NEW: A new president enters the White House following a failed, impeached president, amidst unprecedented racial reckoning, and battling white revanchists bent on insurrection.
The events earlier this month were hardly the first insurrection in U.S. history, and there's a direct through-line between the white terror-backed examples from Reconstruction and the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol:
The overlap between the pro-Trump insurrection and the insurrections during Reconstruction are impossible to miss: "The Red Shirts of South Carolina have been replaced with the Red Hats of MAGA."
And the "Lost Cause" is becoming the "Trump Lost Cause."
What was Grant's response to insurrection(s) across the South? First, the creation of the DOJ—and appointing the right people to head it.
As AG Akerman said, the white supremacist insurrectionists were leading “war, and cannot be effectively crushed on any other theory.”
And second, Grant brought the full weight of the federal government down on the heads of the white insurrectionists:
"Grant’s willingness to bring the full legal and military authority of the government to bear [broke] the Klan’s back and produced a dramatic decline in violence"
Yet Grant's successes in crushing insurrectionists also contained the seeds of failure:
Grant "realized that however welcome enforcement of Reconstruction would be in the short term, in the long term it was politically suicidal, and no longer enjoyed support of white Americans."
So what can Grant teach Biden? Two things.
1. Use the full weight of the federal government, and all—all—resources available. "There are so many more federal laws that can be used now... there are any number of laws on the books now that theoretically could be used."
2. Biden and others must make clear that there's no quarter for insurrectionists in the American body politic.
'The quicker you say, ‘There’s a line you can’t cross,’ the better... ‘And if you do, we’ll come down on you like you won’t believe.’”
And the lessons of successfully—or unsuccessfully—putting down American insurrectionists can't be implemented soon enough.
As @BrooksDSimpson said, "The stakes are actually bigger this time than during Reconstruction."
"You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future.”
Coverage of the American right circa 2009-11 has aged horribly:
—The Tea Party? Morphed into ethno-nationalist anti-democratic MAGA base
—Militias? Morphed into ethno-nationalist anti-democratic shock troops
—The guy leading the birther movement? Incited an insurrection
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Spending decades ignoring Russian brutality against Alaska Natives is bad enough.
But overlooking the topic meant Americans missed an opportunity to understand more about Russian colonialism—and the outright imperialism still driving Russia. politico.com/news/magazine/…
Enslavement. Massacres. Hostage-taking and sexual violence—and clear signs of genocide. All in the name of stripping Alaska Natives of their wealth.
Russia’s conquest of Alaska was as colonial as it comes. And it was no better, or worse, than other European colonialism.
I'd forgotten that Jim Mattis was a military advisor to the UAE *before* he was appointed Defense Secretary—and never publicly disclosed that relationship.
'The most prominent American cheerleader of the Emirati armed forces is former defense secretary Jim Mattis... [Mattis] again extolled Sheikh Mohamed and downplayed concerns about human rights in the UAE' washingtonpost.com/investigations…
The UAE's operations in DC is one of the—maybe *the*—most successful foreign influence and infiltration operation of the past decade.
An adviser as defense secretary, and another Trump insider as an agent. Millions saturating think tanks and universities. An army of lobbyists.
We're starting to see the contours of how the Russian elite is going to pin this (ongoing, eventual) loss in Ukraine on Putin. (See: ft.com/content/800025…)
It is, to pick a term, bullshit. They were all fully on board with Russia's initial invasion, and moves to carve Ukraine.
The only reason gullible Westerners may buy this line—"It was Putin, it wasn't us!"—is because there's still a failure to recognize this invasion began not a year ago, but in 2014.
Russia's invasion began when troops rolled into southern Ukraine, and first stole Ukrainian land.
And guess what? The Kremlin's invasion was **insanely popular in Russia**. Putin's new social contract laid its cornerstone on this invasion (the "Crimean Consensus").
Beginning to carve up Ukraine was arguably the single most popular thing Putin ever did.
There are three major reasons Western views have shifted on Ukraine retaking Crimea:
1) Military necessity. So long as Russia retains Crimea, it will be a forward operating base for Russian troops to rest and resupply—a dagger aimed directly at the rest of Ukraine.
2) Economic reconstruction. So long as Russia retains Crimea, it can effectively suffocate a rebuilding Ukrainian economy—all while destabilizing Black Sea maritime security.
As @general_ben told me, “Crimea is decisive for this war.”
Between Navalny calling to respect Ukraine’s 1991 borders (Crimea!) and Khodorkovsky gesturing at potential independence for the North Caucasus, been one of the most interesting few days for Russian opposition in… some time.
All of these concerns about Putin being replaced by someone “more hawkish” are faintly ridiculous.
If Putin goes because of this war, it will come after rolling military defeats, accelerating economic stagnation, spiraling internal divisions, etc.
Any successor will be immediately inundated in domestic crises. Do people really think they’ll, what, invade NATO? Launch a nuke?
Western officials need to stop buying into Putin’s “apres moi, le deluge” framing.
And they need to stop worrying about—and stop calibrating—what effect arming Ukraine will have on Russia internally. Just do whatever it takes to evict Russia from every inch of Ukraine.