Ok, folks, lemme give you a little story set in history. I know most of you will tune out as soon as I get to something you don’t want to hear or when I write something you don’t like, and that is your perogative. It isn’t the right thing to do, but I will support you in your wrong way of approaching an objective account of where we are today. I encourage you to read this diary to the end, take a moment to think, and then make your comments. It behooves no one to give a knee-jerk response out of cognitive dissonance about our collective past without first learning why you never learned this in the first place and why you are now learning it from me.
(Full disclosure: I am an amateur historian, a comic storyteller and a bit of a smart-alec. I also lived in France for an academic year and travelled across Western Europe by train … in other words, I am not your average bear.)
As with most of historical contexts, we need to understand how we got here today. By that, I mean our judical body, our legislative body and our executive body have all just absolutely failed us, the US voters. The judicial system failed us by not allowing our electoral institutions at the state and local levels to clear our ballots of any and all candidates who supported, assisted or actively participated in the failed 1/6/21 political coup. The Supreme Court wrote a decision to appease the 1/6/21 insurrectionists and justified their decision by saying that, if only the legislators in 1868 had written how to activate Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the US could enforce that section in 2024.
You do remember that niggling 14th Amendment, Section 3 bit left over from the American Civil War, right? After the bits about citizenship, privileges and immunities, due process and equal protections … well, mixed in there was the following: “Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
As you can see, there is no action needed to be taken to enforce this section; the only action was to ‘remove this disability’ of this section with a 2/3 vote in each House (Senate and House of Reps). It was self-evident to those who wrote it that no action needed to be specified because of the heinous nature of violating one’s oath to the Constitution of the United States of America. This was because, at the time it was written, the US had just endured it’s Civil War, which pitted family against family, North against South, progressive ideas against reactionary beliefs. Many Confederates were barred from holding any office because, well, they were insurrectionists.
But, then, the North’s appeasement of the South’s bigotry began. Rather than continuing with the correct path of purging the Confederacy from our governmental institutions, instead of working towards a more perfect union, the US allowed the Jim Crow era to flourish. And, while Jim Crow era laws are largely defunct, there is still a culture of discrimination and bigotry in all parts of US society. Which is why we tolerate misogyny and bigotry as valid planks in our political discourse: this is what those members of the cult of personality, what I call ‘the Trumpinistas,’ exploited for their political gains in 2016 and yesterday in 2024.
Our national legislative body (House and Senate) failed to vote to impeach the leader of the cult of personality, almost enitrely along political lines. There were a very small minority who crossed over to vote to impeach, but the cult quickly excised them from political power. When the Representatives and Senators who voted against impeachment cast their votes, they stood for insurrection, for lawlessness and they abrogated their own oaths of office. And, yet, nothing was done to correct this clear dereliction of duty to put country ahead of insurrection. In short, those to voted against impeachment became insurrectionists.
Our executive body (the Executive Branch of government, the White House and the Department of Justice, in particular), the body entrusted with the enforcement of our laws, failed us by allowing the insurrectionists on the Supreme Court to decide whether or not the 14th Amendment, Section 3, needed any sort of action to enforce barring insurrectionists from serving at any level of our government or in our military. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not have an ‘action clause’ because, well, Americans in 1868 figured out that no action clause was needed to keep insurrectionists from ever holding power. Unfortunately, there are insurrectionists currently sitting on the Supreme Court who decided that they like insurrectionists and prefer to let insurrectionists stay in power, completely against what is explicitly stated in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Which brings me to appeasement throughout history. Don’t worry, I will not go into ancient tomes to bring you thousands of years of historical documentation as to why appeasement never works. I only have to go back as far as last century for another example appeasement that mirrors what the US did in appeasing the South following the Civil War. A second opinion on why appeasement never works, if you will.
World War I, the Great War, the War to End All Wars, was ended when Germany capitulated to the Allied Powers in the Treaty of Versailles, signed 28 June 1919. The Allied Powers wanted to make sure that Germany would never again have the ability to invade other countries, would never again have the economic or military strength to tear Western Europe apart. The Treaty of Versailles was harsh and led directly to the economic and political events that a short, vegetarian, possibly homosexual, Austrian exploited to build political and social influence in 1920s and 1930s Germany. This short Austrian began building a cult of personality that eventually led to him taking over the German political institutions.
German political leaders in the 1920s and 1930s did not realize the danger posed by that short, populist, Austrian cult leader. They treated him lightly and allowed him to gather political influence. Even after the failed Beerhall Putsch of 1923, German political leaders did not ban this short Austrian from the political sphere. Rather like the US failed to exclude insurrectionists from all levels of political power following the Civil War and the failed coup of 1/6/21.
Additionally, Germany’s neighbors, while still reeling from the mayhem, savagery and carnage wrought by WWI, also realized just how decimated the German economy was by the Treaty of Versailles. Rather than finding a diplomatic solution to renegotiate this treaty, they simply looked the other way when it came to internal German politics. They also justified this inaction by saying that if they just appeased Germany a little bit, this short Austrian would stop fomenting political unrest and social violence. And, because every European power acquiesced to this appeasement, this short Austrian gained more and more political power and social influence.
A similar tide of political power has been gathered by those in the US who still cling to the reactionary bigotry of the Confederacy. This appeasement of insurrectionists, this unwillingness, inability or incompetence by those who swore an oath to protect our Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, has led the US to where it stands today: insurrectionists are now in every level of our governmental bodies or who are poised to rejoin government, are in the military or who may soon join the military. All because the US judicial, legislative and executive branches failed to enforce a law that was written expressly to protect the US from this exact moment in history.
Appeasement never works.
Acquiescence to misuses of power only leads to gross abuses of power. Allowing bigotry into political discourse only leads to insurrectionists destroying our democracy.
Appeasement never works.