Ours is the Age of Play Acting, in which small characters strut and fret their hour upon the stage, impersonating greater figures.
Consider Donald Trump’s mugshot, taken at the Fulton County Jail following his indictment for conspiring to interfere with the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Trump evinces a pose of heroic defiance, a pose he clearly rehearsed. Within minutes of its being taken, the mugshot was featured on fundraising messages, and on Trump X’s (formerly Twitter) account, where it soon garnered a quarter of a billion views. Beneath the heroic visage are the stirring words: “Never Surrender.”
For his hour upon the stage, Trump chose to play Winston Churchill.
It’s a free country, and such silliness is constitutionally protected. But these antics demand to be put in perspective.
On June 4, 1940, when Winston Churchill vowed to never surrender, he did so, not to raise campaign funds, but to stiffen the backbone of the British people, who were facing the imminent threat of invasion. His vow to fight on the beaches and landing grounds, and in the streets, fields, and hills, was made when France had fallen, the United States was neutral, and the Soviet Union was allied with Nazi Germany. Churchill knew that if the British Isles were subjugated (a prospect he felt compelled to address in his speech), one of the first tasks of the subjugators would be to line him up against a wall outside Parliament and shoot him. After which, they would have shot his fellow members of the War Cabinet.
Now one may argue that Donald Trump has been indicted for political purposes. One may argue that if he had ultimately accepted the results of the 2020 election, or if he had announced his retirement from politics and removed himself from contention, none of these four criminal cases would have been brought. But while the prosecuting attorneys may be many things – ambitious, vindictive, political — they are not the Gestapo.
When Churchill vowed “never surrender,” he meant: Fight to the death. When Trump says “never surrender,” he means: Donate to my campaign.
Donald Trump is not alone in this kind of play acting. His opponents do it too. A huge swath of the nation’s intelligentsia demonstrated the same propensity during his presidency, when they melodramatically proclaimed themselves “The Resistance.”
Seriously?
The French Resistance – the source of the modern term – were the underground opponents of the Nazi occupation and the Vichy puppet regime. They represented a brave but small minority of the French population, resisting the Germans behind the lines. When captured (as an estimated 90,000 were), they were tortured and executed.
The American Resistance differs. Its members are in no danger of torture or execution. Instead, these esteemed academics, Hollywood producers, professional athletes, online influencers, late night television hosts, and corporate executives live comfortable lives in which they converse and socialize with others who think as they do. Whereas the original Resistance was the underground, the anti-Trump Resistance controls the commanding heights of American culture. In their world, it requires more audacity to defend Donald Trump than to attack him.
Whether one likes Trump or not, the plain truth is that in fashionable circles condemning him is an act of conformity, not courage. The American Resistance features far more compliance than resistance.
Some play acting creates strange bedfellows. Progressives universally describe the January 6 riot as an “Insurrection.” Interestingly, some of the more prominent rioters do too – at least when they’re not on trial.
The January 6 riot at the Capitol was a disgusting and repugnant act of lawlessness. But it was not an insurrection.
When Spartacus led a slave revolt against Rome, that was an insurrection. When the Minutemen faced the Redcoats at Lexington and Concord, and refused an order to disperse, that was an insurrection. When the Southern states raised an army and fired upon Fort Sumter, that was an insurrection. When the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace, that was an insurrection.
An insurrection is a movement to overthrow an existing system of government through violent means. The Neanderthals who forced their way into the Capitol, chanting slogans and putting their feet up on legislators’ desks, were criminals. But to call them insurrectionists is to do them too much honor. Their crime was not an insurrection. They had no plan to overthrow our constitutional system and replace it with something else. In their lizard brains, they were the ones upholding the Constitution.
“Insurrection” is defined in the federal criminal code at 28 U.S.C. Section 2383. There have been over 1,100 criminal actions brought against the January 6 rioters. Not a single action has been based on the federal criminal insurrection statute. Instead, nearly all have been based on sturdier if less dramatic criminal bases, such as assaulting police and trespassing on government property. A tiny handful of these actions have been based on seditious conspiracy, which generally involves plotting and incitement, rather than actual violence.
It seems that everyone has become accustomed to referring to the January 6 riot as an “insurrection,” except for those prosecuting the so-called “insurrectionists.”
That includes far-right extremists, at least when they are not facing prosecution. Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, reportedly warned after the election that the country was headed for “a bloody, bloody civil war … you can call it an insurrection or you can call it a war or fight.” Chris Hill, who leads the Georgia-based Three Percenters Security Force, called the attack on the Capitol a “shot heard round the world,” adding: “The second revolution begins today.”
The attraction for those on opposite sides of the political spectrum of the term “Insurrection” is comparable to the attraction for Trump of Churchill’s defiant rhetoric, and the attraction for Trump’s critics of the “Resistance” label. In each case, the modern day performers allow themselves the great joy of associating their mundane lives with something larger and bolder, something more fearless or fearsome. But such association is mostly pretense; a lot of sound and fury, signifying very little. The performers may see themselves as great heroes or villains. But when the theater lights come on, they reveal the actors as bit players.
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Interesting observation, adds to the discussion on modern culture.
I agree with much of what you say. Especially the rhetoric used by all sides is overblown and is usually used to incite not to inform.
I tend to agree with you that January 6th was not an resurrection. But it was an attempt to unlawfully prevent the counting of electoral votes by lawfully chosen electors. It was in furtherance of a scheme to replace lawfully elected with electors with others though not elected in any sense of the word with other electors to subvert the results of a validly and lawfully conducted a Presidential election. It was in furtherance of a scheme prevent the peaceful transfer of power. One wonders if you have such a benign view of January 6th if the participants had succeeded in hanging the Vice President.