I went to college in Washington, DC and interned for both members of the House and Senate. Watching the violence and desecration that day felt like a personal violation. It's a wound that will never heal for me and for this country, because of the denial and disremembering that you discuss. And it repeats the pattern of denial and disremembering that has been part of our history from the very start.
I am filled with dread that the person who was the driving force behind what happened on January 6th is going to be sworn in as president in two weeks. And that so many citizens of this country voted for him. I know every voice, every action in opposition will make a difference. And I will do my best. But I worry that many others will be too apathetic or brainwashed by misinformation to do anything.
I am grateful to you for sharing your thoughts. Your posts reinforce my determination to live my values in every way I can.
I'm sharing this with my friends and family. You explained the "Disremembering" of January 6th perfectly. My hope is that those who take the time to read it (some won't and that disturbs me) will understand the importance of what you're saying and embrace the truth there in. I'm still so very upset about the election and angry with those people who voted this...I can't say what I'd like to; person into office. As always, thanks for being a voice and force for good especially at a time when it is so sorely need.
I think it was mehdi hasan who said americans have goldfish memories[its easy to forget the news/events&worries whilst trying to work day to day take up so much time] and my father said that americans make some films to remind them what morals are[being english myself,i not many here have lack therefore to,but they do have a sense of cyncism]...for many forget the morals of life to pursue the american dream[cash]..equally its a reminder that many americans that are struggling due to low income have more morals than those earning stupid levels of money. Sometimes in pursuit of success we leave behind the morals that enable getting that cash to have that success...
[“Thomas More: Will, I'd trust you with my life. But not your principles. You see, we speak of being anchored to our principles. But if the weather turns nasty you up with an anchor and let it down where there's less wind, and the fishing's better. And "Look," we say, "look, I'm anchored! To my principles!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts]
I think that many americans in pursuit of cash, making that cash , keeping that cash, have forgotten laws, ethnics and even democracy. Why worry about such things, when such things cant keep a house over your families head. Why worry about such things, and going to the government to improve such things and helping of humanity, when even the bodies above us dont care about things? I saw a article the other day where police in ohio can now charge to review body camera footage from policemen/women [$75/hour or $750/item] , when justice itself is subject to charge and money, i rather doubt you have founded a society built on law or justice...its built on money, and with trumps success at avoiding accountability is just the nail in coffin, that justice is whats on offer?..unless of course you have the money that will enable you to make your own for yourself? justice is more a auction in america,for those that can afford it,not because you deserve it :(
[“RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.
CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
“When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water (he cups his hands) and if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again. Some men aren't capable of this, but I'd be loathe to think your father one of them.”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts]
Thank you. I appreciate your reasoning and your ability to calmly express my outrage much better than I am able. I will not forget the horror of that day, but I feel so helpless to be a changemaker... I do not feel confident enough that my voice would matter.
I wrote a piece in 2019 for my podcast called "Connect the Dots and This Is a Coup!" I've added it as a long form note but it says a Substack bug in the app is preventing it from posting.
Professor, I hope you don't mind me posting it here since I think it is the perfect companion piece for your note on this sad anniversary 😢
Those who are disremembering because they seek normalcy are no different than the good White folks Dr. King mentioned in his letter from a Birmingham jail. History repeats itself when we don't learn the lessons.
(Written in 2019 by Malika Dickerson for The New Progressives Podcast)
All the Evil is Here
The U.S. is not only under attack from the Russians; the Southern confederates are in cahoots. In their 160+ year coup all they need now is to hang on to Congress in the midterms to complete it. Yet everyone is still focused on the dots and not connecting them to see the big picture.
The war, Pollard [Confederate journalist and author] wrote, “did not decide negro equality; it did not decide negro suffrage; it did not decide State Rights...And these things which the war did not decide, the Southern people will still cling to, still claim, and still assert them in their rights and views.” – The Soul of America
That quote is taken from the recent best seller by historian John Meacham, The Soul of America. It would seem like hyperbole and wishful thinking except that if you look at our Congress now, it appears that over the last 160+ years since the Civil War, the sons and daughters of the confederacy truly took this mantra to heart and “settled in for the longest of sieges.”
We Called Them Rebs as in Rebels
Despite southerners being raised to believe that the Civil War was a “War of Northern Aggression,” that is fiction. The first shot was fired by the South Carolina rebels on Fort Sumter – an attack against America that started the war. It’s that kind of mythology that, as a society, took hold for a century and a half; the kind that Pollard was calling for and the victorious North allowed.
By framing the war as an attack on the South, they were able to create a myth of victimhood; that they were the ones downtrodden by the North. They were beat by the North in war yes, but in an effort toward reconciliation, America allowed this dangerous bitter root to take hold in this country. Unlike post WWII Germany when the swastika was banned, the confederate flag was not. Just a few decades after the war, the U.S. was honoring southern troops along with union troops who served in the Civil War with parades and ceremonies in a spirit of brotherhood:
“The war has left the South its own memories, its own heroes, its own tears, its own dead,” Pollard wrote. “Under these traditions, sons will grow to manhood, and lessons sink deep that are learned from the lips of widowed mothers.” – From The Soul of America
In that spirit, the nation softened the rhetoric used during the war. America quit treating confederate sympathizers like the traitors that they were (and are). The menace lurking beneath the surface was allowed to grow and flourish with an acquiescent blessing from the rest of America. They have been allowed to cling to their so-called Southern pride. Meacham points out in his book what the defeated South’s true aims for post-Civil War America were:
In Pollard’s formulation, the Lost Cause was both justified and enduring: It was not dead, but alive. The foe now was central authority and national will—Washington, D.C., writ large. “The people of the South have surrendered in the war what the war has conquered”—slavery and secession—“but they cannot be expected to give up what was not involved in the war, and voluntarily abandon their political schools for the dogma of Consolidation.” Pollard declared that a “’war of ideas,’” a new war that “the South wants and insists upon perpetrating,” was under way.
The North wanted to heal and reconcile. The defeated South did not. Southern rebels took it to heart. It became a holy cause to re-establish white supremacy regardless of the Federal government. As John Meacham puts it: “The question was no longer slavery, but white supremacy, which Pollard described as the “true cause of the war” and the “true hope of the South.”
“What the Hell They Got to Do with Ohio?”
George Voinovich, a Republican who served as Governor of Ohio in the 1990s and then as a U.S. Senator when asked back in 2009 what was wrong with the Republican Party, he said, “We got too many Jim DeMints (South Carolina) and Tom Coburns (Oklahoma). It’s the southerners. They get on TV and go ‘errr, errrr.’ People hear them and say, '…these people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?’”
Take a look at the Republican Party of today, less than a decade from when Voinovich noticed a peculiar southern bent to the political discourse in Congress and in the country at large. The Republican Party has in essence become a party of Southerners. Worse, they are openly and brazenly fighting for the very ideals that Pollard spoke about way back in the 1860s—white supremacy.
At this very moment, they are dastardly attempting to bar citizens from the polls just weeks before a crucial midterm with tactics not seen since the Civil Rights era. Republicans have been working since the Voting Rights Act to pass laws that make it harder to vote, ramping up those efforts since 2008 after the election of the first black American president. But even then they tried to at least be a little subtle about it.
The reason that they are acting so boldly now is because of both a sense that the 160 year siege is weeks away from complete success cobbled with the fear that they will fall one check short and the political swing will have the opposite effect—tossing republicans out of power for at least a generation. Republicans control all levers of the Federal government, the majority of statehouses and governorships across the country for the first time in history. They’ve ascended by skewing districts through gerrymandering while imposing voter ID laws and other barriers to voting.
In the last two years alone, from the presidency on down, the GOP has cottoned to white supremacists, riled up the anti-democratic forces in the country, and changed the rules in Congress to suit their agenda – controlling the central authority and forcing their political will on the nation. As a dwindling minority population in this country, there is no way for republicans to legitimately get elected democratically so they have been and are openly cheating by thwarting democracy to “win.”
How Did This Happen?
How have they gotten away with it is the most important question. To this very moment, there are so many dots on the board that journalists, citizens, even elected officials find themselves chasing down and staring at a million different dots. However, those dots when connected actually form a picture that can be summed up in four words: This is a coup!
The principles of American democracy are under attack from all sides. Republicans are attacking the first pillar of democracy – free, fair, and transparent elections. The GOP has aided and abetted the Russian attack on the 2016 presidential election (which is ongoing right now); without making one attempt in the last two years to investigate it or do anything about it.
It adds up to words that Americans have been reticent to use since 1865 – treason, traitors, rebels. There was no shot fired at Fort Sumter this time. This has been – as Bill Maher has repeatedly said – a slow moving coup. No one has been looking at the big picture. Journalists and pundits point out the attack on civil liberties, the attack on American institutions, the attack on normalcy and regular order without piecing it all together.
Only twice has war been declared against America – in 1941 by Japan in their attack on Pearl Harbor and the Confederate rebellion when they attacked Fort Sumter. Both times, both were squashed by American troops. But this time, it’s been done secretly, slowly, and over a long, long period of time. The picture is almost complete. Instead of chasing dots, it’s time to connect them in order to see what is really going on.
President Eisenhower knew immediately following World War II that the Nazis would try to deny the truth of what they had done. He wanted it on film and he also insisted that the people living outside the concentration camps be bussed in to look at what they allowed to happen. Disremembering is denial, and it opens the door to history being rewritten by the perpetrators.
“Two Americas” — this brings back terrible memories: I, an adolescent Jew, watching the horrific goings-on in Little Rock, Memphis, etc. unable to do anything. Unable to make sense. Two Americas - one white, one black - showing the whole world just how petty and deceitful our country can be.
I went to college in Washington, DC and interned for both members of the House and Senate. Watching the violence and desecration that day felt like a personal violation. It's a wound that will never heal for me and for this country, because of the denial and disremembering that you discuss. And it repeats the pattern of denial and disremembering that has been part of our history from the very start.
I am filled with dread that the person who was the driving force behind what happened on January 6th is going to be sworn in as president in two weeks. And that so many citizens of this country voted for him. I know every voice, every action in opposition will make a difference. And I will do my best. But I worry that many others will be too apathetic or brainwashed by misinformation to do anything.
I am grateful to you for sharing your thoughts. Your posts reinforce my determination to live my values in every way I can.
I'm sharing this with my friends and family. You explained the "Disremembering" of January 6th perfectly. My hope is that those who take the time to read it (some won't and that disturbs me) will understand the importance of what you're saying and embrace the truth there in. I'm still so very upset about the election and angry with those people who voted this...I can't say what I'd like to; person into office. As always, thanks for being a voice and force for good especially at a time when it is so sorely need.
I think it was mehdi hasan who said americans have goldfish memories[its easy to forget the news/events&worries whilst trying to work day to day take up so much time] and my father said that americans make some films to remind them what morals are[being english myself,i not many here have lack therefore to,but they do have a sense of cyncism]...for many forget the morals of life to pursue the american dream[cash]..equally its a reminder that many americans that are struggling due to low income have more morals than those earning stupid levels of money. Sometimes in pursuit of success we leave behind the morals that enable getting that cash to have that success...
[“Thomas More: Will, I'd trust you with my life. But not your principles. You see, we speak of being anchored to our principles. But if the weather turns nasty you up with an anchor and let it down where there's less wind, and the fishing's better. And "Look," we say, "look, I'm anchored! To my principles!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts]
I think that many americans in pursuit of cash, making that cash , keeping that cash, have forgotten laws, ethnics and even democracy. Why worry about such things, when such things cant keep a house over your families head. Why worry about such things, and going to the government to improve such things and helping of humanity, when even the bodies above us dont care about things? I saw a article the other day where police in ohio can now charge to review body camera footage from policemen/women [$75/hour or $750/item] , when justice itself is subject to charge and money, i rather doubt you have founded a society built on law or justice...its built on money, and with trumps success at avoiding accountability is just the nail in coffin, that justice is whats on offer?..unless of course you have the money that will enable you to make your own for yourself? justice is more a auction in america,for those that can afford it,not because you deserve it :(
[“RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.
CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
“When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water (he cups his hands) and if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again. Some men aren't capable of this, but I'd be loathe to think your father one of them.”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts]
Thank you. I appreciate your reasoning and your ability to calmly express my outrage much better than I am able. I will not forget the horror of that day, but I feel so helpless to be a changemaker... I do not feel confident enough that my voice would matter.
I wrote a piece in 2019 for my podcast called "Connect the Dots and This Is a Coup!" I've added it as a long form note but it says a Substack bug in the app is preventing it from posting.
Professor, I hope you don't mind me posting it here since I think it is the perfect companion piece for your note on this sad anniversary 😢
Those who are disremembering because they seek normalcy are no different than the good White folks Dr. King mentioned in his letter from a Birmingham jail. History repeats itself when we don't learn the lessons.
(Written in 2019 by Malika Dickerson for The New Progressives Podcast)
All the Evil is Here
The U.S. is not only under attack from the Russians; the Southern confederates are in cahoots. In their 160+ year coup all they need now is to hang on to Congress in the midterms to complete it. Yet everyone is still focused on the dots and not connecting them to see the big picture.
The war, Pollard [Confederate journalist and author] wrote, “did not decide negro equality; it did not decide negro suffrage; it did not decide State Rights...And these things which the war did not decide, the Southern people will still cling to, still claim, and still assert them in their rights and views.” – The Soul of America
That quote is taken from the recent best seller by historian John Meacham, The Soul of America. It would seem like hyperbole and wishful thinking except that if you look at our Congress now, it appears that over the last 160+ years since the Civil War, the sons and daughters of the confederacy truly took this mantra to heart and “settled in for the longest of sieges.”
We Called Them Rebs as in Rebels
Despite southerners being raised to believe that the Civil War was a “War of Northern Aggression,” that is fiction. The first shot was fired by the South Carolina rebels on Fort Sumter – an attack against America that started the war. It’s that kind of mythology that, as a society, took hold for a century and a half; the kind that Pollard was calling for and the victorious North allowed.
By framing the war as an attack on the South, they were able to create a myth of victimhood; that they were the ones downtrodden by the North. They were beat by the North in war yes, but in an effort toward reconciliation, America allowed this dangerous bitter root to take hold in this country. Unlike post WWII Germany when the swastika was banned, the confederate flag was not. Just a few decades after the war, the U.S. was honoring southern troops along with union troops who served in the Civil War with parades and ceremonies in a spirit of brotherhood:
“The war has left the South its own memories, its own heroes, its own tears, its own dead,” Pollard wrote. “Under these traditions, sons will grow to manhood, and lessons sink deep that are learned from the lips of widowed mothers.” – From The Soul of America
In that spirit, the nation softened the rhetoric used during the war. America quit treating confederate sympathizers like the traitors that they were (and are). The menace lurking beneath the surface was allowed to grow and flourish with an acquiescent blessing from the rest of America. They have been allowed to cling to their so-called Southern pride. Meacham points out in his book what the defeated South’s true aims for post-Civil War America were:
In Pollard’s formulation, the Lost Cause was both justified and enduring: It was not dead, but alive. The foe now was central authority and national will—Washington, D.C., writ large. “The people of the South have surrendered in the war what the war has conquered”—slavery and secession—“but they cannot be expected to give up what was not involved in the war, and voluntarily abandon their political schools for the dogma of Consolidation.” Pollard declared that a “’war of ideas,’” a new war that “the South wants and insists upon perpetrating,” was under way.
The North wanted to heal and reconcile. The defeated South did not. Southern rebels took it to heart. It became a holy cause to re-establish white supremacy regardless of the Federal government. As John Meacham puts it: “The question was no longer slavery, but white supremacy, which Pollard described as the “true cause of the war” and the “true hope of the South.”
“What the Hell They Got to Do with Ohio?”
George Voinovich, a Republican who served as Governor of Ohio in the 1990s and then as a U.S. Senator when asked back in 2009 what was wrong with the Republican Party, he said, “We got too many Jim DeMints (South Carolina) and Tom Coburns (Oklahoma). It’s the southerners. They get on TV and go ‘errr, errrr.’ People hear them and say, '…these people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?’”
Take a look at the Republican Party of today, less than a decade from when Voinovich noticed a peculiar southern bent to the political discourse in Congress and in the country at large. The Republican Party has in essence become a party of Southerners. Worse, they are openly and brazenly fighting for the very ideals that Pollard spoke about way back in the 1860s—white supremacy.
At this very moment, they are dastardly attempting to bar citizens from the polls just weeks before a crucial midterm with tactics not seen since the Civil Rights era. Republicans have been working since the Voting Rights Act to pass laws that make it harder to vote, ramping up those efforts since 2008 after the election of the first black American president. But even then they tried to at least be a little subtle about it.
The reason that they are acting so boldly now is because of both a sense that the 160 year siege is weeks away from complete success cobbled with the fear that they will fall one check short and the political swing will have the opposite effect—tossing republicans out of power for at least a generation. Republicans control all levers of the Federal government, the majority of statehouses and governorships across the country for the first time in history. They’ve ascended by skewing districts through gerrymandering while imposing voter ID laws and other barriers to voting.
In the last two years alone, from the presidency on down, the GOP has cottoned to white supremacists, riled up the anti-democratic forces in the country, and changed the rules in Congress to suit their agenda – controlling the central authority and forcing their political will on the nation. As a dwindling minority population in this country, there is no way for republicans to legitimately get elected democratically so they have been and are openly cheating by thwarting democracy to “win.”
How Did This Happen?
How have they gotten away with it is the most important question. To this very moment, there are so many dots on the board that journalists, citizens, even elected officials find themselves chasing down and staring at a million different dots. However, those dots when connected actually form a picture that can be summed up in four words: This is a coup!
The principles of American democracy are under attack from all sides. Republicans are attacking the first pillar of democracy – free, fair, and transparent elections. The GOP has aided and abetted the Russian attack on the 2016 presidential election (which is ongoing right now); without making one attempt in the last two years to investigate it or do anything about it.
It adds up to words that Americans have been reticent to use since 1865 – treason, traitors, rebels. There was no shot fired at Fort Sumter this time. This has been – as Bill Maher has repeatedly said – a slow moving coup. No one has been looking at the big picture. Journalists and pundits point out the attack on civil liberties, the attack on American institutions, the attack on normalcy and regular order without piecing it all together.
Only twice has war been declared against America – in 1941 by Japan in their attack on Pearl Harbor and the Confederate rebellion when they attacked Fort Sumter. Both times, both were squashed by American troops. But this time, it’s been done secretly, slowly, and over a long, long period of time. The picture is almost complete. Instead of chasing dots, it’s time to connect them in order to see what is really going on.
President Eisenhower knew immediately following World War II that the Nazis would try to deny the truth of what they had done. He wanted it on film and he also insisted that the people living outside the concentration camps be bussed in to look at what they allowed to happen. Disremembering is denial, and it opens the door to history being rewritten by the perpetrators.
I will never disremember January 6, 2021
Same here, that makes 2 of us
“Two Americas” — this brings back terrible memories: I, an adolescent Jew, watching the horrific goings-on in Little Rock, Memphis, etc. unable to do anything. Unable to make sense. Two Americas - one white, one black - showing the whole world just how petty and deceitful our country can be.
And me, a naive child, helpless to do anything … or even make sense.