This is something not enough people say out loud.
The “Second Amendment” bullshit of the modern GOP was always meant to create a race war.
The plan was simple. Flood the country with guns. When white people use guns, defend them regardless of the circumstances. When black people use guns, attack not just the users of those guns but their political leaders, the places where they live, and any liberal impulse.
In today’s Republican Party whites are always the victim, blacks always the perpetrators. It’s precisely what southern Democrats did after the Civil War. Eventually, northern Republicans anxious to do business relented, ending Reconstruction and damning U.S. Grant before history along the way.
When I moved to Atlanta, historians were still in the thrall of Henry W. Grady, who edited the Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s, soon after Reconstruction ended in northern defeat.
His “New South” speech basically said, “We still hate n%*## but we’re ready to do bidness.” There’s still a statue to Grady in downtown Atlanta, although his name was recently taken off the high school my daughter graduated from. For his time, Grady was considered a liberal. This is what Republicans now have in store for everyone, if the current "Second Reconstruction" can be beaten back.
The GOP plan, using the Grady approach, is the same false choice employed by autocrats around the world. Divide and conquer. If you shout loud enough, nuance looks like weakness. If you shout loud enough about victimhood, even genocide can be countenanced.
The Biden response is to get past the virus and get people back to work. The question is whether that will be enough. Election Twitter seems to believe it won’t be. Lefty Twitter is increasingly in agreement.
But if delivering jobs and prosperity is worthless in the face of a race war, maybe democracy isn’t a good system of government after all. Maybe, in that case, strong man rule is the only possible outcome, hoping that the strong man has smart Mandarins behind him.
If the President is wrong, maybe it’s time all of us learned Chinese.
