The Shot Heard Round the World

The Shot Heard Round the World

This title is intended to harken us back to our pre-Revolutionary days in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts when the very first militia of American patriots engaged British troops in 1775 and exchanged a volley of musket balls with the red-suited “lobsters” of England and thereby marked the start of the Revolutionary War. There are plenty of conservatives in the country who like to think that their actions on January 6th, 2021 were a similar act of defiance against the tyranny of oppression. The big difference is that while there were certainly plenty of Torys who wanted to remain loyal to King and Country (meaning mother England), the majority of the people on the continent wanted independence and thus was born the fight that came to be known as the Revolutionary War and the ultimate formation of the United States of America. Majority rule became our clarion call to formation.

Back then, there were plenty of differences between the thirteen states or colonies that chose to band together to fight the perceived oppression of England, but they found common cause in their battle against the far greater and seemingly overwhelming presence of a country far away that wanted desperately to hang onto its empire. It took a lot to push the fiercely independent colonials to the point of risking life and limb and their very families and existence to shrug off the bonds of servitude and unfairness in governance. But they ultimately reached a point of no return and they did it. That was when the shot was heard around the world and the new world order began that has served the world well (in my opinion, even though others might choose to disagree).

Today we have a very different dynamic underway that has less to do with a distant despot and more to do with the strains of common governance. There are forces that want to see us return to a world where white men of Christian designation (I say designation because it is less clear that they were of Christian demeanor) reigned supreme and could control their own world as they wished. That world also seems to want to ignore the ravages we already feel from global climate change. There are others fighting the good fight for racial and religious equality by seeing our nation become the polyglot that they feel better serves the wide breadth of the nation (snd the world, especially with regard to climate) as it is currently constituted. There is very little to commend the former position and a great deal to suggest that the latter is the only rational objective we can have given that demographics and climate make it clear that the world is not changing, but has rather long ago changed. Its composition is now what it is and any proper governance of it must be multicultural and multi-religious if it is to be truly representative of the majority. Evolution and nature are taskmasters that must be served and they has brought us to a point where turning back the clock to a bygone era (with all its injustices, I must add) is impossible.

I read today that a leak of a Department of Justice memo indicates that our Attorney General, Merrick Garland is unwilling to bring an indictment against Donald J. Trump as an ex-president during the election process scheduled for later this year. Despite the mountain of evidence so well-developed and put on display for the American people by the Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on our Capital, it is his judicious view that the purposes of democracy are not well served by taking the very unprecedented step of indicting an ex-president during an election cycle. This is very disappointing and seems like a holstering of a smoking gun ready to be fired.

But wait. No person in America bore the direct brunt of injustice from the oppressive right during the last cycle of rule than Merrick Garland. He was nominated quite properly by a sitting president for a Supreme Court seat nine months before an election and then denied a hearing by Mitch McConnell for politicized reasons that served only the Republican agenda but were technically allowable. This same Mitch McConnell reversed field at the end of the Trump presidency to push through two Supreme Court justices without a thought to the impending elections, which did indeed reverse the majority. The result has just proven that, as pundits like to say, the dog has caught the car and reversed standing law in Roe v. Wade and may well be the car that now runs over the same dog. This single act has more galvanized and highlighted the divisiveness of the country and has shown in poll after poll that the governance of the country had swung to the minority and is now rightly considered oppressive by the majority of Americans. Strangely enough, this is occurring at a time when the majority holds the executive branch, the area that Merrick Garland now inhabits.

While many on the left will choose to disagree with me, this stand of Garlands, to stand for democracy over retaliation, is a noble and righteous stand. This is the classic Michelle Obama move of going high when they go low, a notion that many on the left feel should be left behind us in order to reacquire a governance that represents the true will of the people. But democracy demands restraint and it cannot fall prey to lesser instincts of going lower when they go low. Nothing would herald the end of democracy faster than that path. The American people are being served up a stark picture of what Trumpian ways were really like and they have to step up and do their duty to vote in a fair and open election if they want their voice to be heard and for their policies to be given wing. The manner in which the Republican agenda has been enacted is simply not true democracy and to overthrow it by similar means is not the democratic way either.

The 2022 elections may or may not see Democrats controlling the Senate or the House of Representatives. The cycle of politics implies that at best Democrats can hold the Senate and will lose the House. I sincerely hope that won’t be the case, but it might. In any case, the executive branch does not turn over this year. That is not an accident, it is by ingenious design by our founding fathers in thinking through the cycling of politics that is quite amazing in its forethought. By virtue of keeping control of the executive branch, Merrick Garland has the time to bring and indictment against Trump and break that new presidential ground if the facts and case are strong enough to recommend it. There will be more dust thrown into the air by a Republican controlled House or Senate, but it can still happen and will be an important step to take at this more appropriate time.

I hope the evidence against not just Donald Trump, but the entire Republican machinery that has played by these low-country rules will be enough for the general electorate to see themselves clear to holding the House and Senate for the Democrats. That will create an amazing two-year run at least for liberal democracy to reassert itself, which I believe is the best thing for this country and the world. But it is up to the American people, not a group of politicians or justices in a smoke-filled room to decide.

In 2022, unlike 1775, the shot that needs to be heard round the world is the shot not taken. We need a lot less shooting in this country and this world if we are to find peace and prosperity on a scale to serve an 8 billion person world. I trust Merrick Garland and feel he is the militiaman on the wall of democracy that it using precision of thought and conscience rather than precision of a bullet to bring positive change to the world.