This Just In – You’ve heard the old axiom that it’s not about how many times you’re knocked down it’s all about how many times you get up.
I’ll confess to feeling like I was still on the mat, wondering what hit me after election night. When the returns started coming in, I had a sick feeling in my stomach that seemed very much like a PTSD episode from eight years back. It became easy to envision that the worst could indeed happen, because, well, it did. That’s not so much imagination as it is observation.
I won’t get into the weeds about the various concerns I have. There are too many and we’re already fatigued, if not exhausted quite yet. I have been thinking about historical context, if only because I’m tired of the “he’s a felon and that’s never happened before” thing.
So let’s just start with somewhat recent history …
History has told us that Ronald Reagan got involved with the Iranian government to prevent them from releasing American hostages prior to the 1980 election. That’s a felony. (Reagan also made an illegal arms deal while president … by accident, he claimed.)
Richard Nixon did something very similar in late October 1968 to block a peace deal in Vietnam. In 1972, his committee to re-elect the president committed crimes to manipulate the 1972 presidential election. Those are felonies.
So, those two presidents also committed felonies. They just weren’t indicted, tried and convicted for having done so. There’s a pretty good argument that what Reagan and Nixon did was dramatically more serious and threatening to the health of the republic. I can’t argue with that, except that indictment, trial and conviction suggests a level of objective scrutiny that was never brought to bear on their crimes.
Looking back only as far as my lifetime, I think about trauma to the nation. We’ve had horrific events that shocked our system of government, but none more searing to the mind than that terrible day in Dallas in 1963. The assassination of President Kennedy (and subsequently his brother, Bobby in 1968) felt like something so promising, so optimistic was stolen from us in the most cowardly way possible.
Seeing President Trump free convicted, violent rioters this week has suggested to me that this is now a segment in our history that requires caution to endure. Our resilience may not be most effective in the form of marches and boycotts. Perhaps this will require a different model – an underground one.
Reaching back to the middle of the 19th Century, we find President Lincoln’s having ended the long, bloody civil war after winning re-election. He took his second inaugural to talk about reconciliation, not revenge. “With malice toward none, with charity for all” he said. Then discussed the need to care for the widows and orphans of both sides in a war that nobody expected to drag on and be so costly.
He was generous. He was thinking about the future of a great nation that had nearly destroyed itself with racial hatred and division. He was humble. Imagine that.
And then, he was murdered. All the possibility that his second term could have seen disappeared. Our nation has always struggled with the poison of white supremacy. Presidents before the current one have exploited racism to win elections. Under two terms of a remarkably successful African American president, we didn’t make racism disappear. It’s a virus that will always be within us and when our body politic is weak (as it is now) we are more vulnerable to the damage it can cause.
That’s scary, but let’s recall that the pendulum swing that can result can be surprising. It’s not at all clear that anyone other than Lyndon Johnson could have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Medicare that year.
The pendulum swing that I’m watching for is to see whether and how the Congress will reclaim some of its power for the purpose of check and balance against the Executive branch of government. Likewise, the Judiciary is overdue for reviewing its responsibilities. There’s a great deal of good that can come out of this era. I hope we can get up off the mat just one more time to continue the struggle.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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