Poison Rising in America!
A significant subset of “Americans” has always been willing to turn to violence as a first option. The Trump Phenomenon has awoken and enabled the vipers… and they are very excited about what is to come… very soon!
In December of 1860 there was no legitimate reason for civil war (begging the question: is there ever?). Abraham Lincoln had just been elected president, but he had explicitly reassured Southerners that there would be no change coming from the White House that would disrupt their favorite “institution,” slavery, as it existed in the United States.
Absolutely nothing would have changed in the lives of Southerners if they had simply gone along with the election like all others in the history of the still young nation.
But they did not. They would not.
The decision to secede, first taken by the state of South Carolina that month was an extreme and provocative act, to be followed by ten other states the following year. The bravado was the logical extension of pent-up frustration, perceived grievance and hot-headed rhetoric that ramped up to a fever pitch. Lincoln was the “devil.” The Southern “way of life” was threatened. They didn’t use these terms, but in effect the South saw Northern “political correctness” and “wokeness” as anathema to their “traditions” and “heritage.”
Sound familiar?
Southerners, the vast majority of them rural-based, saw the mostly cityfolk “Yankees” collectively as aliens. The “other.” Not “real” Americans. Soft. Effeminate. Immigrant-tainted. Yet in ways commercial and industrial, dominant. This was an insulting, unacceptable situation. The answer was to separate, break the Union apart. The time for talk and compromise was over. It was time for action. There was no legal remedy. So they simply quit on the United States of America. Then attacked it with an assault upon Fort Sumter. So much for their loyalty to the USA.
And so a civil war was started… for no real reason other than the conservatives were mad… and itching for a fight.
Arrogant, over-confident, prideful, Southerners believed they would make short work of this “war.” Macho young men across the South, filled with blood-lust, flocked to join the CSA Army or local militias for the opportunity to kill Yankees. The war would be over in a few months and the Confederate States of America could do as they wished with slavery, perhaps extending it all the way to California. They were making the South Great Again!
A very rude awakening awaited. The Civil War and its aftermath would obliterate slavery and ravage the South for generations to come.
Perhaps it is surprising that it took 163 years for the opportunity for this endemic national toxin to rise again to such a frenetic level. I suppose the criminally cruel crew has made do in the meanwhile with piecemeal murder, lynching, military-based shenanigan and/or police brutality to serve their propensity toward violence.
But starting with the hollowing out of the American manufacturing sector (prompted by conservative economics), followed by the burnout of the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by the Great Recession when so many average families were hammered by yet another Republican-engineered economic calamity, then the great insult of a Black man elected president by all those “socialist” Democrats, then the rise of the Tea Party backlash to this, that and everything, a kitchen sink laundry list of grievances both real and imagined, the table was well set for the crazies to come out of the woodwork, a shocking number of them armed and very dangerous.
Win or lose in November, violence is almost surely coming from the conservatives this election cycle. Check that. Violence has already occurred this election cycle. The would-be Trump assassin is yet another disgruntled young male steeped in conservative disinformation and gun obsession and seeking notoriety. He’s a precursor. There are tens of thousands — at least, perhaps hundreds of thousands— of American males itching for a fight, just like their Confederate ideological forebears, only MUCH better armed. Just like the desire to kill “Yankees,” these faux “patriots” are keen to kill people of color, immigrants, Muslims, gays, transgenders, liberals, politicians, professors, scientists, artists… anyone who seems unlikely to pledge fealty to their cult leader, Donald Trump, or just won’t fit in on any count.
These are brigands, bullies, sociopaths, sick in the head, thinking they are heroic figures when they are truly pathetic losers… also just like the Confederates. They are armed to the teeth, and those weapons aren’t just for admiring and showing off. They are meant to be used. And like, 1861, the time is now. Who is going to talk them down? Who will be the voice of reason and civility? Trump? J.D. Vance? Marjorie Taylor Greene? Kari Lake? Any of the proud boy, oath-keeping militia leaders?
Trump, a toxic dump himself, loves these guys. They are “his people” standing down and standing by. What else could be greater for a world-class narcissist than a civil war started in his honor? In the United States of America, of all grand places? And he just may get it. The MAGA movement has become an uncontrollable monster, and more and more sinister every single day.
Is it absurd? Is it nonsensical? Is it surreal? Could it really happen? Why, oh why?
All of these questions were asked in the weeks and months prior to the Civil War. Few would have believed it could happen. But it did.
Poisonous thinking leads to abominable actions. It only took a very few evil idiots to start the Civil War.
As with the irrational rush to secede over a century and a half ago, Trump’s lies and immorality have given the green light to any and all comers who would light that same fuse. We saw a glimpse of it on January 6, 2021, a mob of not-tourists storming the United States Capitol with evil intent, the entire Congress and vice-president inside the building. A colossal national tragedy was narrowly avoided that day. Yet to the Trump faithful it was either nothing to worry about, or a dry run for greater glory to come.
The Republican Congress and Supreme Court have done their part to make sure there are a maximum number of weapons available (over half the guns in the world are here in America), and plenty of contrived grievance and boogeymen for these “heroes” to go after, and pardons or other get-out-of-jail-cards awaiting those who might over-indulge. It’s all been set up quite conveniently for those who would like to feel the exhilarating power of taking someone’s life. Life is cheap for conservatives, even cheaper for those seeking to embellish their sense of self through acts of violence.
Poison is free flowing within the Republican Party and the conservatives of America. Violence begets violence. As the death toll begins, which lives, which families, which towns, which states will be caught up in the whirlwind? Is a civil war coming to your street, to your house in the near future?
Sometimes the American “Dream” becomes a nightmare. I fear that is coming.
I desperately hope I am wrong about this, but it sure seems to me we are on a course toward death and destruction… dead ahead. Good luck to us all.
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Check out singer-songwriter Rusty Reid at www.RustyReid.com or your favorite streaming service.
No Hate.
No Violence.
All Life is Sacred.
The Universe is Magnificent & Beautiful.
Love is the Way.
Copyright 2024, Rusty Reid
