Inauguration Day, 2021

Yesterday National Public Radio aired an interview of historian and filmmaker Ken Burns by Rachel Martin. Martin was reporting on an essay Burns wrote for Politico offering an historical perspective on this time in America.

The story began by Martin saying, “Filmmaker Ken Burns has spent his career documenting American history, and he always considered three major crises in the nation's past: the Civil War, the Depression and World War II.”

“Then came the unprecedented "perfect storm" of 2020 — and Burns thinks we may be living through America's fourth great crisis, and perhaps the worst one yet.”

"We're beset by three viruses, are we not?" he explains. There's "a year-old COVID-19 virus, but also a 402-year-old virus of white supremacy, of racial injustice. ... And we've got an age-old human virus of misinformation, of paranoia, of conspiracies."

As upsetting as it was to have a group of people storm the United States Capitol two weeks ago, today we will witness a hallmark of American Democracy: the peaceful transition of power following a free and fair election. The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol weren’t the biggest threat to our government and our way of living. They lacked the passion and commitment of those in the past who have sought to change the course of history. A little pepper spray was all it took to turn them back. They had not come prepared to sacrifice for their cause and have been whiny and complaining about their arrests for their crimes. If they had even faced the show of force that was used to clear a path for a photo op for the President in the midst of Black Lives Matter protestors, they would have scattered. They lacked true leadership.

While those who committed crimes, many of which are well-documented, should be prosecuted to the full extend of the law and given fair and objective trials, they are not the source of my worry about our great nation. What worries me is that there are millions of people, some of whom I know as friends, who have embraced the lies and misinformation about our nation’s recent election. It is not those who stormed the Capitol from without who pose the greater threat to democracy. It is the not insignificant number of members of the House of Representatives and Senate who even after the attack refused to accept the results of the election.

In the interview, Burns noted that such acceptance of the baseless claims of fraud are especially troubling after what is likely the most fair election in our history with the least amount of fraud, a fact born out by the opinions of court after court in state and federal jurisdictions which found no evidence of the fraud that was claimed by those who are upset that their candidate did not win. Their cries of foul are not supported by the facts. They have been unable to produce any evidence at all that can be seen by the courts.

Yet millions of Americans continue to listen to the lies and believe propaganda that is spread as if it were news.

As i reflect on the three major crises of our nation’s past as enumerated by Ken Burns, it seems to me that they have all come to focus in the events following last November’s election. Part of our current situation is that we are living the on-going effects of those crises. Historian Barbara J. Fields said, thirty years ago, about the Civil War, “It’s still to be fought, and regrettably it can still be lost.” The storming of the Capitol made her words sound prophetic as a crowd of white people, predominantly male carried the Confederate Battle Flag into the halls of our Capitol. There is no doubt that white supremacy and those who spout its rhetoric have been emboldened by the last four years of a president who encouraged and emboldened them. Three years ago when American Nazis marched in Charlottesville, with deadly violence, the president refused to condemn their actions. He has embraced members of the alt-right in our country including neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmn and various right-wing militias.

It isn’t just the Civil War which is still being fought. Another of our nation’s great crises continues as the ideology and rhetoric of Nazi fascism and white supremacy rear their ugly heads as if we had no memory of the reasons our nation went to war and so many of our people died in defense of democracy.

The third crisis in American history is also present in the struggles of today as millions of Americans are out of work and facing their inability to afford the basics of life. A foreclosure crisis as large as the Great Depression is bearing down on our country. Despite the words of the out-going president who said, “We did what we came her to do,” his promise of jobs closing the borders of the nation to immigration has resulted in the worst record on employment and the highest unemployment in modern history. Ask a coal miner how the last four years have worked out for them. Tell the record numbers of homeless people in our cities that they don’t have it as bad as the folks in the Hooverville communities of the depression. Ask them how the tax cuts of the last four years have benefited them. Economic disparity is at an all time high as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class disappears under the weight of debt.

Among those who have been arrested for the attack on the Capitol are those who traveled by private jet to the rally. The insurrectionists had money and leisure for travel. Their numbers didn’t include the folks with their cardboard signs asking for help standing at intersections in every city in America.

In 1936, with the nation sill in the grips of the Great Depression, FED stood before the unfinished Mount Rushmore carving and body declared that he believed that American Democracy would still exist in 10,000 years. I hope and pray that he was correct. If so, we will need to continue to speak truth to lies and stand up to the threats of unfinished wars. Inauguration is a beginning. There is much work for all of us as we move beyond this crisis.

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