the glory of American history

"By the time a generation had gone to war, with all the hardship it endured, deference to the monarch had not just dissolved but had turned into a hatred of kings, and of the hierarchies they represented. Such psychological upheaval carries costs, of course—you can find in it the roots of the anti-intellectualism that continues to mar our society, the antagonism toward “elites” that translated into, say, Donald Trump’s attacks on scientists like Dr. Fauci or his declaration that “I love the poorly educated.” But Trump, for all his pretense of “draining the swamp,” was actually the embodiment of those old hierarchies, the exception to the American rule. He was the man who sat (at least in his bathroom) on a golden throne; who said, of our nation’s problems, “I alone” can solve them; who insisted that the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want.” The man who installed his family members in positions of high power, and who used occasions of state to line his pockets. And if he and his compatriots tried to use the imagery of the American Revolution to consolidate power (a “tea party” to fight against equal access to medical care, an “insurrection” to prevent the counting of votes), then at least for the moment the tradition of our egalitarian history still managed to hold. It was Jamie Raskin—grandson of a Russian Jewish émigré plumber, now a congressman from Maryland—who concluded Trump’s impeachment trial for that insurrection with an account of those early days of the Republic, of “our great revolutionary struggle against the kings, and queens, and the tyrants … Because for most of the rest of human history, it had been the kings and queens and tyrants and nobles lording it over the common people. Could political self-government work in America, was the question.” He quoted from Thomas Paine: “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, but we have this saving consolation: the more difficult the struggle, the more glorious in the end will be our victory.” Raskin didn’t win that legal battle, of course—the bootlickers of the Republican Party protected Trump from prosecution, and they may yet try to install him back on the throne. (How easy to imagine Lindsay Graham or Mitch McConnell in a powdered wig, packing the family silver to flee to London with the other loyalists.) But, at least for the moment, the basic outline of American history shuddered but held. That anger at arbitrary power, that refusal to allow one person to lord it over another or over the whole—that is the glory of American history, and it dates back, if you want a date, to those days and years immediately following the stand on the Green. It’s why I’ve never wanted to give up the flag."

"The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened" by Bill McKibben: https://a.co/aUoIjXO