This ain't your mama's transition by @BloggersRUs

This ain't your mama's transition

by Tom Sullivan

It's Saturday, so you have some time to dig into two pieces that you may need to weather the storm. Historian Rick Perlstein compares two museums to explain how unprepared America is to confront what lies ahead:

There is a museum at the former site of the GESTAPO headquarters in Berlin. It is searing and frank: a history of the relationship of the Nazi party and the people of Berlin, telling a story of the way ordinary Germans made Hitler’s rise possible. Berliners flock to it. When I visited, the line of people shuffling past the informational panels was three or four deep, everyone meditating on this awful indictment of their grandparents’ generation.

There may be such museums in the United States, but I’ve never seen one. I’m more familiar with museums like the one memorializing the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, where two domestic terrorists who despised the U.S. federal government killed 168 people, including 19 children in daycare. Unlike the museum in Berlin, the Oklahoma City museum is meant to be uplifting: Heroic first responders rush toward the explosion. A doctor performs makeshift surgery with a pocket knife. Around one corner, an authentic pile of rubble betokening the awesome power of the blast. Around the next, a miracle—the Bible that emerged unscathed.

Other sections narrate a thrilling police procedural: the truck axle thrown three blocks clear of the blast, whose miniscule identification number allowed intrepid investigators to uncover where Timothy McVeigh had rented the truck he turned into a bomb. The officer who, in an extraordinary coincidence, pulled over the getaway car because of its missing license plate and apprehended the sullen young man in the “Sic Semper Tyrannis” T-shirt. The arrest, the trial—justice.

Of course, the museum also tells the story of how Oklahoma “came together.” It almost frames bombing as a blessing. “Caring Communities Provide Safe Havens,” one panel read, above a picture of a church.

I saw the word “terrorism” only once, in a self-congratulatory text about how initial suspicions of “Muslim terrorists” were overcome, fair-minded Americans turning their rage on a corn-fed American boy instead: another blessing, this opportunity to prove that America was not racist. There was no mention of right-wing talk-radio host G. Gordon Liddy advising his listeners the previous year to confront agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fireams: “Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests.” Or Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolutionaries taking over Congress via rhetoric depicting the federal government as an alien occupying army. Or Jesse Helms informing President Bill Clinton that if he visited North Carolina, he should bring bodyguards.

A political cartoon on display depicted someone asking, “How many hurt?” The answer: “260 million Americans”—the entire U.S. population at the time. The implication, of course, is that no one except four people—one duly executed by lethal injection, another in jail for the rest of his life, a third sentenced to 12 years and a fourth granted immunity—had anything to do with creating the political context of antigovernment rage that made the bombing possible.

This denial is how a childlike nation gets past trauma. It demonstrates how unprepared our nation is for the trauma about to be visited upon it.

There are tons of protest movements that have won. Everyone who’s terrified of these democratically elected white nationalists being in charge of the largest military in the history of humanity, should get to know the late-90’s Serbian group, Otpor (Serbian for Resistance). When I was at Occupy LA, interviewing an activist, an Otpor handbook fell out of her backpack. For a moment, I thought Occupy was going to be successful because they had a strategy and a blueprint they just weren’t telling us about it yet. I was wrong. Otpor, through non-violent struggle ousted the tyrant Slobodan Milošević, who died in jail while on trial in The Hague for war crimes. They know how to take down monsters. They wrote a handbook. Read it.

We’ve also had incredibly successful social movements in this country. The first one that comes to mind is the Civil Rights Movement. Civil Rights icon John Lewis will still be serving in Congress in Trump’s America. Lewis survived the last time America was “great” and has since made it fairer for all peoples. He’s written what are essentially guidebooks on non-violent struggle. Read them.

The Equal Rights Movement had huge wins for gay marriage, open military service for LGBT Americans and greater legal protections. They’ve won countless battles. How’d they do that? I could write up a report of all the elements that they had and how they won. But you can ask the leaders — many are still with us. Talk to them. Listen to them.

Most Americans didn’t vote for Trump. We need all of them. We need fair-minded Republicans. We need Establishment Democrats. We need those who’ve pledged to defend the Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic. We need activists and community leaders. Trump wants to build walls and tear families apart. We have to build bridges. Mend fences. We, The People, cannot be divided. This means working with people with whom we disagree — even those who vowed to obstruct Obama — even those who enthusiastically bought into right-wing propaganda about Hillary — even those who still lament that Bernie lost — religious leaders — educators — we need them. This is a new world. We’ll never have Monday, November 7th back. People of conscience will have to have their long game in mind or we’ll lose every battle to a septuagenarian with a man crush on Russia’s autocrat Vladimir Putin because Putin once said something nice about him.