... one more thing. And it's not about Trump. It's about all of us.
"Like it or not, and I hate it, the battle has been joined."
I wrote and published those words in this blog nearly two months ago, in the aftermath of the shootings at a practice for a charity baseball event between members of Congress. If you or anyone else think that those shootings comprise an isolated, never-to-be-repeated moment in our culture, I am forced to tell you after last weekend, then think again.
The march on Charlottesville by white nationalists was largely fueled by a recent trend across America to take down statues and other monuments to the Confederacy. Needless to say, those who still believe in the so-called "Lost Cause" are not happy about losing their "safe spaces" for expressing their hatred of anyone who isn't them. And never mind, for the moment, how ironic it makes their criticisms of leftist college students who want to be protected from such expressions with safe spaces and trigger warnings.
I have, frankly, never understood why these monuments exist in the first place. We, the people of the United States are almost certainly the only nationals around the world that allow public commemorations of an armed insurrection against that nationality. Call it "heritage" and "state's rights" and even "Northern Aggression" if you must. None of that claptrap rhetoric disguises the fact that the insurrection was treason motivated by a desire to treat humans as chattels. It neither erases history nor diminishes the First Amendment to remove these ugly items to historical societies and museums. It simply removes them from places of honor and public participation in society, where they do not belong.
The effort undertaken by cities to do the right thing by these items has hitherto been peaceful and marked by due process, public debate, and a respect for the interests of everyone. If you're a white nationalist, however, none of that means anything, becuase none of that has anything to do with the America they believe in. That America has been defined for them by Nazi Germany: blood and soil.
That is why they are willing to use violence at the drop of a Trump to take control of what they believe, exclusively, is their country. And the response by the majority, in Charlottesville and elsewhere, shows that it has concluded what I concluded long ago: that the time for peaceful demonstations is over. Tom Courtenay, in one of most famous roles, might agree. Especially when official law enforcement appears to be split on how to respond: either do nothing, or plot the unthinkable.
While the rest of us ponder the question: is it unthinkable any longer?
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