The U.S. is primed for an explosion

From The Onion:  Satire comes true

I claim no status as a predictor of public events.  But sometimes the indications that something is about to happen are so abundant and so compelling that the conclusions are obvious.  The indications that the United States is about to erupt in a violent rebellion have reached that point.  

I came to such a conviction many years ago when I worked for a newspaper in Illinois.  I spent a weekend in September in Wisconsin at a  workshop held by a journalistic organization.  As I drove back to Illinois late on Sunday afternoon, I was passing by Lake Geneva in the company station wagon assigned to me.  A large group of college-age people who had apparently gathered to enjoy an early autumn weekend had turned to demonstrating.  Civil rights, the draft into the Vietnam War, poverty, women's liberation, and many other things motivated them to abandon recreational pursuits for expressing their dissatisfactions with the direction the country was headed.  They crowded the highway I was on and were obstructing the traffic.

There were some young people who seemed to enjoy the opportunity to act out, but most of them were expressing their opposition and anger at the political attitudes dominating the nation.  They halted the traffic, were shouting and waving signs of protest, and  milled around to avoid the police who had converged to try to restore order.  One young man in an effort to evade the police jumped up on the hood of my station wagon as he ran from the police.  He left a big dent from the boots he was wearing on the hood.  I was going to have a hard time explaining that dent to the fleet manager when I turned the car in.  But the major impression left on me was that the country was headed for a time of violent rebellion.

And, indeed, it exploded

There was much violence in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The Detroit riots, the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Kent State, and a multitude of other eruptions are forgotten as dominating the social history of the time.  There was something about the intensity of the young people surrounding my car that Sunday afternoon that projected a sense of the tumult to come.  And it came.

For the past few years I have felt a sense of foreboding like that again.  As massive marches have been organized to protest what Donald Trump stands for and does,  I've expected the peaceful demonstrations to explode into a flash of anger.  The impeachment of Trump has brought the nation to its flash point.

Democrats are widely criticized for the impeachment.  They knew the Senate would acquit him of the charges.  Conservatives have obtained a lot of enjoyment out of deriding the Democrats' defeat and what they regard as the triumph of Trump.  They gloat that the American people are watching Trump deny and evade any responsibility for his attempt to extort the Ukraine president into performing one of his malignant schemes.  But the impeachment had a different purpose than punishing Trump.  For those who have the intelligence and moral courage to face unpleasant truths, the impeachment detailed an instance of Trump's belligerent malignity and the GOP senators' cowardly servility and anxious will to make a mockery of their oath of impartiality in service of their master.  Together, they cancelled out the respect this nation has earned as it strove to be the world's leading democracy.  The impeachment detailed how low this nation has sunk and who is sinking it.

But that is all a prelude to the explosion of rage that has been building up with each lie Trump has told and each nod of assent to his lies by those who join him in the debasement of the nation--whether out of fear of him or the desire to be like him.  

As I heard Trump make his petulant and juvenile rant during his "victory celebration" and heard and saw politicians prostrate themselves before him in an obsequious fervor through their applause and laughter,  I could sense the revulsion being inspired throughout the nation.  It was a pageant of obscenity.

An election is coming in November.  But the vibrations I am sensing make me doubt that the nation will hold together that long.  Trump and McConnell put on a very convincing demonstration that facts and Constitutional procedures can easily be subverted by people who would rather have kings and courtiers.  People who saw this demonstration for what it is will not be so foolish as to believe the democratic processes have any integrity left in them. 

Let's see if the Capitol is standing by election time.  Or anyone gives a damn if it is.  If they survive what promises to be an angry summer.