Long about the 1600’s, and into the 1700’s, the Western world began to change in very big way. People started to think a lot more, ponder new economic ideas, revise old philiosphies, and invent new devices.
We are talking here mostly about Europe, as the New World was still at that time, mostly wilderness, although we Americans were certainly destined to ultimately play a huge role in all the changes that brought about the modern world.
That period of time is called the Enlightenment. The ideas of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness represented a progressive development in the conduct of governments and industries. Our American version was represented in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the steady development of our American government.
A very important development in Europe was the industrial revolution. This progress brought into plain view a certain characteristic of civilization that has always been true, but became even more intense in the Industrial age: the rich get richer and the poor take a while to catch up, if they ever do.
Back in the 1830’s, Karl Marx noticed this and pointed out that, in the new order of things, this widening differentiation was intensifying into a confrontation between the people who do the work and the people who run the show. The workers he called proletariat; owners he called capitalists.
Well, this philosophical/economic division has, since that time, evolved into a major identity differentiation that is oversimplified in the terms, the Left and the Right. Another loosely categorized expression of it has evolved to Democratv. Republican.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What I really want to write about here is use of violence of either side to try to impose their program on the rest of us.
Looking back again to the Marxian analysis: as that developed, history witnessed the issue of violence used as a means of imposing progress.
In early 20th-century Russia, the Bolsheviks harnessed some wild ideas to the extreme economic and military extremities of that time. There was a dispute about tactics in which, ultimately the strong man won the whole kitnkaboodle.
Josef Stalin, with his ruthlessness, prevailed over Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky was sent packing; Stalin took control and set up trials in the ’30’s which led to an oppressive system of gulag prisons.(which Solzhenitzen wrote about) Josef Stalin was a bully who grabbed the Marxist idealogues by the balls and twisted Communism into authoritarian Fascism. So Stalin was a bad-boy dictator.
Meanwhile, down in Germany, an even more bruthal badass was mustering up a wehrmacht to out-do the Russian bully-bear.
Hitler was cunning, even more cruel that Stalin. He didn’t think twice about telling lies; he was the father of 20th-century strong-man fascism, a master of deception. He set up the most massive killing administration that the world have ever seen—the final solution of the third reich, a Holocaust to kill all the Jews and other critics of nazi extremities.
Hitler made a deal with Stalin in 1939, not to attack Russia. Good luck with that, thought the civilized people of Europe. Then hitler reversed himself two years later. and attacked Russia anyway.
That’s what bullies do. This gets around to my main point. As these Left v Right confrontations intensify—and then degenerate into real enmity, the tough guys are always behind the scenes waiting for their opportunity to turn civilized politics into violent overthrow. The stalinists took over Russia; the nazis took over Germany. The maoists took over China. The Viet Cong took over Vietnam. blah blah blah. . .
Violence, in 20th and 21st century infrastructure, ultimately descends into violent insurrection, if not—dare we say it—civil war. God forbid it doesn’t happen here.
I mean, (wake up!) it already did . . . on January 6 2021.
Never again!
All ye Constitution-abiding Americans, do not allow the magas to follow their chief insurrectionist (see our 14th Amendment, Section 3) into a violent overthrow of our Constitutional Republic. They already had one failed attempt. The so-called Right-wingers are disposing of their classic conservatism (which was legitimate) and permitting the loudest bully on the block to incite them into a (blahblahblah) abuse of 2nd-amendment rights to foment of fascist rebellion.
As we used to say back in the Deep South, where I was born in 1951 and grew up, Never Again! A few years ago, I wrote a novel about it: King of Soul
Listen to my new third-verse for our National Anthem:
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