Karl Marx began his most literary work, "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," with these words: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
Indeed, we are certainly living through a farcical phase now, though there is nothing at all funny about it. After the US Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th and 14th amendments, we went into the brief period of Reconstruction. It was a great political opening. African-Americans began to vote and to obtain political power both locally, in states, and nationally. Reconstruction was made possible by the presence of federal troops in the South.
However, there was a huge backlash led by the virulently white supremacist Democratic party at the time. Disgustingly racist attacks were made against Lincoln in 1864 and Grant in 1868. The Republicans did not allow Frederick Douglas to campaign for Grant in that year, and there were signs of back pedaling on their part over emancipation and the right to vote.
According to a huge compromise, the federal troops were withdrawn from the South, and white supremacy, enforced by brutal and bloody violence, retook control and Jim Crow became the law of the land. The first Ku Klux Klan played a key role. The re-emergence of virulent racism continued to dominate US society and there were few signs of that lessening until after World War II.
There is a clear and valid comparison between Reconstruction and the gains of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. By the same token, the rise of our current white supremacist excremental president, strongly parallels the successful backlash in the 1870s. In this farcical repetition, DEI and Critical Race Theory fill the same role as Reconstruction.
The difference now is that there is a huge constituency for the protection of the fairness gains of the last 60 years. Unfortunately, the Democratic party establishment refuses to represent this constituency. The Democratic left is willing to do that, but they are still a very small minority among elected officials. I refuse to call them leaders because they refuse to lead.
We cannot afford to wait 90 years to reverse this dangerous back sliding.
