Pretty heavy stuff, the idea of taking up arms against your government. Actually you can find some form of armed resistance be it a full-blown civil war, an insurgency, a local rebellion or a criminal gang* (drug cartels) in any corner of the world, just not our own. Well, except for that Civil War thing.
Americans have always toyed with the idea. In the common imagination, it's the whole purpose of their troublesome Second Amendment. Taking up arms against a tyrannical regime. Little bands of latter-day Minutemen, decked out with their obligatory AR-15s, running through bush and forest playing guerrilla warrior. Rambo.
While this idea has always attracted a small fringe of the lunatic population, of late it's been gathering steam with people like Anthea Ford.
The notion of legitimate violence against government had not occurred to Anthea Ward, a mother of two in Michigan, until the past year — prompted by her fear that President Biden would go too far to force her and her family to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“The world we live in now is scary,” said Ward, 32, a Republican. “I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but sometimes it feels like a movie. It’s no longer a war against Democrats and Republicans. It’s a war between good and evil.”
If you can imagine yourself caught up in a war, how big a step is it to take the next step and become actively involved?
A year after a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol in the worst attack on the home of Congress since it was burned by British forces in 1814, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds that about 1 in 3 Americans say they believe violence against the government can at times be justified.
A majority continue to say that violence against the government is never justified — but the 62 percent who hold that view is a new low point, and a stark difference from the 1990s, when as many as 90 percent said violence was never justified.
People’s reasoning for what they considered acceptable violence against the government varied, from what they considered to be overreaching coronavirus restrictions, to the disenfranchisement of minority voters, to the oppression of Americans. Responses to an open-ended question on the survey about hypothetical justifications included repeated mentions of “autocracy,” “tyranny,” “corruption” and a loss of freedoms.
If this sounds like lunacy, it traces back to America's founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson foretold periodic rebellion when he said, "the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." The catch is that one man's patriot is often the other man's tyrant.
*although these terms may seem interchangeable they define different stages of unrest according to factors such as controlling territory to the exclusion of the government; part-time versus permanent control of contested territory; establishment of alternate civil administrations to collect taxes, dispense justice, etc., basic, garden variety terrorism; and criminal enterprises such as drug cartels.
Whilst US citizens love to hold their government accountable by the force of arms I find it strange that they also try and destroy fairness in voting!
ReplyDeleteWhen much of the world yearns to rectify issues with it's government by the common vote the USA does the opposite!
Perhaps world wide people resort to authoritarian governance because the truth of our existence , global warming and overpopulation, are too difficult or unpleasant a subject to confront?
I can't see you, I can't see you?
TB
What they object to is visible minorities voting. Put another way, "white votes matter."
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