American schoolchildren learn that the Boston Tea Party was the work of patriots.
They destroyed property. They refused to pay a tax that generated the revenue to pay for Boston's defense.
We call the Tea Party protesters the good guys.
A regular reader of this blog told me he thought that in a decade Americans will understand the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol to be similar to the Boston Tea Party, as an act of rebellion by the people. After all, the Senate had refused to impeach Trump, and the 2024 electorate, knowing what had happened. and hearing Trump insist that he had won the election and the Capitol protesters were the good guys, voted for Trump. He was vindicated.
His predicted outcome needs just one more event to fall into place, he told me: election of a Republican president in 2028, which he said was likely because Democrats are still angry and divided over trans rights, immigration, DEI, and Israel.
Our understanding of the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s is undergoing change. There was a good cause (equality), charismatic heros (e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr.) unattractive villains (racist Southerners) and a context that forced action. Black WWII veterans felt they had earned equality, and we were competing with the USSR to appeal to non-aligned nations as a beacon of freedom, and the segregated South was a conspicuous embarrassment. We think peaceful protest, non-violence, was the magic formula that made this possible. No violence; good cause.Trump is re-writing that history: He positions the civil rights victories as mistakes that took something precious from the White majority.
Democratic socialists have absorbed some of the language and ideology of class struggle. Power must be wrenched from the hands of the geriatric officeholders, from the establishment, from corporations, from the elites.
Century-old history can be kind to insurgents. In 1980 the Supreme Court concluded that the U.S. had shamefully broken the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie which placed Sioux and Northern Comanche land in the Great Sioux Reservation. White settlers and prospectors were trespassing looking for gold and homesteads, breaking the treaty and defiling sacred lands. Sitting Bull's army had a just cause.
The short-term response to Custer's Last Stand was backlash and disaster for the tribes.The immediate response of White Americans to urban arson and rioting in the 1960s was overwhelmingly negative.
Democrats have a political problem now. Some of their candidates who won primary elections said impolitic things about the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. They described it as the inevitable, understandable reaction to Israeli policy on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The idea is that sometimes it takes a Tea Party, a wipeout of Custer's troops, urban arson, or a murderous incursion into Israel to send a message that gets attention.
Most American voters do not agree that Hamas carried out justice in a just and necessary attack on October 7. Americans are souring on Israel, but their instincts are toward less violence, not targeted justifiable violence.
Time and current events bend our understanding of the past. I suspect that the reputation of the Hamas attack will age poorly over the decades ahead, but perhaps I miscalculate. I thought the January 6 Capitol attack would end Trump's career and be a matter of endless shame for Republicans.
But in the meantime, I think it would be wise for Democrats who said anything positive about the Hamas attack to walk it back.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
4 comments:
Peter said:
But in the meantime, I think it would be wise for Democrats who said anything positive about the Hamas attack to walk it back.
Justifying the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 is a disqualifying and unforgivable moral failing. You cannot just "walk it back."
A candidate who justifies October 7 can win with the Israel-hating vote in a Democratic primary, but will lose the general election if there is any kind of sensible Republican opponent. In particular, Abdul El Sayed, just won the Democratic primary in Michigan, but his justification of October 7 is one of many far-left positions that will sink him in the general election this November. And I will be contributing $$$ to help make that happen.
El Sayed is not a member of the democratic soloists. He describes himself as a capitalist. And he did not praise the Hamas attack. He did not justify it, as some people have.
Ready. Fire. Aim.
He does, however, have an Egyptian heritage and surname, and he is Muslim. For people who profile the behavior of others based on ethnicity, , that is damning enough. It is not fair or accurate, but it is the way of the world. I am sure many American Muslims jump to conclusions about the likely jbad behavior of a Jewish politician, based on knee jerk research. So the endless fight continues, tribe against tribe. Is God so disgusted yet that he brings another flood?
Hamas deserves to be destroyed for what they did. But, the people of Gaza don't. That's the problem. I think what Isreal did was a little overkill to those people. So, who do you support? I think Isreal should back off. They've already made their point. Penning in people and trying to kill them all is just not right. I can see Isreal's point, but there comes a time to stop.
The way it works is that the more people you kill, the more enemies you create. In other words, a never ending conflict.
I just had a grandchild aged 1. When she turns my age (80), that war will still be going on. Great.
El-Sayed for the most part has kept his skirts clean specifically where 9/11, the October 7 atrocities and communism/socialism are concerned, but campaign surrogates such as the infamous Hasan Piker have not. Mr. "America Deserved 9/11", Piker, who views the mass executions, mutilations and rapes of 10/7 as valid resistance against genocidal occupiers, and who lauds Fidel and Mao as great heroes, hung with El-Sayed at his election victory pool party. El-Sayed's father-in-law reportedly has moneyed connections with CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Maybe El-Sayed will be obliged to disavow them, as Obama did Reverend Jerremiah Wright. And then again, maybe no disavowals will be forthcoming.
Post a Comment