Douglass speaks urgently to our crisis. "It was an honest president backed up by ... people ... who regarded society as superior to its forms... They resolved to save the country with the Constitution if they could, but at any rate to save the country. To this we owe our present safety as a nation."
After the Court’s decision yesterday, I think there’s an argument from necessity for Biden seizing Trump and trying him by military tribunal, given the sudden unavailability of Article III courts. Plus, itʼs just the sort of thing they’ve authorized an active and energetic chief executive to do.
It makes me uncomfortable that this is the same logic used by the Christian Nationalists. I don't know what to do with that, or how I feel about it. Maybe I'm mad they're forcing a crisis on us, that this would be necessary at all.
It's a paradox that serves the reactionaries. MAGAists view society as friends to be supported & enemies to be crushed. Liberals do not. We believe in pluralism. But the MAGA anti-institutional, friend-enemy move induces a response in us. We have to see them as the enemies they've made themselves.
The example was deliberately chosen. Once the time for debate and diplomacy was past, we went to war, and didn’t stop until we had their unconditional surrender. Admitted, the motivation for post-war reconstruction was complicated by the Cold War, but the point remains.
