Mad As Hell

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One of the most successful films of 1976 was “Network.” The movie featured Howard Beale, a network anchor with declining ratings. In a rage about his impending cancellation, he screams out a window, “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” His anger becomes the feature of a new show and his angry man persona garners a large audience by using his rant as his slogan. He finds that his audience is also “mad as hell,” although not really about any common grievance. Beale becomes the face of their anger.

As an amateur political scientist, I have been puzzling over the continued support for Donald Trump. It defies conventional wisdom. At any other time, his personal failings, bombastic behavior, and legal travails would have long ago eliminated him as a candidate. But now is just not any other time.

I think Trump is a modern Howard Beale, but a presidential candidate instead of a news anchor. For quite a while, perhaps more than two decades, a growing segment of the US population has been undergoing a slow boil. Economics, taxes, government regulations, cultural breakdowns, seemingly endless war, and on and on have hit sore nerves and spiked anger. Who used to be called members of the Silent Majority are no longer silent and they are angry about the state of affairs in the nation. As with the followers of Howard Beale, they may be “mad as hell” about a wide variety of things but their anger coalesces around Trump. Trump says things about the establishment that they want to be said and attacks people and institutions they want to see attacked.

There were approximately 75 million citizens who voted for Trump in 2020 and polls suggest he may have similar support now. For how many of them Trump embodies their anger, who knows. I suspect a number that would surprise many. If only 50%, that means we have roughly 40 million Americans who are fed up with the status in the United States and angry enough to support a candidate for President that the intelligentsia cannot understand and dismisses them merely as deplorables. That is a problem.

Howard Beale’s audience grows bored with him and eventually moves on. Trump’s opponents believe the same thing will happen when Trump is defeated. By election day in 2024, however, Trump’s supporters will have been behind him for eight years. Unlike Howard Beale’s audience, they have not moved on even though they have a host of reasons to do so. The pundits believe Trump is the source of their anger rather than merely its face; that he is nothing more than a boil that, once lanced, will lose its force. But what if he is nothing more than the rod for the populist lightning? What if even if he is defeated, he leaves the angry energy behind? What if once Trump leaves the stage 40 million Americans or more remain “mad as hell” and determined to show they will not take “it” anymore? And what if they conclude they have given the ballot box a try and it no longer works fairly, and must try something else?

I have no idea what the answers are to the questions I pose. I know, however, that the anger is real. How broad and deep? I have no measure, but I think it is real enough that it should not be casually dismissed. Something is happening in this country and whatever it is, it strikes me as dangerous. If it was just the Trump supporters that would be bad enough. But I have a sense that many across the line from the Trump supporters are just as mad. How easily our streets filled with angry Hamas supporters may just be another coal mine canary.

The United States has been at such a crossroads many times before. Often, we have found a way to reconcile the competing interests and become a better society. But sometimes those who have been “mad as hell” have resorted to violence, which occasionally has been widespread. I am not a prophet and cannot foresee our future. I know only this: each crossroads presents the choice of a path. Nothing is inevitable until we make the wrong choice, and only history is the judge. But I fear our time at the crossroads is coming.

© 2023, Thomas Trezise

Liberty in an Age of Pandemic

I am a closet libertarian. My default inclination is to favor individual liberty over government authority. As with most, I was far more ardent in those beliefs as a younger man. As I matured, I came to recognize that there are times and situations where individual liberties have to subordinate to governmental requirements. Otherwise, chaos ensues. So I shuttled the libertarian to the closet. He appears rarely now, but tempered by history, makes this appearance.

I have Facebook Friends that may readily be classified as Conservatives or Progressive. I have been following the posts and discussions of both groups regarding the many aspects of the circumstances we face because of the coronavirus pandemic. I find comforting that both groups share similar posts and discussions about faith, particularly Christianity. There seems to be similar concerns also regarding the health of others. Unfortunately, they part very visibly on the governmental response to the virus.

My Friends are dividing fairly clearly into the camps. The Progressives support whatever actions the state governors take in response to the pandemic and view the actions of  President Trump and his administration as too late, inadequate, incompetent, and as to the President personally, arrogant, self-serving, and overbearing. Conversely, the Conservatives rally to the President who can do no wrong and decry some state governors and the restrictions they impose on individual liberty in an effort to manage the spread of the virus. The Anti-Trumpers are just frequently hard to follow logically.

As a libertarian I also am very concerned about what some state governors are doing. I am even more concerned, however, about how we as a people are responding not only to the circumstances and actions, but also to those with whom we disagree. On these issues, my Facebook Friends are breaking into what can fairly be described as echo-chambers. They post scathing original or linked critiques of the opposition, followed by responses and discussions almost invariably by supporters. The linked stories are sometimes patently false and ridiculous but still offer fuel for the fires. Each respondent seems to try to do the prior one better and come up with even more creative invective to be used to criticize those who are the objects of the original post. I characterize this as an echo-chamber because opponents rarely respond. The few that do usually immediately face responses similar to jackals with a wounded wildebeest. With blood in the nostrils there is little room for human decency and intellectual curiosity. Little wonder then that we simply reinforce each other’s opinions instead of entertain and consider the opposite.

I also am concerned about some of the governmental responses and how we are responding as individuals. Each carry danger that may, and I fear will, last far beyond the end of the pandemic. The pandemic has provided government officials both great and small incentive to feed their authoritarian tendencies. They overreach, but most of us still submit in the interest of safety while some resist. Some resisters have taken to the streets and some favoring submission demonize them for doing so. That alone is disturbing, but is yet another manifestation of a fundamental rift in our society and moves us further along a very dangerous path.

Our President represents one overreach. In his usual and unfortunate bombastic way President Trump declared that he has absolute power to order the states to release coronavirus restrictions. Of course, that is completely unmoored from the Constitution. He was rightly and roundly criticized for the statements. Fortunately, as has been all too often the case, he has not yet followed his ridiculous statement with actions that would precipitate opposition, protests, and a Constitutional crisis. Nonetheless, some rationalize and justify this patent misconception of his authority.

We can hope that the President has learned from the experience that the government he leads is a federal republic. He does not have the plenary right of kings. The federal government can only take actions authorized in the Constitution and not otherwise limited in that same Constitution. The President’s powers and that of the US government in relation to the states and their citizens are thus limited.

That the federal government was created by states and not through the act of individual citizens often goes unnoticed. That fact is significant, however, in a way that has emerged to the fore in the pandemic response of some governors and state officials. Unlike the President, the powers of state governors and governments are plenary. They do exercise the right of kings. Unless restrained by state constitutions, laws, or the US Constitution, they can act as they choose. The restraints are significant, but in the end many governors have substantial power. As with kings, they can be disciplined and measured in the use of their powers, or they can arrogate to themselves the power to tell their subjects to do or not do whatever their whims or inclinations suggest. Unfortunately, some have done the latter in the current crisis. If they go unchecked, a sad and dangerous precedent will have been set and undoubtedly followed in the future.

The actions of  Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are the most celebrated of governors using the plenary police power of the states to restrict individual liberties without any reasonable relation to the need to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.  You can find a discussion of the most controversial of the restrictions here. Perhaps the most illustrative is the restriction against the use of motorboats while the use of those energized by paddling is permitted. There is no science to support the proposition that vehicles powered by gasoline spread the virus. Motorboats, however, can be used for fishing, a time-honored recreational activity for Michiganders. There is no evidence that those same Michiganders cannot use their boats consistent with social distancing guidelines. No matter, the boats fuel some animus in the Governor who has used the virus as an opportunity to choose between favored and disfavored persons and activities. Why? Because she can, at least until she faces the wrath of her citizens in court or at the ballot box.

Some citizens of Michigan resist the restrictions placed upon them. The Governor faced a protest by what some have reported as 10,000 vehicles blocking the streets of Lansing. That some of the protesters violated the social distancing guidelines was apparent. Most, however, stayed in their vehicles, although the use of the vehicles for the protest problem itself probably was a violation.

Protests by small groups of eccentrics has long been a facet of our society and fuel for cartoonists. Confronted by thousands of protesters, however, most government officials might at least stop and think about the merits of the arguments raised.  Not Governor Whitmer. She immediately doubled-down and threatened to extend the restrictions. The Raleigh Police Department recently evinced a similar disregard of the of right citizens to protest, declaring it a “non-essential” activity. Equally troubling has been the almost universal condemnation by Progressives and the Progressive press of all governors who have resisted plenary and universal coronavirus restrictions. Now is the time to establish the absolute power of government and it must not be wasted, for once accepted it can be used in so many ways.

The willingness to proceed with actions limiting individual liberties in the face of challenges by citizens has become an increasing aspect of governments. Earlier this year, over 20,000 citizens protested peacefully in Virginia in opposition to legislation restricting the rights to acquire and own guns. The planned protest so threatened the government that the governor declared a temporary emergency so he could use his police power to restrain the protesters. The Democrats announced in advance that they would ignore the protests and carried through by passing the legislation. 

Government cannot respond to all protests, otherwise we would have mob rule. Government officials, however, can give the protesters respect. That has been missing with regard to the recent protests by conservatives regarding restrictions on individual liberties. Governor Whitmer relies on the need to provide absolute safety against the coronavirus. Preventing death trumps all other concerns. Safety is a common theme for the restriction of liberty. If liberty can be restrained any time death can be avoided, however, then there is no limit to restraints. Large construction projects can be prohibited because someone invariably is killed. Individual automobiles can be prohibited, forcing the use of mass transit, as auto deaths are in the tens of thousands annually. The use of fossil fuels can be prohibited to avoid supposedly climate change deaths. And so on and so on. The possibilities are limited only by the creativity of the authoritarians. If all that is required to suspend individual liberties is for a governor to declare a state of emergency to protect deaths then we have no liberties. That the deaths  are caused by a pandemic may have broader support for the restrictions, but they are nonetheless problematic.

The tension between those who favor a controlling government presumably acting for the greater good and those who favor the precedence of individual liberty is the central struggle and a defining characteristic of the American experience. I have written on the subject several times over the last decade. See Health Reform and The Great American Civil War and The Great American Civil War Revisited. When protests and civil disobedience have not been sufficient to relieve the pressure that builds around issues that mark the differences, violence ensues. Our history is replete with examples, the American Revolution and the Civil War being the most dramatic and costly in lives and treasure. 

The current protests and civil disobedience are more significant than some in the past because of who is protesting and what they are protesting. The current protesters are not fringe movements. They are mainstream citizens. Many are Conservatives but not all. Some acknowledge to the press that they have never engaged and do not even vote. These are people who do not normally take to the streets because they have a deep respect for law and order. But now they are in the streets. They are there because they perceive the government is ignoring, perhaps even callously so, core rights to work and thereby provide and care for their families, their freedom to move about their state and between states, their freedom to purchase and bear arms to protect themselves and their families from crime and government abuse, their freedom to worship and express their faith as they choose, and in some cases even their freedom to speak.

Agree or disagree, history will show that these are things over which people will fight and die. History also shows that when civil disobedience is ineffective the next step is violence. Perhaps our core respect for the outcome of elections will override. Let us hope. We have a growing drumbeat that elections are not valid for a host of reasons, so we also may have weakened that line of defense such that it fails as well. The options other than violence regrettably are narrowing.

This brings me to my final point. If we depersonalize our friends and neighbors, they more easily become our enemies. If we depersonalize them they and their issues no longer are worth the time and energy listening and understanding the opposition will require. Depersonalize them and they are much more easy to face across a barricade. The brothers and friends who literally fought and then died in each others arms during the Civil War speak to the truth of that.

If you have read to this point and think you would never do that, just look at your Facebook News Feed. Perhaps you do not do so (I suspect we all are guilty to some degree), but look at how many people viciously attack and demean their Friends and those who respond to the posts you make or of your Friends. Do that and tell me that we are not depersonalizing each other. Divide people into opposing camps where they associate only with people who think the same, watch the same news channels, read the same books, newspapers, and journals, and vote for the same candidates not because of who they are as individuals but solely because they are of the party they support, then throw in each demeaning and demonizing the other side and reasons to fight over core freedoms, and I’ll show you a country one match away from a conflagration. History also shows the match will come from somewhere, at some time, and in some manner no one sees coming.

If you think this cannot happen in the United States then you need to read some history. Revolts happen in all societies, be they authoritarian or democracy. Indeed, authoritarians by their very nature can keep lids on violence much easier than democracies. Moreover, it happens quickly once ignited. All it takes is law enforcement officials to refuse to obey the orders of the government. Sound familiar? It is happening now. Only sporadically, so perhaps the tinder does not yet exist. Let’s hope.

Perhaps none of this is real and I am just a lunatic fearing phantoms in my mind. Indeed, I somewhat hope I am. Nevertheless, I shall end with the same conclusion I have had in the other articles:

A final word of warning. The news today is filled with hysteria regarding some acts of minor violence and threats toward representatives. Everywhere people of all political stripes condemn it as not characteristic of Americans. That is utter nonsense. We are a violent people who have had few reservations throughout our history of resorting to violence and warfare, domestically and internationally, in defense of our liberties. We are not Europeans with a history steeped in submission to authoritarian governments who surrendered meekly to democratic socialism. Individual liberty runs deep in the fiber of Americans.  To dismiss the potential of serious violence, from either side of the conflict, is foolish and historically ignorant.   The Great American Civil War has already produced two battles of arms and numerous incidences of civil unrest. We should not assume that it will end with a whimper if this battle in the courts and the polls ends in defeat for the opponents of central authority. This great conflict has resulted in violence before and it can happen again. That is the climax that I fear, but pray will not occur. History has not ended, however, and human nature has not changed. We must be vigilant.

 

 

 

 

The Great American Civil War Revisited

Already this electoral season we have seen a number of protests by Progressive groups across a broad continuum of the left in American politics. Many of those have been legitimate protests. They have been expressions of opposition, primarily to Donald Trump, by words and lawful symbolic speech with assemblies in lawful locations. Their legitimate common goal is to express contrary positions and hope you will find them persuasive. Those protests are constitutionally protected by the freedoms of speech and assembly. Whether or not you agree with the messages, and even may be offended by them, you should recognize that the protection of those protests also protects your own freedoms of speech and assembly for those liberties cannot be predicated on content.

Unfortunately, we are also seeing protests that go further. They block roads and access to campaign rallies and speeches. Speakers are shouted down and threatened in public squares, colleges, and events organized by those who want to hear their messages. Physical force is used to prevent others from attending the events and hearing the speakers, including confrontation, intimidation, pushing, shoving, and hitting. Some groups, such as Black Lives Matters, promise even more severe violence. Their goal is not to persuade, but rather to suppress the freedoms of speech and assembly of others. You may speak and assemble only if you agree with them and if you do not you must be stopped by whatever means available.

What has become truly remarkable, however, is that responsible political and civic leaders and political and social analysts sanction, encourage, and support the unlawful, and at times dangerous, behavior. Politicians opposed to Trump criticize him for inciting violence rather than condemning the unlawful protestors and in so doing encourage more protests. In an ironic juxtaposition to a college as a marketplace of ideas, college professors and administrators sanction and support those who shout down, disrupt, and threaten speakers with whom they do not agree, sometimes with such success that the event is cancelled. Now we have progressive politicians and commentators threatening that this summer will repeat the political violence of the summer of 1968, with the violence directed primarily against Republicans and Donald Trump specifically. Apparently if you agree with the message of the protestors and view the opposition as illegitimate, then anything done to stop the opposition is worthy behavior. And it also is appropriate to criticize the victims of the violent protests as inciting the violence because the opponents to their positions just are too aggrieved and righteous to be restrained.

The commentators at least are correct that political violence is neither unexpected nor unusual in the history of the United States. Six years ago I wrote an essay titled Health Reform and The Great American Civil War that details that from the Revolutionary War forward the history of America has been marked by ebbs and flows of confrontation between those who support a strong controlling central government and those who do not. It was written in the context of the debate occurring then on Obamacare. Sometimes those confrontations have manifested themselves in severe and on a few occasions broad violent conflict. So those who now decry the reemergence of political violence as something outside our experience simply have no understanding of our experience.

What is different now, however, from at least recent experience are that people are beginning to respond to the intimidation and violence of the protestors with intimidation and violence. I’m in my seventh decade. Throughout my lifetime the illegal and occasionally violent political protests have been confined almost exclusively to the progressive left. They have been met with violence, but almost exclusively by law enforcement groups. The responsive violence by police has occasionally gone way beyond the necessary and been indefensible. Conservative citizens, however, have very rarely taken independent action. Respect for the rule of law inherent in conservatives has held them back. And conservative leaders have universally condemned such behavior and refused to encourage it in any way. Until now.

Although hardly common yet, some supporters of Donald Trump are responding to unlawfully disruptive and sometimes violent behavior of protesters with unlawful and violent behavior of their own. And Trump gives mixed messages about the violent responses and may be said to even give them a metaphorical wink and nod. If the populist and conservative supporters of Trump conclude that the unlawful and violent behavior of protesters must be met with equally, or greater, unlawful and violent behavior, we are entering a new and very dangerous chapter in our recent experience. For history teaches that the events can more easily and more quickly slip into a far more general environment of violence than most can imagine.

The essay that I wrote 6 years ago ends with the following paragraph:

A final word of warning. The news today is filled with hysteria regarding some acts of minor violence and threats toward representatives. Everywhere people of all political stripes condemn it as not characteristic of Americans. That is utter nonsense. We are a violent people who have had few reservations throughout our history of resorting to violence and warfare, domestically and internationally, in defense of our liberties. We are not Europeans with a history steeped in submission to authoritarian governments who surrendered meekly to democratic socialism. Individual liberty runs deep in the fiber of Americans.  To dismiss the potential of serious violence, from either side of the conflict, is foolish and historically ignorant.   The Great American Civil War has already produced two battles of arms and numerous incidences of civil unrest. We should not assume that it will end with a whimper if this battle in the courts and the polls ends in defeat for the opponents of central authority. This great conflict has resulted in violence before and it can happen again. That is the climax that I fear, but pray will not occur. History has not ended, however, and human nature has not changed. We must be vigilant.

For conservatives the battle in the courts that I mentioned is mostly over and we lost. The ballot box is the last redoubt. And now progressives are reacting to stop the discussion of conservative ideas and, in the case of Trump supporters, from even exercising their right to assemble and inform themselves for their vote.  Just as some progressives cannot distinguish between protected verbal and symbolic speech and try to suppress others, we now see Trump supports acting out violently not in response to violence, but rather in response to the verbal and symbolic speech alone of their opponents. The fear I expressed 6 years ago is now very real. If conservatives are reaching the point where they refuse to go with a whimper we are indeed at risk.

We are a society arming ourselves at a rapid rate. We are divided more than ever and crossing that divide with political violence more frequently. The last eight years of executive regulations, court decisions, and political correctness that often seems directed at and suppressing conservative thought and positions have pushed conservatives to a line that I have not seen before. Those that are responding with violence are over that line. I pray that they have few behind them. But those on the progressive left should understand that they stand at a point where they have not stood for a long time. The projected “Summer of 68 Redux” that they long for from the glory days may not be met this time just by the police. You now have a political leader who may tacitly encourage followers to respond with more than words. The random punchers may soon become groups and then crowds responding with violence. The “Summer of 16” could bring us the unthinkable…pitched street battles between opposing political groups. And if those groups begin to represent defined ideologies or cultural groups, we could spin out of control. History tells us it can happen even if you think it cannot.

Six years ago I cautioned that “We must be vigilant.” I think what we see now is the result of our failure to have been vigilant and stop the small episodes. The time for vigilance unfortunately has passed for the problem is growing rapidly. We now must act. Leaders on all sides of our political divides must act to stop unlawful protests and suppression of speech and assembly from within their groups, wherever it raises its ugly head, whether the rally, the church, the office, the classroom, or the streets. Leaders on all sides must condemn and take whatever measures are necessary to stop violent responses of their groups to the protests of opponents, and Donald Trump has to stop winking at the violence.  History tells us not to turn aside and tolerate such behavior, and certainly not tolerate our leaders to manipulate these circumstances for their own short term gains. No matter what, history will serve us an end. But we get to control that end if we choose to stand on our constitutional heritage. We can choose whether it is another step forward for American greatness or tragedy. But make no mistake, we are choosing now and so far the end does not look promising.