Thread by @mhbx

There is so much to comment on here. It has been said, or is being said, by others... so just to reference the seed that is being planted. Resist won't be sufficient if we get to this place where we are fighting Tr at this level.

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1103393652238413828

What is frightening is to watch in slow motion, in real time, the swirling reification of ideas become intractable positions between sides, each certain of its rightness...thus no room to move to find a common ground from which to move, grow, accommodate, figure things out.

It is becoming a hard edge Political fundamentalism no less strenuous and no less absolutely certain of its rightness and therefore righteousness.
All the factors that go into this concretization of the mind, and position are the subject of the many books & articles trying to

figure it out. Each have a point. Each are not comprehensive. We have yet to grapple with the foundations of the movements that are creating our present tense history.
And how could we? How does anyone understand their tumultuous times?

We are roiled w labels of opposition and contradiction. Right-Left. Liberal-Conservative. Alt Right-Alt Left. North-South. Social-Libertarian....
Most of these are freighted w unexpressed, even unknown, meaning. Used as tribal flags to create "teams". Or as cudgels to

attack "them".
I get the boding sense that we are experiencing the same sort of not-as-yet codified breakdown of the country/society into indistinct binary grouping similar to the years before the Civil War. Ideas and passions, venalities, certainties, beliefs & hatreds, all

jocking for position and standing. Eventually becoming the unmoveable, unshakable, axiomatic values and truths that are "worth dying for".
We look at other countries and their many civil wars and think we are immune from those divisive forces. That "we are better than this".

It may not be true. Those syndromes are seeping into our public square. The center cannot hold out any longer. It has been a 30-50yr slow motion reification of slights and certainties that have become the daily shouting.

Who would have thought that a sitting president would be able to create the idea that he might not leave the office if he loses the election?
If you retort "he didn’t say that". Then it is demanded that he take an unalloyed stand against those who are suggesting it.

But he will not. Whatever stupid Trump is, he does seem to know how to manipulate crowds. At least of a certain set. He should distance himself from extremists. Lots of hand-wringing will be done by our pundit class trying to figure out "if he means it" "knows it" and/or

trying to figure out how what we are seeing is not actually true. [ It takes no effort to find amazing examples of this...people trying to make a normal sense out of the inexplicable doings and sayings. ]

Meanwhile, the oppositional forces are gathering force. Evangelicals and politicians have tied themselves to the fortunes of Trump. They will be the lead voices claiming divine anointing for why we must abandon the constitutional framework to save the country.

Doubtless in a time of manufactured troubles. Manufactured, but become very real, and very painful.
In the end we will diffuse these energies by war, civil unrest, constitutional crisis or other such nasties, if we do not figure out how to address & diffuse the bombs being

laid in now.
I think we still have enough residual strength that we can avoid the worse of these trends. But it is not certain. Our values and system of liberty and freedom are under attack, and it will not get any less so when and as the attacks are also being instigated from

within, at the highest levels of power.
If Trump were actually a patriot, a true citizen of America he would stop this talk of a perpetual presidency, and fake elections cold. Firmly, clearly, without any ambiguity.
But, that is not likely to happen.
He needs these confusions.

Trump daily demonstrates his loyalties lie with himself, first and last, his "base" so long as they are with him, other examples of power/authoritarian exercise that he admires and aspires to.

I am reminded of that other great horrible time when the intractable forces coalesced to engage & solve another great problem: that of slavery.
Lincoln's sad, demanding words stand as some sort of warning to us: "....And so the war came...".

We will error to retort that we won't do that again. Of course we won't. We are not fighting over physical states, and principles of a nation vs a state etc. What we are engaging now is far deeper and less subject to simple battles and victories, or loses.

We are entering a time of simmering emotions that can create the energy of pure righteous hatred. We see this played out on the world stage. Where the sides seem to be irrationally unable to even engage the "issues", unable to "see the other side", "our side" being so obviously

the right and righteous one. Till now there has been some core reservoir of what it means to be an American, a common set of values that might not even be able to be expressed. Just lived and understood. Something that could be appealed to as a common POV, framework, from which

disputes could be adjudicated. Now, as then, we are experiencing what it is to live in a world where the division of values/beliefs/identities cut through families. Brother against brother. City against town. You against me.

We might as well be functioning out of different religions. It is essentially what is happening.
Just our "religious battles" no longer are along the lines of Christian v Muslim. Or Catholic v Protestant. however bloody those divides, we are entering a completely new state.

New, in the underlying precepts that are organizing oppositional sides. Old as forever as to the underlying energies & motivations compelling and propelling these sides to battle.
When that conflict happens the world is changed.

So. A working out first draft of reactions to the notion that Tr won't leave office willingly. I see it not as a silly thing that of course won't happen, but maybe the catalyst, the string in a supersaturated solution that precipitates events that seem unlike, even impossible.

Hoping we can rediscover what is common in our heritage. Unfortunately we have someone in office who is not in alignment with that objective.

"so the war came".

It may yet be staved off. But now it will take conscious effort to do so.