Reflections/Jonathan Gramling
Freedom Is Not Automatic
I have been watching the January 6 Select Committee hearings that have been televised nationally, last Thursday in prime time and then Monday morning. After months and months of released sound bites of information, some of the committee’s findings are now being released throughout the month of June. It is compelling television.
My son always tells me that I am obsessed by Donald Trump because I often comment on what Trump is trying to do now. In my mind, it isn’t an obsession as it is a nagging fear that is reinforced every time I hear Trump speak or read his comments in the newspaper. And what these televised hearings are reinforcing in e is that yeah, I am paranoid a bit, but I have good reason to be paranoid.
What these hearings are piecing together for me is the level of planning that went into the attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, which Trump’s own inside people like then Attorney General William Barr who told him the allegations of fraud in throwing the election to Joe Biden were “bulls**t.” I never did like Barr because I felt he ran too much political interference for Trump as attorney general instead of just doing his job. But for Barr to say that Trump and the crazies he was now surrounding himself with were spinning tales out of whole cloth, well I don’t think there is now any doubt that the election wasn’t fixed and it is just Donald Trump’s narcissistic ego that prevents him from admitting the truth. And he does know the truth.
I think in his mind, it isn’t over until it’s over and he hasn’t lost because he is still denying it in the hopes of becoming president once again, either by hook or by crook. And he has tens of millions of people believing him even though there is no factual basis for his beliefs. What an ego trip it must be for Trump to have all of these people believing the lie that he has told and knows is a lie.
This is building into mass hysteria. Here is a minority — a significant minority — of Americans who believe something that isn’t there, are seeing things that aren’t there, people who see a bin of secured ballots and spin it into a tale of ballots for Joe Biden being smuggled into the polling place in large suitcases or somehow believe that technicians in Northern Italy are turning votes for Trump into votes for Biden through the internet in voting machines that aren’t hooked up to the internet. I don’t think fiction writers could do a better job in creating a fantasy world.
But the real danger here is that there are millions of people who are sharing a delusional world unattached from reality. And as we can see, Trump — and people like him — can thus manipulate people into seeing and doing anything including armed insurrection.
There are many people in the tens of millions of people who share this delusion who own guns. Some are very adept at using them. And I can’t help pout think that we are in a Reconstruction moment where the KKK is replaced by the Proud Boys and Patriotic Front. And if Donald Trump and his surrogates begin declaring the “white civilization” is being hopelessly overrun by immigrants and other “undesirable” people. And so they will feel justified to openly commit acts of violence to preserve their order. What did members of the Patriot Front, the ones who were going to disrupt an LGBTQ+ festival in Idaho believe? Isn’t that their forefathers conquered America and so they own America?
When I was growing up, I was taught that justice and freedom were something that remained forever once they were won. But nothing is guaranteed in life. And the fight for freedom and justice is more like a rugby scrum where opposing sides push against each other and move them off the rugby ball. And the sides move back and forth dependent on which team has it going on at the moment.
And I feel that is happening now. Right wing and conservative forces are pushing back and are gaining the upper hand and who knows what this group with shared delusions will do when it does get the upper hand. People need to be involved and engaged. The time to press for your freedom is now.