Homage to Minneapolis

 

In my last post, of some time ago, I anticipated the coming need for heroism, and that time has certainly come.

I certainly haven't shown it, but in many, many places around the country there has arisen courageous resistance--resistance to corruption, resistance to lawlessness, and, most importantly, resistance to the scapegoating of the poorest, the most helpless and most hardworking of our population.  It has now come to murder in our streets, murder abroad, and imprisonment of children in a growing system of concentration camps.  And instead of redress from those sworn to uphold justice, there has been collaboration and cover-up.

I neither need nor intend here to expand on these evils, or consider their causes or possible remedies.  That work is going full steam, and for all the horror of the past year, there is hope that this tide can be turned.

Here I simply want to recognize those who, unlike most of us, have put life and limb in jeopardy opposing the ground forces of oppression.

I remember being dismayed when I realized that the current administration would be in power on the 250th anniversary of American independence, and it has confirmed those fears by announcing cage matches on the White House lawn and the erection of what can only be called neo-fascist kitsch in our capital.  

But, on reflection, the remembrance of 1776 can only be salutary this year.  

The President famously put a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the Oval Office  last year.  When asked why, as I recall he kind of sputtered out that it was a great declaration of love--which of course it isn't.  After a ringing affirmation of human equality and fundamental rights, it gets to its business of listing those grievances against the King which justify resistance.  They sound familiar:

"He has endeavored prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration...."

"He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

"He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures."

"He has...giv[en] his consent to...protecting [large bodies of armed troops,] protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment from any murders they may commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; for imposing taxes upon us without our consent."

"He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us."

"A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be a ruler of a free people."

So, yes, there are parallels--even to that between the bitter winter of Valley Forge and the open resistance of the people of Minneapolis in the frigid temperatures of this last winter.  So, glory to the living and the dead who would not suffer their neighbors to be grabbed, beaten, separated, abused, held in filthy cells and then transported, sick and impoverished, to parts unknown.