Are Lawsuits and Protests Working?
I Hope What Happens Next Isn’t What I Think It Will Be
I don’t have to be right to be happy. In fact, most of what I’ve been thinking lately, I hope is completely wrong. I don’t want to be right. So, if you think lawsuits are doing the trick and protests are forcing us to change direction, keep doing what you’re doing.
I’m so proud of all the hard work so many people are doing.
So far, there has been no violence or illegal attempts to thwart the Constitution. The resistance to the current administration is appropriate and legal. There are rules we have long adhered to, and these rules help us navigate difficult times.
The United States has gone through many challenging periods where internal strife and conflict resulted in chaos and even death.
The Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the Great Depression, the 2008 crash, World War II, and more. We can go all the way back to the Civil War, where Americans were actually in active combat against one another. We can’t take any prizes as a nation when it comes to solidarity and a progressive vision for the future. There’s so much dirt under our collective fingernails that we could build a sod house with the scrapings.
However, the Constitution has always provided a grounding force in our country.
Political parties have often disagreed about policies, but when we take legal recourse, it has resulted in better, safer, and more hopeful outcomes. Those days are disappearing. There are many historians and political leaders who believe that we’re witnessing a coup. Working together to solve problems is almost impossible now. The two parties agree on nothing. They can’t find any issue in which we share common ground. I wrote an article yesterday about this problem. For all intents and purposes, ideologically, we are now two separate countries.
And although we keep trying to resolve things the “old way” by looking for commonalities and relying on the Constitution to keep us on the high ground, those tried-and-true methods are slipping away.
So what’s next?
I don’t have a crystal ball. I’m not a soothsayer. I can only pay attention to what’s happening with my eyes wide open and reflect on historical events. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from the past. Maybe.
So I ask myself again — what’s next?
If indeed we’re dealing with a coup, what do we do? Historically, when parties become this separated from a grounding form of government, violence often breaks out. We’re not the only country that has experienced a coup, nor are we the only country that has experienced a civil war. This is a very common result of collective decline. Humans tend to turn to violence to solve problems; in fact, that is practically our only problem-solving skill.
It’s certainly the most popular choice when conflict arises.
It’s not hard to imagine the United States engaging in warfare. We have been involved in war since our inception, with only a few years of peace to this day. We carry more guns than any other country in the world. I can be pretty certain that when I’m dining out in a local restaurant, the room is most likely packed with people toting guns. In their purses or under their jackets, guns are a quick second away from being drawn and used. I know this; you know this. We can’t deny it. None of us are safe. We don’t need a foreign enemy either. We aren’t safe from one another. Even our children are in danger. Every day, when we send them to school, our children are in danger.
We know this, even though we send them to school anyway.
You know as well as I do that there are droves of young men who are angry and just itching to use their weapons. They post online their plans to hurt and destroy. They are already radicalized. If the need arises, they would be thrilled to join the cause — any cause.
What about assassinations?
Well, they aren’t merely the result of a third-world government takeover. We’ve had a scourge of assassinations in America. John Kennedy, his brother Bobby, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X were all political leaders who were assassinated. That’s our history that I’m referring to not the history of some miserable little country that we can’t even find on the map.
Chaos is another great ploy used by Americans in political disarray.
Why not storm the White House? That’s been tried. And although small militias don’t have a chance against the American military, marauding mobs can keep you and me from feeling secure in our beds at night.
What about power through unification?
Don’t forget that in many cases, dissenters in other countries who have dealt with this kind of political unrest have also had trouble uniting against the powers that be. So the factions that hate the government also end up hating one another. They can’t unite, and thus their power is diminished.
Instead, it’s not uncommon to end up with a dozen splinter groups that are fighting the same devil but for different reasons. This is a recipe for a long prison sentence, if not an untimely death, for the dissenters who already had little chance against the powers that be.
To top it off, other countries will often back the powers that be, as though they’re the ones who need more money or weapons.
They already outrank the rebels by a thousand to one. But who can’t use more money and weapons? The U.S. has been known to provide support to dictators who are under siege by those fighting for democracy. Oh yes, on more than one occasion.
I can think of a country or two that would support our current administration if things got wild and wooly.
The sad truth is that those who try to overthrow a dictator often don’t succeed. The dictator ends up either declaring martial law and mowing the dissenters down in the public square or capturing and imprisoning the homemade militias.
There’s no guarantee that things will turn out the way an organized resistance hopes, that is, with democracy being restored and a return to life as it used to be.
Oh my, there is so much at stake when the rules to the game are ignored. How I wish we could return to the way things used to be. But those days may be gone — forever.
Still, maybe we will flip the House at the midterms.
Maybe the will of the majority has the power to take back the rule of law and reestablish a democracy. Maybe we’ll use logic and reason rather than emotion and persistence. I hope so. Like I said, I certainly don’t need to be right to be happy.
This time, I WANT to be wrong.
Teresa is an author and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
