War Between Red and Blue

Not so long ago, in old people's years, there was breathing space in the middle where public discourse could take place without rancor and with the common goal of reaching a cooperative agreement on the way forward.

Much longer ago, a group of colonists believed they were "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,” as is stated in the Declaration of Independence. They then listed a number of grievances that they felt justified such action.

This document formalized colonial sentiments which had lead to an uprising in the Boston harbor several years earlier. A group of colonists had stormed a British ship and poured the cargo of tea into the sea to protest an unfair tax.

In February, 2021, a young man (Francisco Camacho) wrote a guest column in the Tennessean newspaper comparing the Boston Tea Party to the Capital uprising on January 6, 2021. He concluded "There is but one tangible difference when adjusting for place and time. In one case, the tyranny the mob feared was  real.  In the other, it was a manufactured  fiction."

In another way, they are surprisingly the same. In the eyes of the challenged governments they were both illegal. Insurrection, Revolution and Secession are all threats to the continued existence of a civil union, and no matter how well justified they may be, if the governing entity suppresses the disturbance, their laws apply. And on the other hand, if the troublemakers win, their rules become the laws of the land.

Thus, the bad boy colonists became the good guy patriots of the new United States of America. Perhaps there's another way besides armed conflict to guide a government's evolution into a more enlightened civil society. Perhaps nonlethal resistance could bring about change through the same means they hope rulers would implement to govern humanely and equably.