Storming the Palace: Can it
Happen Here?
Published in Marietta Daily Journal July 2, 2017
The thoughts pursued here are not
pleasant. They are dark and ominous. Even so, Americans must entertain them. There is a mood and a movement in the land
that at one time or another has befallen almost every nation except America.
I’m referring to such occurrences as
street violence and massive protests which in so many countries have brought
normal life to a halt. Americans have watched on television as
citizens have hit the streets in Central America, South America, Asia, and
eastern Europe to bring about change.
Particularly have there been massive protests and violence during transfer
of power from one individual or one party to another.
Not so in America, until now. Historically Americans have honored the
axiom, “Debate is how civilized people fight.”
We have done our political “fighting” at town hall meetings, in
legislative halls, and eventually at the ballot box. Losers at the ballot box have typically
accepted election results and then set out to win voters to their side for the
next election by powers of persuasion.
This, the American way, is not the
path the losers of our last presidential election have taken. Instead, they continue to reject and
undermine the people’s choice in the 2016 election. Everyone knows who the leaders of this
rejection are. Basically that leadership
is three-fold: the media, the political class, and the college campus.
The anti-Trump media is not every television
cable station or network in the country.
Nor is it every newspaper. It is,
however, the Washington Post and the New York Times, the three old line
television networks, plus CNN and MSNBC.
These entities daily dish out accusations and charges against the
president and show disdain for those who voted for him.
The anti-Trump political class
includes politicians of both parties who are out to bring Trump down. Democrats, of course, are quite out in the
open with their vitriol. Republicans,
having to walk a thinner line, aren’t vitriolic. They either damn Trump with faint praise or
decline to speak of him at all. They
certainly don’t defend him, even though he was their party’s choice and still
draws thousands to rallies everywhere he goes.
The Republican wing of the political
class has a strategy that is cowardly and abhorrent. Unlike the media and Democrats who are bold
and forthright, these Republicans stalk through underbrush, peering out into
the clear, waiting to pounce after the media, the Democrats, and clueless
college kids have completed their dirty work for them. We could call the Republican wing of the
political class McCain Republicans.
For McCain Republicans, the
expression “coup de grace” comes to mind.
The expression may reference grace, but it’s grace of a far different
stripe from what we normally think. In
short it is a finishing stroke. The
Republican wing would never stab Trump (I speak figuratively), but it would
gladly dispose of his corpse, all the while saying nice things about it.
Even though charges of Trump’s
collusion with the Kremlin are waning for lack of hard evidence, there are
still endless other bogus charges the media and the political class can make
and are making (regarding his tweets, and no doubt soon … his neck ties).
Let’s say that special investigator
Mueller indicts the president for this, that, or the other. Trumpsters everywhere are thinking, “Just let
him.” If Mueller and company invoke the 25th amendment, the president’s
enemies would emit their cheers, but middle America would show its claws. I believe the delayed frustration and the
stored up anger of the working class that put Trump in power would
explode. Backlash is too weak a
word. Class warfare will have come to
America.
If such occurs, no one should wonder
what or who propelled it. It will have been propelled by college kids ignorant
of Americanism, dressed up people who stare at cameras for a living, spouting
(and usually reading) their commentary, and politicians who no longer honor our
political system.
Jefferson wrote, “I hold that a
little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the
political world as storms in the physical.”
At some point America’s deplorables
are going to invoke Jefferson’s words if their president’s malignment
continues. This may or may not mean
physical violence, but it is a prospect that the chattering class and everyone else
should ponder.
Trump’s enemies should be looking
ahead toward the next election, not backward toward the one they so
embarrassingly lost. Otherwise, America
will face what other nations have faced which is unrelenting turmoil and chaos.
Roger
Hines
June 28,
2017
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