Dispatch from Gettysburg– January 11th, 2021
from the mobile desk of Paul-Newel Reaves,
owner, co-editor, Defenestrationism.net
History books are better judges than I. But he will receive his comeuppance.
I don’t care to make statements on Defenestrationism.net for idle purposes. This: no impotent condemnation from ant to boot, no populist statement of alliance from preacher to choir. This: comeuppance— and should you consider such comeuppance beyond my power as publisher, you read very different history books than I do.
First, I will cede momentarily to a stateswoman and some statesmen, past and present:
“Watching on TV, we saw white supremacists stroll past Capitol Police, untouched and unscathed… There was no way to avoid the comparison or to duck the obvious answer: Would this have happened if the rioters were there to fight for Black lives rather than white supremacy?” — Representative Cori Bush of Missouri.
“Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass… was a night of rampage… by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys. Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered… the very principles on which our country was founded.”— former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California.
“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.”— Lincoln
These leaders most eloquently express much of what I would now, had they not so very well, already. So my aim, now, is comeuppance.
I noticed a heightened awareness across my neighborhood by North Capitol street last Wednesday— an in distress— 20-odd blocks from the center of a revolution. I can rationalize it no other way than a scent, the scent of some few hundred folks not afraid, but wary. We know our history, here, we know what mobs and demagogues can accomplish.
Now, here I am in Gettysburg, five days later, but less than 90 miles from Washington. I don’t remember how I found my way here. I’m sitting out my Volvo station wagon trunk, typing, but don’t remember even parking it under this tree.
So I checked where a noble leader gave his noblest speech, wandered through the graves in a listless and morose manner— contemplating governments and insurrections, hypocrisy and corruption, the nature of violence and hatred against our fellow human beings, and how to constructively approach the inevitability of all them— along with other suitably sullen subjects. Here are some:
224 years of peaceful transition of political power within a democracy, this had made the United States unique in the history of nations. Three, perhaps four U.S. presidents have been assassinated, yet power remained with that president’s designated successor. Even at the break of Civil War, Lincoln was peacefully instated after Buchanan. Only after that peaceful transition did the Confederate states secede. There will be no 225th year of peaceful transition for us. Not for nine quarter-centuries more.
Without military backing, a coup d’état will fail. In modern world history, the successful military coups seem most often led by colonels, high enough in rank to have influence, yet not so comfy in their positions that they are satisfied without more power. Congratulations, U.S. military-industrial-complex, you are comfortable enough.
The disparity of security forces and sanctioned violence at the onslaught of the Capitol verses those at Black Lives Matter protests expose vital weaknesses within the structures of systemic racism. If the systemic racism of recent decades has functioned invisibly to its broadest and most insistent degrees, then the onslaught at the Capitol is a betrayal of this system of hate. The extent to which force and violence are officially authorized and sanctioned is now unveiled. If the racism of recent decades has indeed functioned to its broadest and most insistent degrees invisibly, then the racists of recent decades do not know how best to perpetuate their own system. Systemic racism, it seems, does not bother with attempts to recreate its means of production. As we— we in opposition— hone our ideological thrusters, engineer our economic propulsion and pressurize our grassroots ignition systems, preparing to raze these hatred systems to the ground, it will aid us to keep— shall we call it a lack of calculation— in mind.
Liberals have been pulling their punches, the Left has been distracted, fighting for too many causes at once, and Democrats have been asleep on the job. Whatever you name our community of opposition for change, imagine our full strength, energy and focus should we be forced to rely upon it for our immediate survival. We won’t need to merely imagine formuch longer.
There may well be another attempt at secession. It would fail, within democratic processes, and on the large scale, peacefully.
I resisted considering him the worst president in American History, resisted it for quite some time. I dismissed him as a fool, a gangster-puppet— perhaps with late-stage syphilis— thinking him truly not important enough. Well, I long thought, at least he hasn’t actively committed genocide, as our Seventh and Thirty-third Presidents did. That thought lasted for three years and a few months. To now be a worse U.S. president than Trump, one would need to launch a nuclear strike and then forcefully resist the transfer of power.
History books will judge him far more harshly than anyone alive is capable of. He’s headed for a cozy, federal, white-collar prison— undeniably with his self-righteousness still intact. History books, I tell you— there he will reap his eternal reward. There his comeuppance will be brutal.
It need not come swiftly for him. It is far to late to save our 225th year, far too late to save that unique quality among the history of all nations– a truly unique quality– which the USA once had. No, not swift, merely eternal. As his allies suffer retribution across the next fifty years, they will denounce him— as thoroughly as they sold themselves and their voters to his banner, they will denounce him. For centuries to come, politicians and military leaders across the globe will study his mistakes. To the racism and bigotry so fully exposed during his regime he will be forever tied. And schoolchildren of all races, ethnicities and nationalities, perhaps even of different species will learn of him and make crude jokes about his face.
He will be disgraced for as long as anyone remembers his name.
That second-to-last comeuppance, the part about schoolchildren laughing at his face, that makes me feel minutely better about such cringe-rending harm as he has wrought on my city, our people, this nation-state and democracy worldwide.
Alright, peace–
excuse me while I go home to sob
— PNR,
owner, co-editor, Defenestrationism.net
by 
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February 6th, 2021 at 9:08 pm
You had me at “late stage Syphilis.”