Friday, April 08, 2022

"...I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore!"

Remember the movie "Network"?  In the end Howard Beale is gunned down on camera by a group of radical black Maoists (or maybe they weren't Maoists; memory fails me at length.  A violent left-wing group, at least.)  Nobody blinks at that, or even remembers it well, but that sub-plot is part of the vision of Faye Dunaway's executive character for "relevant" news on TeeVee.  So it was literally a plot ripped from the headlines.  The headlines of 1976.

The '70's weren't all disco and John Travolta.  The political activism of the '60's turned into political violence, from the left, in the '70's.  And yet no one spoke of democracy in peril or bombings and shootings as threatening the foundations of the republic.

Is it because the radicals were leftists?  Or is it because they were mostly black, like the group in the movie? Or is it because nobody took them seriously because of their politics?

But the violence now is "supporters" of the GOP, you say.  The Weathermen and the Panthers were regularly associated with the Democrats, especially by the Republicans (politicians always know a good scare tactic when they see it). They were presented as a threat to the social order; but to democracy itself?

Why do I think we just need to ratchet up the tension, because violence is as American as cherry pie and already we've forgotten how much of the '70's was about political violence?  I mean, I'm not in favor of crazies ginning up ridiculous conspiracy theories to justify their violence, but even the mob at the Capitol on January 6 only included a few seriously armed and dangerous people (they did too much damage to people with what was at hand).  Guns were brought and left in motel rooms; one person (or more?) tried to plant bombs.  But the violence of weapons was never really unleashed; except, again, insofar as doors and flagpoles and stolen police tasers were used as weapons.  That is real and problematic violence, but it's the violence of circumstance.  The mob didn't come heavily armed and ready to lay siege and hold off the police forces of D.C.  Some of them may have talked that way (I haven't seen the evidence, I surmise some such chatter existed), but nobody really followed through.

The violence we're going to get is bad enough without inventing fantasy violence.  And the presence of soldiers around the Capitol was enough to prevent repeat performances in the weeks that followed January 6th. And now the arrests and prosecutions have further taken the wind out of the sails of would-be "patriots" (as some style themselves).  Even the Proud Boys didn't want to bring their guns without the assurance Trump "had their backs," by which they meant he would sanction them and even pardon them.  When that didn't happen, they lost whatever Dutch courage they had.

Even the Symbionese Liberation Army was more committed than that (look it up, punks!  Does Grandpa have to do everything for you!?).  And all they really did, in the end, was kidnap Patty Hearst and mess up her life.  But she was a white rich girl, so a lot of the "right" people at the time felt sorry for her.  Ah, yes, I remember it well.

But maybe the threats from the right are taken more seriously now because we take the right more seriously in this country.  AOC and Bernie are as far to the "left" as we ever get.  Trump and Mitch are the default settings for “real Americans.” When AOC and Bernie go "too far" (and I mean only politically), we chastise them for their foolishness; but we consider them mostly harmless.  When Trump and Mitch go too far:

(The answer is, he doesn't.), we are shocked and appalled and fear for the future.  Which probably says more about us as a political culture than we want to hear said.
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