Fortress America Nibbled To Death By Ruthless Ducks

What the rebellious confederacy could not pull off with violence, today’s nefarious secession depends on legalistic, electoral and political trappings.

Setting internal explosives amped by oligarchic betrayals, MAGA doesn’t need open violence to enforce its anti-democratic coup d’etat

Not every defiant U.S. secession comes with cannon shots targeting the Union, echoing the unprovoked attack on Ft. Sumter. History speaks to open, violent secession, but far more common: betrayal from within. At least the elitist, anti-democratic Confederacy served up to the Union a visible rebellion spouting states’ rights’ excesses the North could not abide. The scorching of the Old South then triggered a serial, historic array of human, citizen, and voting advances true to the best of America, fortified (until now) by Constitutional amendments. That could happen again, with a potent response to the inevitable Trumpist glut of excesses.

Long after Jim Crow and the racist, anti-immigrant Klan, Reaganism represents modern reactionary forces against the best of America. The Great Rightwing Regression fueled Citizens United, voting and human rights breaches, abortion reversals and Tea Party/MAGA Trumpism, kicking off today’s secessionist war against national progress, so far insufficiently resisted. Guns don’t work well against massive reneging on whether America supports constructive immigration, or white elitists commandeering impoverished minorities, or the sanctity of hard-won voting rights, fair elections and vigorous dissent.

At least our brutal civil war (to the degree it ended) helped inspire a sustained Progressive Era crowned by the legendary achievements by two Roosevelt regimes, Truman’s integration moves, rejection of unjust segregation in schools and sports, and LBJ Democrats, then women’s and gay marriage rights, even Obamacare. Here is the clear if sporadic arc towards greater freedoms, especially for minorities, immigrants, women, gays, retirees, blue-collar students, poor and sick people in need of food and medical care. Though in jeopardy since Reagan, traditional liberal values endure in many laws and cultural values, however refuted by inequality of wealth, political machinations and cultural bigotry.

Brigands within the Beltway.

Because ignoble, hypocritical rebels dominate the federal government, the Great Rightwing Regression (GRR) has enough leverage for this minority secession to barrage the idea and fact of government as an equalizing social good while fueling intolerance towards non-entitled, non-rich, non-white, non-Christian, non-male-dominated populations. In fact, irony on irony, MAGA Trump hardly wants to secede FROM a union rife for the taking, a willful quest to concentrate power, money and choices. The party of renegade hustlers (with Trump the symbolic firebrand) eyes federalism as a ravenous lion spies a wounded, ill-defended victim. That means maximizing tax payola, regulatory waivers and subsidized crony corporatism via more disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, glorification of outlawry, and distrust in elections and the Constitution. Blatant goals: reverse America as the greatest immigrant nation, corrupt fundraising, crush the Dept. of Education, destroy the independence of the military, the FBI and DOJ, all the while debasing critical safety nets like housing, food and medicine.

MAGA secession is thus neither invisible nor subtle. Aside from fundamentalist disgust with modern, secular life, what drives MAGA’s scorched earth, white nativist rampage is to undermine the ideals and integrity of a people-serving federal government. Why risk bodily harm to backers large or small when insiders can purloin more than their fair share from the richest treasure hoard anywhere? Unlike TR, FDR and LBJ/Obama reforms at least tried to serve most of the people, MAGA’s libertarian Musk-Trumpism manipulates federalism, and the tarnished system of justice at its core, to serve its favored gang at everyone else’s expense. What the rebellious confederacy could not pull off with violence, today’s nefarious secession depends on legalistic, electoral and political trappings. You don’t need a weather vane to see which ways the degrading, anti-reform storm blows.

That America fails to live up to its own ideals does not, however, undercut long-term, measurable gains: a strong commitment to domestic, personal freedoms of speech, travel, the rights of dissent; relative socio-economic mobility (even home ownership, despite rising obstacles); exceptional educational opportunities (thus mobility), and even our still remarkable, if wobbly ethnic diversity. Hard dualities persist: we are at times a fair-minded, welcoming, increasingly racially-integrated brood (opposite Trump’s phony populism) yet also a greedy, hypocritical, imperialistic, money-grubbing, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic bunch of yahoos trapped in delusional bubbles shredding their best self-interest.

For the most dramatic opposition, just compare the departing, unfairly rejected President Biden vs. the most blatantly criminal pack of Republicans in history, headed by the vulgarian know-nothing playing off primitive gut appeals. However  blinkered and conventional, Biden is a decent, good faith (domestic) politician who never had to traffic in manipulative lies to win achievements. How impossible to imagine Trump, the vain, graceless Oligarch-in-chief, ever warning about the evils of predatory oligarchy, or challenging the inequality of wealth, or honorably accepting electoral defeat and peaceful power transfer. For some, Biden is too much the federalist but Trump is a replay of Confederate anti-federalism serving fat cat class hegemony, hiring unbelievable bozos out to devastate the all-important agencies some will lead. This is the double cancer within (hidden and overt) that drives the garbage heap of ignoble secessionists now in charge.

A full-fledged, serial secession here and now.

Just listen to Simon Rosenburg, Hopium Chronicles, a veteran, left-leaning Democratic moderate to appreciate the unholy, secessionist gall of rampant Trumpism:

“Yes, we get to see the ridiculous Pete Hegseth yesterday in all his MAGA manly glory—a drinker, assaulter of women, adulterer, fraudster, serial liar, failed non-profit exec, religious and political extremist, Fox News buffoon and obnoxious, belligerently ill-informed asshole. The dude’s red flags have red flags. To be very clear—Hegseth could not pass a background check for jobs in most corporations in America. And here we are, debating whether he should run the largest government agency in the world responsible for the safety of literally billions of people—one he could not get hired to work for as a low-level employee.”

“The overwhelming sense I have this morning is that we need to see MAGA as a secessionist movement. Not a choreographic secession, but an ideological and political one. MAGA is succeeding from the rule of law here at home and the American-led rules-based order globally. Force, strength, AMERICA FIRST!!!! It all represents a remarkable betrayal of the American creed. The 2021 insurrection was justified in their view for the system Trump and MAGA attacked – American democracy itself – is not something they believe in. Why the J6 pardons are going to flow and Jack Smith could be locked in the closet by MAGA Justices and judges. “

“It’s why Trump felt justified in lying and defrauding the government for years, in assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room, in stealing America’s secrets and putting them in a MAL [Mar-a-lago] bathroom, in threatening to seize the territory of sovereign nations and our closest allies, in putting forward these outrageous, unqualified and dangerous nominees. Because Trump is not bound by the rules and laws of our democracy or the global system we imagined and built. Trump is an Uberman, or in his ancestral German, an Ubermensch. He is “over” or “above” us, not bound by silly conventions, norms, rules or laws.”

In short, who else but Trump and his nominated buffoons fit more perfectly as ruthless, insider, authoritarian secessionists oblivious to history who rule by fiat and gut instinct—in a self-serving orgy of predation. In the end they are blindfolded screw-ups who won’t triumph, but the inflicted damage will last longer than this scribe is around to complain.

First Published on Nation of Change.

Shared via Creative Commons.