Beware the Red Undertow following A Blue Wave

I hate the current Commander in Chief. It’s visceral, my desire to rebel. But in America, the idea of the current Resistance actually leading a conventional revolution against him becomes problematic under this President because all those Americans most prepared to revolt, those in the armed forces and police, people with the know-how and weaponry to lead a rebellion largely support his agenda. “We’ve got the guns but they’ve got the numbers.” Jim Morrison sang to rally up the youth, forgetting of course that they’ve got the guns! When they have a monopoly on bullets, the only option is the ballot. But after the election there’s still the guns.

Say you run a grassroots campaign with socialist candidates using many small donor contributions and face-to-face politics to get the message of big love government out to the masses and there is truly a blue wave in this country. That’s not it, it’s not game over. The people who support this president would then position themselves as the resistance, but they will call it something different cuz the Resistance is gay, bro. So now you have an angry group of people with a playbook for how to speak truth to power and, more importantly, a rule book for rebellion and dissent in the 21st Century. This dissent will include vulgar language, harassing officials in public and intense dehumanization both online and in person. Particularly if the newly elected American leadership is socialist or largely socialist, this President's supporters will view the government as tyrannical, (which is what they’ve always wanted in the first place. That’s what the guns are for!) The primary differences between this group and the current resistance will be this group will en masse lack empathy and they’ll be well trained and, most frighteningly, they’ll be heavily armed.

The left needs to understand that if we get what we want, this is where we could be headed. Barring some change in how we communicate across party lines, some huge natural or national disaster or other galvanizing tragedy, there’s no reason to think the undercurrent of conflict in this country will deescalate. I’m not saying to leave centrist democrats in power - to do so would be to further forfeit the country to the forces of fascism. I just think the left needs to remember that casting our vote in November is likely the start of the real conflict, not the end of it.

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