I find my aging brain is slow in thinking through a number of issues connected with the barrage of new facts awaiting us every day. I need my own kind of time.
So while I think, permit me to offer two other voices who have something interesting to say. For one I have a link https://medium.com/@…/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5… and hope you find something in there that helps understand what is going on.
The other is a short post by Heather Cox Richardson, educated at Harvard, now teaching history at BU; she posted it on FB and gave permission to share it. I just copied the whole thing below.
“What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries– is creating what is known as a “shock event.” Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order. When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but fromwhich everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.
Last night’s Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.
Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.
My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one’s interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won’t like. I don’t know what Bannon is up to– although I have some guesses– but because I know Bannon’s ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle– and my friends range pretty widely– who will benefit from whatever it is. If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.
But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event. A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union. If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln’s strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power. Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it.”
When I tried to summarize her argument in conversation with someone who is politically astute and passionate, I was reminded by him that calls for unity have a place, are important, will lead to effective outcomes, BUT – they are too often one sided. Blacks and Native Americans have called and weren’t headed in the history of our nation, only co-opted when it fit; now they are scolded if they don’t help with the cause (the women’s march, for example.) For one, they DO come out and join in a united outcry against what has been happening in the last week. Secondly, if individuals pass on any particular march due to personal fatigue, having for so long shouldered the burden of resistance without general support, it is perfectly justified.
I hope that the division along established lines will crumble, as they seemingly did yesterday at the demonstrations against the muslim ban. I hope that marching together will open the eyes and brains of us privileged ones when coming in contact with the historically oppressed. The focus on current emergencies could then be expanded to a joint focus on restorative justice. I hope that the historical lessons of divide et impera can be undermined by solidarity freely given and reciprocated after this wake up call.
Calling all Opas und Omas…. with the appropriate attitude…. 
I have a few people who recommend books to me that invariably hit the spot. Those people are from different backgrounds and of different ages, and I agree with them 90 or so % of the time. I am grateful to them because they alert me to authors that I might otherwise never have encountered.
It took an incredible amount of work for all the staff to pull this event off, superb volunteerism that makes safe spaces possible. Nothing but respect for them.
