JANUARY 8, SUNDAY

AMERICAN BELIEF(S)

I just read a New Yorker article on What The January 6 Report Is Missing in which the writer, Jill Lepore, states that the January 6th report “is less an account of a conspiracy than a bill of indictment against a single man,” and says “as a brief for the prosecution, it’s a start. As a book it’s essential if miserable reading. As history, it’s a shambles.”

Her essential point is that while she agrees that Donald Trump led the fight to overturn the election, the report completely leaves out the forces in American history that led so many Americans to believe him then about so much, and believe him now. It leaves out the real causes of the insurrection which have run through much of American history. Why did so many people believe as they did, as they do? That is her central question, Why did they believe? She asks it again and again without trying to answer it definitively.

To answer that question I think, Americans, all Americans, would need to face themselves directly and ask “How could that have happened here, how could we have done that and how is it dependent on what we believe? It is a question the Germans have to ask themselves about not only about the holocaust but the long lead up to the holocaust.

Of course I am not going to explain what led up to the insurrection. The historians in our Friday morning men’s group often point out that events that happened during the Trump years had happened again and again in American history and are not aberrations. They are better suited to explain this. White supremacy has been there from the beginning and been a central part of our politics. The longest votes for Speaker before this one were essentially bitter battles between north and south over slavery. Religious fundamentalism and thinking of ourselves as a new Eden, God’s people starting over, was there from the beginning. Male domination was there from the beginning and still causes tremendous tension. We took someone else’s land and but as a land of immigrants we were again and again anti immigrant. And right from the beginning from before the tea party we valued freedom and felt threatened by the power of big government.

What I struggle with is the knowledge that racism, Christian fundamentalism, male domination, anti immigration and freedom, maybe above all freedom, are as American as apple pie. I learned them in school, all of us older Americans learned them in school along with American exceptionalism. In fact in the 50’s they just seemed natural values. And what I really struggle with is the fact that the people who believe this way are just as good, just as moral, just as sensitive to threats to their values as people I agree with. They are people who go to church on Sunday and pray before meals, and who are willing to put their lives on the line for things they believe. They are good, honest, upright, freedom loving, freedom defending patriotic people. We all feel, on both sides that we are on the higher moral ground. It is no accident and not hypocrisy when people call themselves the Tea Party or the Freedom Caucus. Onward Christian soldiers could be their righteous battle hymn.

So the question that Jill Lepore asks, and which the January 6th Report doesn’t explore, is why do so many Americans, so many good Americans who are willing to sacrifice for these values believe this way?

My sense of what is going on is certainly naive and certainly as biased and unthought out as anyone else’s. I remember when before Trump was elected as he was being accused of racism and sexism, some ordinary woman in a tv questioning of random people said, “He is only saying what everyone believes in their heart.” And I, who have racism imbedded in me and male superiority and a lack of deep acceptance of other religions and as I travel a sense of American exceptionalism, which I dismiss or ignore, wondered who was the hypocrite.

I also have a feeling that a great number of people who feel American values are being threatened also feel the changes the computer and the Internet has produced in the world threatens their livelihood by relocating the work they do to other countries and that United State is weakened militarily by ties with other countries. Globalism is a threat.

It is odd that something as neutral as computerized technology and advanced scientific mastery and expertise, which is clearly transforming every activity of human life, can be seen as a malevolent force and something to be resisted. Vaccinations, global warming, artificial intelligence, evolution can all be threats. When Jill Lenore asks why people believe Donald Trump, she could just as well be asking why people don’t believe in government suggested vaccinations which have always saved lives, or the theory of evolution which is basic to all of science, or global warming when it is so clearly getting warmer?

We are good people, all of us are good people, speaking the same language, eating the same kinds of food, watching the same sports, consuming the same goods, entertaining ourselves in the same way. As Americans we all function in much the same way.

We are polarized I think over whether we think traditional American values are being threatened or whether we accept that in a world that is rapidly changing our values are also changing. Somehow to get along with each other we have to accept those who want to go back to the old values and those who welcome change.

And I realize that this probably depends somewhat upon luck, upon whether we are lucky enough to prosper in the new economy and new ways of doing things or are threatened with losing our income and our well being and feel our sense of self worth is slipping away or being mocked in some way.

I feel this new upside down world enhances my life and makes me feel better about myself, but many people feel sidelined and marginalized. I can see that right here in Swannanoa where we are all good people.

I know I don’t know enough or am perceptive enough to find a way out. But I’m guessing that Jill Lepore is right. If I want to understand the January 6th Insurrection instead of simply blaming Donald Trump, who certainly deserves enough blame, I have to face what it is to be an American by becoming aware of the forces that determine what it is to be an American, a good American of either the right of the left.