In a post on Facebook, historian Heather Richardson of Boston College, brings forward her specialty of US Civil War and Reconstruction history to contextualize what our response can be to the Trump/Bannon travel bans:
www.facebook.com/...
What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event." Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.
Let us be clear: these actions represent a return to the worst American traditions of open racism and contempt for the rule of law in pursuit of that racism.
But this also represents a chance:
But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event. A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union. If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln's strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power. Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable.
Our Progressive values have been repeatedly betrayed by our Democratic leadership, not just the Vichy Dems who are making noises about cooperating with Trump, but over the past eight years by President Obama’s expansion of the security state and cynical, neocolonial wars in the Middle East. This is our chance to make common cause with the neoliberals, to bring them in to oppose Trump’s manifest evil, then show them (gently) how their support of lesser evils that they thought would pragmatically create prosperity lead to this.
No cooperation with white nationalism. No support of Trump. The coalition starts with that. Then, with the credibility we’ve gained, Progressives can begin helping the neoliberals begin the long journey away from mindless worship of markets and toward a human-centered approach to our national challenges.
Small Update:
This diary is meant to build on Kos’s “all-out resistance” diary:
www.dailykos.com/...
