In colonial Boston they played a game every year. This game was the local version of those old European games that lie at the roots of football, rugby, and so on, essentially organized brawls with a few rules to limit the mayhem. The Boston game was played on the Common. The two teams represented north and south Boston, although from the beginning there were accusations of ringers from out of town. At either end of the Common a sort of scarecrow was set up that represented the Pope. These were of course hard-core Protestants who were not fans of the Papacy, so one supposes these were mocking images.
The goal of the game was to break through the other team's wall, reach the other end of the Common and tear down the other side's image of the Pope.
And this is American politics in this moment. Two sides, who call each other Right and Left, although those words no longer have any meaning to the rest of us, have made our public discourse into a field where they can fight a battle with very few rules, aiming to defeat the other side and tear down their idols.
The rest of us need to put an end to this riot before the participants burn down the whole city.
4 comments:
The might Justinian couldn't stop or prevent the Nika riots - who in America today is half the leader he was?
Especially when the bulk of the pressure pushing people toward mayhem is coming from our sensationalist media and their modern Yellow Journalism? They stoke the flames rather than try to quell the embers, because that's more profitable.
The rest of us need to put an end to this riot before the participants burn down the whole city.
The two political parties each capture about 30% of eligible voters for themselves. A whopping 40% of people eligible to vote simply... don't.
If "the rest of us" can't be bothered even just to vote, what makes you think they'll lift a finger to accomplish anything else? Apathy is a hell of a drug, particularly when the system manages to convince huge swathes of people that their vote doesn't count in the first place.
The fact that they were doing this in colonial times might be a hint that the current moment is not unique, perhaps?
Bingo.
It's a point I've made repeatedly to John, but he persists in framing things as this strange, unprecedented turn unique to our current time and place. But populist, factionalist chaos is ancient and enduring.
It's not even unique for America - our history is chock full of factional violence, often driven by extreme rhetoric, more often then not erupting into full blown riots, if not outright armed rebellions. We just don't really hear or think about most of the historical examples all that often. Such as...
The Pennamite-Yankee Wars, the Pennsylvania Mutiny, Shay's Rebellion, the Paper Money Riot, the Whiskey Rebellion, Fries's Rebellion, Gabriel's Rebellion, the German Coast Uprising, Nat Turner's Rebellion, the Toledo War, the Missouri Mormon War...
...the Anti-Rent War, the Regulator-Moderator War, the Bellevue War, the Dorr Rebellion, the Tutt-Everett War, the Philadelphia Prayer riots, the Milwaukee Bridge War, Bleeding Kansas, the Utah War, the Dead Rabbits riot, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry...
...the Morrisite War, the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the New York City draft riots, the Oyster Wars, the Fenian raids, the Memphis Massacre of 1866 and the New Orleans Massacre of 1866, the Sutton-Taylor feud, the Pulaski riot, the Opelousas Massacre, the Barber-Mizell feud, the Kirk-Holden War...
...the Goingsnake Massacre, the Meridian race riot of 1871, the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871, the Colfax County War, the (unrelated) Colfax Massacre, the Brooks-Baxter War, the Battle of Liberty Place, the Election Massacre of 1874, the Vicksburg Massacre, the Mason County War, the Hamburg Massacre, the Baltimore railroad strike of 1877...
...the Chicago railroad strike of 1877, the Pittsburgh railroad strike of 1877, the Reading Railroad Massacre, the 1877 St. Louis general strike, the Scranton general strike, the 1877 Shamokin Uprising, the Lincoln County War, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the Pleasant Valley War, the Dodge City War, the Cincinnati riots of 1884, the Rock Springs Massacre...
...the Haymarket Massacre, the Bay View Massacre, the Gray County War, the Hells Canyon Massacre, the Bayonet Constitution, the Wilcox Rebellion of 1889, the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the Leper War on Kaua'i, Black Week, the Wilcox Rebellion of 1895, the Thibodaux massacre, the Jaybird–Woodpecker War...
...the 1889 Forrest City riot, the Johnson County War, the Castaic Range War, the Morewood Massacre, the 1891 New Orleans lynchings, the Coal Creek war, the Homestead Strike, the May Day riots of 1894, the Pullman Strike, the Bituminous coal miners' strike of 1894, the Spring Valley Race Riot of 1895, the Lattimer massacre...
...I'd better stop and not run through the 20th century, or we'll be here all day.
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