No Peace In Our Time

“Every society has the criminals it deserves.”

~Emma Goldman

 

We have reached a point where the existence of a terrorist threat from the right-wing can no more be denied. When neo-Nazis lay siege to the Capitol, only those they do not wish to kill have the privilege to pretend normality and civility can be restored. For the rest of us, the events of January 6^th were the right's announcement that they are ready and willing to attack regardless of who is president. And this country will gladly allow them the space in which to do it.

In the coming weeks we will hear Democrats shift from calls for justice as they begin talking about peace and reconciliation. They will say that we must have unity and find common ground with the same people who just told us they want us dead. Men who wore “Camp Auschwitz” and “Six Million Jews Was Not Enough" shirts are to brought back into the fold by forcing us to bow before them and the Liberal left will demand as much. There is no indignity, no amount of danger, considered too great for us to be ordered to accept in the name of peace. And when the next attack comes, there will be no amount of our blood spilled that is too much for the Democrats to consider to be an acceptable sacrifice.

The Republicans have shown their hand. They embraced a president who built larger camps in which to torture immigrants. They licked Trump’s boots while he called Nazis “good people”. They have even in the wake of the president’s treason tried to find ways to shift the blame elsewhere, with men like Hawley dog whistling the base. A party that had torch lit parades while shouting “they will not replace us", a Nazi slogan, cannot be brought back into the fold. If the Republican Party is not abolished, it will continue to be haven for genocidal factions dead set on the destruction of democracy. There can be no peace with these people.

American society has long demanded its minority populations sacrifice disproportionately for the sake of the majority. When Black church goers are gunned down, the white gunman is sanitized by the media and treated with kid gloves by the cops. When Hispanic workers go to the fields and factories to put food on the tables of all Americans, the state uses their vulnerability against them and breaks up their families while white owned corporations get a free pass. When American Jews go to temple or market and are met with the bullets of antisemites, all other Americans find ways to pretend their embrace of antisemitic rhetoric had nothing to do with it. America is a nation of cannibals, savages incapable of civilized behavior for more than a moment, yet pretends to be a bastion of liberty and democracy. It builds up an alter to itself on the backs of subjugated neighbors and former colonies while placing its most vulnerable communities upon it as a sacrifice. All promises of greatness from the American empire have always come with the price tag of the innocent blood of intentionally voiceless minorities. The American dream purchased through the deaths of those it erases from history books.

If the Democrats want peace they must first force the United States into a confrontation with its past and present behavior. They must attack the foundations of American mythology and reconcile with the beast within this country. The painful experiences of the United State’s minorities cannot be ignored any longer. The US must pay the devil for time borrowed. Institutions of oppression, the same ones the Right holds up as symbols of greatness, must be inspected and dismantled. Those who have profited off the exploitation of the lower classes must be made to pay for their transgressions as the dignity of the oppressed is restored and their quality of life elevated from the present state of virtual slavery to the system. Until the United States is ready to uproot the right-wing, level the field and offer all people the same rights and liberties; peace is a synonym for submission.