Changing the Past

 Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

--George Santayana

Ready William Shirer's memoir, "Nightmare Years," as he enters his years in Paris as a reporter in the early 1930's the most striking thing he reports is how important the role of street thuggery was in the ascent of fascism and the destruction of democracy.

As Otto Friedrich noted in "Before the Deluge" about the fall of the  Weimer Republic, during the interregnum between the two world wars, over 500 political assassinations occurred, all but 30 were Right wing assassins killing liberal politicians or thinkers.

Violence is not simply the calling card of the Right Wing; it is the primary modus operandum. Without violence, there is no Right Wing. January 6th was not some aberration; it was the first salvo.

Trump's famous taunt to a protester who he says, "You know what we used to do to guys like that? They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1es9MZyyPOA

But he is clever: He first says the man, who we cannot see, is "throwing punches" and then he says, wistfully, "Oh, we can't throw punches any more." So he's setting up deniability. I didn't say we should throw punches; I was talking about responding to someone who already was throwing punches.

He's clever like that. He exhorts the January 6th crowd to march down to the Capitol Building and "Fight like Hell!"  But what does that mean?

We are told people ought to "fight like Hell" against their cancers.

People can "fight like Hell" against taxes or drag queens. That expression doesn't necessary mean throwing punches or bludgeoning. It can simply mean shouting.

Trump also complained that the new rules in the National Football League which are designed to reduce concussions and severe injuries, rules against rocking a "defenseless receiver" who has his back to the play, or rules against spearing a quarterback with your helmet as in roughing the passer, are "too bad." He liked football when it was a man's game, played by men, played rough.

Of course, Mr. Trump never set foot on a football field and never took a shot in anger in any serious way--he has a picture of himself in a high school football uniform, but he was as much a football player as Ron DeSantis was a Navy Seal--DeSantis, of course was attached to a SEAL team in Afghanistan, as a lawyer. Not exactly the same as being a SEAL. Similarly, dressing up for a photo in a picture does not make you a John Madden all star. 

Tough guys like Trump, who has never had a bullet fired at him in anger, are all about violence, as long as it does not get aimed at them.

But he knows he needs the violent men, the street thugs. 

In Paris in the 1930's it was the Right Wing street thugs who almost brought down the French Republic. It was violence, which escalated into Civil War which brought down the Spanish Republic. It was violence, culminating in the burning of the Parliament which brought down the Weimar Republic.

The problem for a democracy, a Republic, is if it responds to violence, it may look oppressive and it may look like the source of violence, as the Ohio State National Guard did at Kent State.

Donald Trump will never be defeated in the courts. Hitler spent nearly 2 years in jail and it launched his career. Trump has observed that every court case against him increases his money raising and his core constituency's anger.

If you want to see the true beginning of the apocalypse of American democracy, watch for the violence, for assassinations, street beatings, Right Wing militias opening fire. 

Then, if history teaches us anything, you'll know.