficiently or were willing to overlook them to elect Trump. Those voters did not materialise in 2016; they were always there among us. They just did not have someone like him to rally them till then. I am going to use basic genetics to illustrate this point. Genotype is defined as the combination of genetic material of an individual. It is the code or blueprint that determines the biological make-up of a person. Phenotype is the outward or visible manifestation of a person's genotype. It determines how tall he/she is, skin, hair and eye color etc. We inherit our genotype from our parents, but our phenotype is the result of a unique combination of parental genes. This is why although we resemble our parents, we are not identical to either parent or to a sibling. This is also why an individual may have a genetically transmitted disease even when neither parent has it. So what does this have to do with our society, you ask. Like it or not, Trump voters are a part of the genotype of our body politic. As much as some of us may want to, there is no getting rid of them. And I don't even think we should want to. They are part of us. There's probably at least one in your social circle or family. You may be married to one. Even if there had been a "blue wave" in the last election there was no driving a stake through the heart of Trumpism. Paradoxically, even though he lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote in 2020, the mob that responded to his call on 1/6/21 appeared to be larger than the crowd at his inauguration on 1/20/17.
The words "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" come to mind. I am convinced that as loud as they are and as ubiquitous as they seem to be, Trump supporters are a minority of voters. The only way to "keep the republic", to use Benjamin Franklin's expression, is for the rest of us to never forget the last four years culminating in the events of 1/6/21. A coup is defined as a "sudden, violent and illegal seizure of power from a government". As much as Trump supporters may deny it, that is what this was. The President, having lost his re-election bid, incited an armed mob to breach the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the election result. He ensured that they would meet little or no resistance by firing officials in the security agencies and replacing them with people he could trust to do his bidding without question. He lined up support for his plot among House and Senate Republicans. The fact that he failed does not make it any less a coup.The only reason it failed is that the disorganized mob was simply not up to the task. When push came to shove, they blinked. We have to stop taking our freedom for granted. No more complacence or ignorance of the facts at election time. No amnesia about the actions of people like McConnell, Graham, Cruz, Hawley, Gomert, Nunez; the list is too long. Republicans cobble together majorities by bamboozling voters with single issues like taxes, guns, religion and abortion. How about treason, sedition and outright crime as single issues. Throw in racism and mysogyny and we may have a landslide. To return to the genetics analogy, we must never again allow a small number malignant genes represented by Trump and Trumpism to overwhelm the body politic. To do that the rest of the genotype must find a way to pull together.