Overly Civil War

A post from Steve M ("A Civil War With No Gunfire") argues, I think correctly, that the real coup Republicans are putting together for next time isn't going to be an assault in the style of 6 January but the completion of the attempts to rig the voting system conservatives have been working on since forever, I guess especially since Bush v. Gore, by writing Republican dominance into the design of state and federal legislative districts instead of depending on the whims of voters, and taking away what power voters still have in appointing the electors in presidential elections and delivering it to the state legislatures to overturn the ones they don't like (unilaterally deciding they're "fraudulent").

It struck me that the base, used to bloodthirsty Trumpiness and really gearing up for a proper war, might not be too roused by this strategy—as I was noting the other day focus on dubious cases of election fraud seems to bring down Republican turnout—and Steve's rhythm brought me a visit from the Muse, with apologies to Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, to the tune of:

A civil war with no gunfire
A crashing bore, a no-fun fire
We should be dressed like seventeen-sev'nty-sixers
Instead we're led by dozens of K Street fixers

A civil war with no cannon
Is just a snore for Steve Bannon
If you don't spill some unpatriotic gore
What is it even for?
Overly civil war

A civil war with no bleeding
Is not the score that Trump's needing
You may have found an argument that convinces
But not the ones from wherever Erik Prince is

A civil war with no bullets
Is not for guys who wear mullets
If you don't spill some unpatriotic gore
What is it even for?
Overly civil war

 

But does it enchant in your mind?

Unboxing the Statue of Liberty, 1885, via Rare Historical Photos.

Shorter David Brooks, "Yes, I'm an American Nationalist", New York Times, 26 October 2018:

I'm magically attached to New York but I'm romantically attached to the United States, Rockies, Declaration of Independence, World War II, Silicon Valley, madness, diversity. I'm an American nationalist, and this proves that Donald Trump isn't one, because I'm a nice guy and he isn't.

Quotes from the six-paragraph peroration of Ernest Renan's 1882 Sorbonne lecture, "What is a nation?", with no indication of where he got it from, likely Dr. Google and www.nationalismproject.org, which runs it without the rest of the text:

The 19th-century French philosopher Ernest Renan argued that “a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle”: “These are the essential conditions of being a people: having common glories in the past and a will to continue them in the present; having made great things together and wishing to make them again. One loves in proportion to the sacrifices that one has committed and the troubles that one has suffered.”

That's not really what Renan (a great rationalist, though also I'm sorry to say an anti-Semite, who is remembered best for his 1863 Vie de Jésus, depicting the life of Jesus with no miracles, as somebody who is not the son of God) "argues". By ignoring the rest of the piece—he may not even realize it exists—Brooks misses all the argumentation, which is a shame, because some of it is pretty funny, anticipating the great Benedict Anderson:

For the Record: A Little Joke

Via somebody's Pinterest.

Gunga Dinesh leapt to the defense of Emperor Trump for calling himself a nationalist:

You can't say he's using the word the way Ho Chi Minh used it. Ho demanded colonial powers let the Vietnamese govern themselves. Trump invites Russian, Israeli, and Saudi regimes to tell him what to do.

— YasGHOUL's Farm (@Yastreblyansky) October 23, 2018

It's a question, I guess, of "nationalist" as opposed to what? Ho was a nationalist for Vietnam as opposed to imperialist water-carrier for the French or the Americans, or the Chinese for that matter (who had fought to control Vietnam for a thousand years, from the Han dynasty through the Song, before they finally conceded defeat). Gunga Dinesh is an imperialist water-carrier for the British, that's why I like to call him that, when he talks about the Raj or East Africa. Dinesh isn't a nationalist with respect to India, though he may be a nationalist with respect to his adopted USA.

Ho, and Castro, also sometimes called themselves "nationalists" in opposition to "communists", when they were explaining their positions to a certain type of friendly Westerner at certain points in their careers. "No, no, he's just a nationalist. Go away, Mr. Quiet American." In this, I'm sorry to say, they were lying, though not without some justification.

Jo Cox

Photo from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, via The Guardian.

I can't deal with this story coming out of England, where Jo Cox, Labour MP for Batley and Spen (up in West Yorkshire, near Leeds), was stabbed and shot by a "quiet and polite" middle-aged white man (apparently not so quiet and polite in his Web presence, where he is linked to white supremacists) in the street this morning, as she was coming out of a constituent services session, and has since died of her injuries. The man is said to have shouted "Britain first!" reminding us of course of our Donald, who has adopted the pro-Nazi "America first!" slogan of ca. 1940, though he may be too insistently pig-ignorant to realize that, but Britain First is the name of a political party of sorts (which has said it is "not involved" with the murder), compounded of anti-abortion agitators, Ulster Unionists, and anti-Muslim rowdies, which is probably worse than the Ukip (which is not explicitly anti-Muslim; but Britain First urges its supporters to vote Ukip all the same), as passions rise over the coming referendum over Britain's membership in the European Union. 

She was 41 years old and had two little kids. David Cameron, her opponent (but an ally on the EU question, of course), mentioned her "huge compassion".

I'm feeling as if it's our disease, not because of the violent nationalism, which is as English as lemon curd, as you might say, but because of that gun. But the gun is being described as "an old gun, like a musket." No, of course it's really not about us. But it is about the curse of nationalism. Humans First!

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.