The BLAST is BACK!

                                                                    Historical Perspective
                                                                                                     (and why it’s important)
 
            The January 6th Congressional Committee has wrapped up its work and their full report will be issued on the Winter Solstice.  Monday’s final meeting, of course, created a big stir because the Committee issued criminal referrals for a former United States President --- and rightly so.  The length and depth of Donald Trump’s criminality extends well beyond the January 6th insurrection, but I think it’s important to step back and consider that event --- and the former President’s role in it --- with an eye toward how it fits into the arc of United States history.
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            Much of my 42 years as an educator was spent teaching --- or teaching people “how to” teach --- United States history.  As an American Studies major it was a subject I relished and loved tackling all the interesting and problematic aspects of telling the story of the development of our nation.  And it is a fascinating, if difficult, tale to trace.  Teaching U.S. History --- and teaching it as honestly as one can --- is a challenging task.  Traditionally, U.S. history is taught chronologically and topically.  That is:  “The Colonial Period” (1607-1783), “The Constitutional Period and Federalist Era” (1783-1801), “Jeffersonian Democracy (?)”(1801-1824), “Jacksonian Democracy (?)” (1824-1840), “Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion” (1840-1850), “The Civil War and Reconstruction” (1850-1876), “The Age of Conservation Reaction (Robber Barons, Jim Crow, etc.)” (1876-1901), “The Progressive Era & WWI” (1901-1921), “The Roaring Twenties and the Crash” (1921-1932), “The New Deal & WWII” (1932-1945), “The Cold War & American Idealism (?)” (1945-1960), “The Sixties” (1960-1974), “Conservative Reaction Redux” (1977-2008), “Obama and Trump” (2008-2021).  Those are the approximate “units” commercial textbooks, and many U.S. History teachers, use for course instruction (the titles are mine & reflect my orientation/biases).  Personally, I’ve never found one piece of research which substantiates that people learn history “better” if it is taught chronologically so I preferred to loosely approach the course, often “doubling up” chronological topics (the American Revolution and the Vietnam War are a perfect pairing, for example, as are the two “conservative reaction periods” as well as the 20’s/60’s, etc.).  There are many creative ways to teach American History, but I believe there are particularly important themes which must provide the “spine” to a course: race, immigration, American “mythology,” geographic determinism, and democracy, for example.   It is the last theme which, of course, directly relates to the January 6th committee and demands our attention as we close out 2022.
 
            Telling the story of “democracy” as we look at the development of the United States is a complex and difficult tale to tell.  Long before Jefferson hypocritically wrote “all men are created equal,” various colonial legislatures were enfranchising landed white men, inventing governments “by the (some) people,” implementing John Locke’s “consent of the governed” and adhering to “the rule of law.”  Throughout our racist, misogynistic, and homophobic history the sins of the Republic were shielded by those idealistic concepts as we became, in our own view, the much-vaunted “City on a Hill” and (in our own eyes) the envy of the world.  As the nation slowly began reckoning with its burdensome history in the second half of the 20th century age-old divisions emerged in higher relief --- at times blatantly, at other times with more subtlety.  Yet, even with all of this, all the conflict, all the clamor, all the chaos we never questioned that our basic democratic processes should be destroyed.  Never.

            One of the things that has always irked me about the Watergate Scandal is that Nixon’s criminality was not sufficiently punished and, worse, that the focus of what he did is never sufficiently emphasized. His “Plumbers,” quite simply, were fixing the 1972 election.  While we are used to Trump’s ranting about “rigged” elections we seldom, if ever, focus on the fact that what Nixon’s “Committee to Re-Elect the President” (with the apt acronym: CREEP) did was fix the 1972 election so the incumbent President would run against the least-electable Democrat, George McGovern.  If you watch Alan Pakula’s brilliant All the President’s Men (or read the equally brilliant Woodward/Bernstein book of the same title) there is a scene where the reporters uncover that Nixon’s “dirty tricksters” created the infamous “Canuck Letter” which undid Democratic front-runner Edmund Muskie’s presidential campaign during the New Hampshire primary campaign.   That the bumbling Watergate burglars were caught trying to bug the Democratic headquarters in June of 1972 --- and Nixon then conspired to cover-up the illegal operations of his Re-Election Committee --- compounds just how corrupt the Republican Party’s politics have been for the past half-century.  Yet even amid all this craziness no one, not even Richard Nixon, ever considered destroying our (bizarre) Electoral College system --- until January 6, 2021!

            Lincoln’s election in November 1860 led to our last insurrection – the Civil War.  Because Southern states believed Lincoln and the northern Republican Party would abolish slavery, they left the Union and took up arms against the Federal government before his inauguration (March 4, 1861).  No Southern states had cast a single Electoral vote for Lincoln.  The votes were divided among 4 candidates, but Lincoln dominated the voting in the populous North and secured 180 Electoral votes (152 were needed for election).  There was no attempt at preventing his certification --- the unhappy South simply left the Union --- and a violent internecine conflict ensued.  What we saw, on January 6th, was nothing short of an attempted coup, an insurrection aimed at de-railing the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.

            As a U.S. history teacher, I always liked to point out to my students that one of the most unique aspects of American democracy was that every four years Americans voted for the leader they wanted and, even when a candidate won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote (4 times), power was transferred peacefully.  Early on, John Adams refused to attend Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration --- and his son, John Quincy Adams, didn’t attend Andrew Jackson’s --- and the impeached Andrew Johnson did not attend Ulysses Grant’s inauguration in 1869.  But none of them attempted to ALTER the outcome of their election.  And none of them summoned their supporters to attack the Capitol the day the Electoral College votes were being certified!  Until January 6, 2021.

            And this is what makes that date infamous and the crime egregious.  It was the first time since 1861 that citizens took up arms and tried to violently overthrow our government.   Consider this: what would have happened if, somehow, they succeeded?  What if the Electoral count had been aborted on January 6th and, somehow, Trump’s Fake Electors were installed and counted?  Remember, 147 Republicans (139 Representatives, 8 Senators) voted against certifying the Electoral count (and more Republican Senators were planning on voting against --- until they were attacked).  What if the Fake Electors from the Swing States had somehow succeeded?  Would Trump and his Republican allies then institute martial law to eliminate the “liberal elites” they believe have too much power?  Based on Trump’s unwillingness to accept reality, to admit defeat, and his inclination to sidle up to Putin, MSB, and Kim, were we that close to losing our democracy --- the way Germany did in the early 1930’s?

            Because Nixon was only declared “an unindicted co-conspirator” and pardoned by Gerald Ford, he was able to lay low for a few years and then present the world with a re-habbed/re-invented “elder statesman” persona and outrun his infamy.  It is imperative that Trump be made to pay for his criminal behavior.  His attempt to subvert democratic rule and overturn an election, simply because his childish fragile ego cannot bear to be a “Loser” is not only unacceptable --- it is criminal -- and he should suffer the consequences for his actions for the first time in his life.