Long, long ago in a land far away an Empire ruled with an iron hand. It ruled most of the known universe. Townspeople with war paint were mistaken for savages when they destroyed the Empire’s over taxed imported necessities. They saturated the Empire’s merchandise with salt water.
The Empire sent storm troopers to confiscate a small rebel armory, but a small band of rebels challenged the Empire’s forces. Simple farmers blocked a bridge said “Thou shall not pass.” The rebels fired the first shot. The Empire storm troopers retreated. Later, a hastily recruited army of half trained civilian soldiers surprised the Empires mercenaries sleeping off their holiday revelry and decimated them with few losses. The war went on for five more years until the Empire’s army was trapped; the commander surrendered to the rebel leader named George Washington. A loose alliance of 13 diverse colonies with only three million people had defeated the most powerful military machine the universe had ever known.
They went on to experiment politically and created a republic, government by the people. It had not been easy. There were many things they did not agree on. The colonists came from many cultures and religions. They spoke at least 19 dialects and languages. Some were religious pilgrims even fanatics, soldiers of fortune, entrepreneurs, adventurers and convicts. Their relationship to the native population was at best unsettled. The climate and agriculture varied greatly from north to south, over 1,000 miles without a paved road. The fastest transportation was a schooner. It took another 10 years from that surrender to create a strong union of those disparate states. One that lives 250 years later.
The most dangerous disagreement was over the institution of slavery. Although it had been practiced since time immemorial, some in the new Union, America, saw it as immoral. They also realized that in most situations it was not efficient. Southern cotton was a valuable product, but too labor intensive. The invention of the cotton gin made it a competitive cash crop that still needed vast numbers of semi-skilled laborers. That reality made slave owning attractive to those whose livelihood status and life style depended on it. For many years the disagreement separated the states into two factions, ultimately, they had a war about related issues. Slavery was defeated but an attitude remained. The formerly slave state people persisted in an attitude that those who had been slaves, and their progeny remain inferior and subservient at a time when that attitude was waning in the civilized world.
American politics is described as a two-party system, although we have multiple political parties. The founders had hoped we would not have parties (factions) at all, but they were disappointed. The rule that requires a candidate to achieve a 50% majority encourages two-party elections. There are proposals to circumvent that limitation but that’s a subject for later. There is a loosely organized party let’s call it the Recalcitrans. They don’t really know what they want, but it is not whatever we have. After the civil war and emancipation, the Recalcitrans were mostly in the former slave states, and identified with the party of slave owners Monroe, Jefferson and Jackson, the Democrats. After 100 years of no slavery, and weakening segregation they were still unhappy. The Civil Rights act and Voting Rights act of 1964 created a dichotomy for the Recalcitrans. The anti-rights party they knew and loved became the pro-rights party of Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.
They no longer had the unifying ideology euphemistically called states’ rights. Adding fuel to the fire, the media divide states into red and blue based on sometimes quite small temporal differences in political affiliation, nowhere near the historic clear distinction of slave versus free or even segregated versus integrated. The Recalcitran factions made a lot of noise. They collaborated on Jan. 6 to try to change history, they had rabble rousers, but no leader. Just a motley collection of discontents with no strategy, ethic or follow up plan.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com