Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data.
Carole Owens, a writer and historian, is a regular Eagle contributor.
A reader sent me a clip. He captioned it “brilliant.” He was right.
It proports to be a motion picture of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). He looks like Twain, but he sounds like Titus Welliver. Is it Twain or even a Twain quote? No matter, the words are worth hearing.
“If you collect 100 black ants, and 100 fire ants, and put them in a jar, nothing will happen. If you take the jar, shake it violently, and leave it on the table, the ants will start killing each other. Red believes black is the enemy, black believes red is the enemy, when the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. … Before we fight each other, we should ask ourselves: Who shook the jar?”
In “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Martin Luther King Jr. explains, “Whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt … he kept the slaves fighting among themselves. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery.”
We Americans have been on a long, bumpy ride. Shaken, we are weary passengers.
We should stop and ask: Who is shaking the jar?
Do you remember Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address? It was dystopian. America was no shining city on a hill; it was a dark, dirty, crime-ridden place being flooded by foreigners. It was lions and tigers and bears, oh my. But wait, fear not: We’ve got Trump, and he alone can save us.
If the first part was true, then the second part was mystifying. Who would want to come to a dark, dirty, crime-ridden place? Internal contradiction was the centerpiece of Trump-speak.
It softens the ground for weird conspiracy theories and assertions that are prima facie bonkers. The self-contradiction gave most people a headache but not all.
Here’s the thing about the many with a headache and the few with a grin: Trump could not and did not win the popular vote, but he won the Electoral College. In that way, we were saddled with our savior.
The Republican Party gave up trying to win the majority and concentrated on winning with a minority years ago.
How? Voter suppression, gerrymandering, voter nullification and a careful look at maps. Once in office, they perfected ways to swing a minority like a cudgel.
In the current House of Representatives, approximately 20 members out of 435 are ruling the roost.
In America, then and now, there was a percentage of the population for whom Trump’s words resonated.
They were left behind. They were being replaced. The life of their parents — with a stay-at-home mom and working dad who could pay the bills — was disappearing.
So was the respect that went with it. The population — with a white Christian majority — was changing. Their pain, fear and disappointment were real. Trump heard them and they heard Trump.
Who Trump blamed for the problem was politically strategic not factually true. It was meant to disable, and even justify violence against, those who would solve problems.
Define the problem correctly and define the cause incorrectly. Exacerbate the problem if possible because problems are the basis for support of the disenchanted minority. Trump did nothing to make America great again. One of his first acts as president was to lower taxes for the uber-rich. Trump proposed drinking bleach and defaming Dr. Fauci in response to COVID.
It requires artful lying. It is hard to explain how truly destructive lying is. There is an argument that could be made that lying killed people during COVID; that lying despoiled our Capitol and is shaking the foundation of our democracy.
Right now we are asked to believe that Joseph R. Biden — the sitting president of the United States, who has served this country for 52 years, passed more significant legislation in two years than most presidents do in eight and means to level the economic playing field and save democracy — is senile. And before he was senile, he was stupid.
It’s not true. It is not even possible that the man who did all that was either, but they cannot have us voting for someone who genuinely wants to solve the problems and make America great again, who would erode the plan for minority rule and would strengthen the people by solving their economic problems.
Breaking commonly acceptable modes of speech and behavior; taking away the rights we relied on; flinging personal attacks and hyperbolic accusations. All shock, create uneasiness and set us fighting each other.
Trashing norms prevents us from working together, just as King warned. Most important, undermining carefully wrought social norms and informal rules of acceptable behavior lays the groundwork for book-burning, political interference with learning and free speech, and the erosion of personal and privacy rights.
So, who is shaking the jar?
A minority that wants to rule but is living in a democracy where the majority is supposed to rule. A minority who wishes to wrest the power from the people for themselves. It takes a plan, patience and a long time, but as long as they think it is doable, they keep shaking.
Carole Owens, a writer and historian, is a regular Eagle contributor.
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