Dear ones: This week we deal with the ongoing aftermath of the attack on the joint session of Congress at the Capitol, including the first -ever second impeachment of the sitting president; we look forward to the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States; too many records are being smashed by the pandemic; and we celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A confluence of epic proportions.
Accountability is a critical step: it makes reconciliation possible. It also calls us to examine the underlying causes that brought so many people together, willing to overthrow laws and norms, willing to use violence and encourage violent acts by others, ready to believe that their mission was a noble one.
For decades (if not longer), too many Americans have been systematically shut out of prosperity, while being told who to blame. Stories told about the redistribution of wealth have added up to a massively successful misinformation campaign. Look at the data: wealth has indeed been redistributed by government policies, but not from hardworking taxpayers to the poor. Wealth has been moved steadily from the middle class to the upper one percent. During the pandemic, billionaires have seen their wealth increase, while millions of Americans tipped into poverty.
The campaign to remove New Deal protections and programs and put wealthy business (primarily) men back in control of the economy joined forces all too easily with structural racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. It helped fertilize the soil of resentment and grievance, making it receptive to the big lies that lit the fire of violent insurrection.
One aspect of the big lie strategy is to accuse your opponent of exactly what you are doing, or intend to do. Want to discredit an election? Accuse the opposition of fraud. Disenfranchise millions? Accuse your opposition of having silenced the voices of your supporters for too long. Ignite violence? Accuse your opposition of having already started it. Divide the country? Accuse anyone who wants accountability for your violence of being, themselves, the fomenters of division. The outcome of misinformation is multiple: only a few have to truly believe the lies. A plurality of citizens so uncertain about the facts that they give up on the notion of ever knowing the truth keeps the door open for further mayhem.
It will take much deep analysis and soul-searching to truly understand the underlying factors that erupted in the attack on Congress. This is just a start. What it points us to is the need to embrace what we now call intersectionality: the ways in which multiple challenges share both roots and solutions.
Dr. King used his voice to describe the intersections between racism, materialism, and militarism. It was his connection of these “triplets of evil” that made him an outsider even in his own movement, at times. In response to the violence around us now, we must go more deeply into the connections. It is hard and at time dangerous territory: we will confront our past, present, and future there.
It is also the only territory where a humane path forward can be constructed.
I’ll end with a quote from Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, the one in which he identified the triplets of evil, and insisted that the moment of connection is always available to us, if we are willing to act.
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action…. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam
I am grateful for your company as we navigate this epic confluence together.
More sources after the photo
How the economic divide has increased in recent decades:
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
On the transfer of wealth to the rich from the policies of the 45th president:
https://publicintegrity.org/inside-publici/newsletters/trumps-signature-legislation-a-transfer-of-wealth-to-the-richest-americans/
Billionaire wealth increase during the pandemic:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/wall-street-s-best-year-ever-why-pandemic-has-been-n1252512
Historian Heather Cox Richardson on the roots of undoing New Deal government:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-16-2021?r=dwyl6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy
Ideas from journalist Art Cullen about a kind of intersectional economic strategy:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-quash-the-resentments-that-cleave-us/2021/01/08/474f54b6-51f2-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html