Does anyone remember what they are?
America is taking another stab at returning to whatever political normalcy is and making us one nation indivisible again. But after overwhelming tragedy, and four years of making America great and domestic terrorism, it’s hard to remember what normal is.
We talk of “Normal” wistfully and longingly. Same with “unity” and “compromise.”
And no wonder. By now, we’re used to abnormal political behavior. It is wildly popular and normal. Leaders used to lie about themselves or their demon opponents. Now they lie to mislead us like it is a normal part of the day.
March this year, for example, came in like a chameleon. Chris Miller, an Illinois state legislator, attended a ThreePercenters rally and sports its decal on his truck. He’s not affiliated with the group, or so he swears. He also swore an “Army friend” gave him the “cool” emblem. Then he swore he got it from his son who got it from a family friend.
And Miller is husband to Rep. Mary Miller. In January, she urged a rally to overturn the election and said that “Hitler got one thing right” in getting youth on board. Then she swore she didn’t mean it.
Waiting for compromise
There’s northing normal about everyday politics like that. Among the Elect and the elected, national and local, abnormal has become a norm. Hypocrisy is an expectation, and immunity an assumption. Shoot or lean on the neck of an unarmed citizen and you get off, without irony, with a slap on the wrist. Pose with a knife and a knifed ISIS teen or slaughter 17 innocents when you open fire in a Baghdad marketplace (discernable reason not included) and a president will get you a medal or pardon you.
Compromise is supposed to rescue us. But “unity” demands more than watching Suits shake hands, should they ever have a mind to do so. And what do we compromise with Three Percenters about? It’s hard to find a middle ground about putting “a bullet in Nancy Pelosi’s noggin.”
Just this side of a state of nature
As any reader of history or crime novels can tell you, America has never been normal or wholly unified. The January insurrection in Washington has many forebears.
Happily, through them all a substantial number of us have managed to stick to the basic agreements that make a civil society civil. Not to get too deep in the weeds, they’re essentially the same “agreements” that the framers saw as the Social Compact that separates us from a brutish state of nature.
Though now hoary, they were routine until recently. We (or, so far, enough of us) agree to lend some Authority over ourselves to a government. We agree to honor contracts and be responsible for our own actions. In daily life, we agree to (more or l
ess) stop at stop signs. In short, we agree to abide by the restraints of human, physical and various spiritual laws.
In exchange, we get an array of social, moral and legal tools to live our own versions of normalcy.
Conversing with Proud Boys
Our enraged vigilantes, narcissists and ideologues dismiss those niceties as oppressive, weak, conformist, fussy and sheeplike capitulation to invisible powers.
Defying the Social Compact, in turn, proves manliness and/or rugged individualism. To them, it is the road to liberty, a glorious return not to normalcy but a Darwinian state of nature where the central tenet may be refusing to wear a mask. Carrying a gun to protect yourself in safe places is reasonable preparation for civilization’s next stage.
Getting Oath Keepers and politicians to redress only real grievances, however, requires them to embrace the very civic agreements they consider a humiliating surrender to unseen powers and snooty Hollywood celebrities.
Who are these guys?
The Chicago Project on Security and Threats studied the court documents, group affiliations, and the socio-economic characteristics of the first 193 people arrested for ransacking the Capitol on January 6th.
They weren’t all Proud Boys. Eighty-nine percent of them had no connection to militias or white supremacism. Their average age was 40 (older than other extremists the Project studies). Forty percent held white-collar jobs. They were “CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants.” Nine percent were unemployed.
All, however, are remarkably gullible. Proof be damned. “Dozens” believed the election was stolen, COVID-19 is a hoax, etc., apparently because someone just told them to.
As the historian Richard Hofstadter put it in 1963, it’s startling “how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority.”
Can it end?
We’ve succumbed to political delirium before (e.g., Red Scares, Nisei roundups, Chinese exclusion laws, Native American expulsions, White League pogroms). Most political fevers ended with a whimper.
Leaders moved on or died or became each others’ enemies. Followers lost interest or grew exhausted. Few fevers, if any, ended in compromise or with aggressors changing their minds.
Short of force, distraction, boredom or victory, it’s hard to imagine vigilantes and their business-suited compatriots returning to something like political “normalcy.” They may rejoin civil society because they need to, but admitting they’d been misled is unlikely. Abandoning one’s identity is a lot to ask.
Shreds of Hope
Some green shoots? The scramble to reverse Trumpian cruelties is heartwarming. Seven Republicans did concede that there’s no statute of limitations on inciting insurrection. Parties still vote in lockstep blocs, but some constituent polls are leaning toward rational.
And the new president’s evident kindness is refreshing. I don’t recall any deathless prose he’s offered, but the Biden debate quote that will live in my heart forever is “shut up, man.”
They’re just fragile shreds of Normal, maybe even hope, but it says something about how far we’ve fallen that even shreds of hope are a thrill.