On Angry Daddies, Ukraine and Undoing a Coup: Part III

FAFO from the Past - Where Nelson Mandela and Frederick Douglass Show Us How It's Done

The Republican Party has become the party of untruth and unreality. It’s their most obvious and unifying brand. They’ve become a social club for people who believe or disbelieve a whole menagerie of ridiculous things, many of which are dangerous, wildly antisocial or flat-out abusive: that violence or discrimination towards lesbian or gay or trans or Muslim individuals either doesn’t exist, or that yes it does exist but it’s both justified and appropriate; that there’s no such thing as climate change; that racism and sexism don’t exist, or if they do exist then they’re probably justified and appropriate, or - alternatively - that yes they exist but the primary victims of racism and sexism are in fact White people and men. Many MAGA followers will tell you with a straight face that a party led by power-mad, chainsaw-wielding billionaires is going to serve the needs of the working class, that Donald is only going to deport the “bad” immigrants and not their friends and family members, and that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. During the height of the pandemic, MAGA orthodoxy was that Covid wasn’t real, or if it was real then it wasn’t actually all that dangerous, a belief for which tens if not hundreds of thousands of MAGA followers paid with their lives. The cornerstone MAGA belief is that Biden lost in 2020, when he in fact won by 4.4 points and seven million votes representing 51.3% of the electorate. Conversely, MAGA also believes that Trump’s 2024 win - by 1.5 points and 2.3 million votes representing 49.8% of the total - represents an enormous victory and a mandate for unprecedented, wrecking ball change. The belief that Ukraine somehow attacked Russia and not the other way around is a shiny new MAGA belief that pairs well with the older MAGA belief that Putin is a more trustworthy, reliable and desirable partner than our traditional democratic allies in Europe and elsewhere.

All of this is clearly, obviously, demonstrably wrong, in addition to being just plain dumb. Truth is MAGA’s kryptonite. So we should beat them, relentlessly, with truth, and with the escalating costs and consequences of their chickenshit, head-in-the-sand complicity and denial.

But how?

On left, Frederick Douglass in 1852, fourteen years after escaping slavery and seven years after the publication of his narrative. On right, Nelson Mandela four years after his release from prison, voting for the first time in his life in the 1994 South African election, which he won.

There is a phenomenon called the Mandela Effect, in which people collectively remember some event or cultural detail that didn’t actually happen or that is different from their recollection. I’m aware that I may be contributing to the Mandela Effect with some of the specifics of the following, but the outline of the story is true, and it happens to involve Nelson Mandela. In my life, I have encountered two moments of political and spiritual warriorship that stopped me in my tracks and changed my understanding of what is possible in fierce defense of the truth. (In reality there are probably at least three of these moments, but I learned about Martin Luther King Jr and his “I Have a Dream” speech when I was very young and I don’t remember a moral pantheon without him in it.) At some point twenty or thirty years ago, I saw - only one time - a short video of an interaction between Nelson Mandela, the then newly-freed leader of the Black South African opposition, and F. W. De Klerk, the White president of South Africa who had released Mandela from prison. As I recall, they were both speaking on the floor of the South African parliament. At one point as De Klerk was speaking there in front of the other Afrikaner lawmakers he made some passing claim that I remember as seeming relatively innocuous, the kind of boilerplate and conventional untruth that often passes without notice or challenge. Mandela wasn’t having it. As I recall, the two men were facing one another not that far apart on the floor. Mandela interrupted - immediately and without hesitation - the moment De Klerk spoke the offending phrase. Mandela may have raised his arm, and I recall that he spoke with clarity and directness.

Tyranny itself may seem unassailable, but tyranny is built of a thousand mean and stupid little lies. Let the lies pass unchallenged and tyranny grows stronger. Destroy the lies, one by one - without fear or apology - and the walls must eventually come tumbling down.

What I remember Mandela saying to De Klerk, there in the lion’s den, in a voice that cut like a diamond, was this:

“That, sir, is a lie.”

This, to the leader of a violently racist state and to the man who had personally released him from prison - and who could presumably send him back - while surrounded on all sides by dozens of the highest ranking members of that violently racist state. The gold standard for speaking truth to power. The dictionary definition of fierce and unintimidated resistance to evil. May we all be so bold.

[And I may be misremembering the exact quote, or some other detail of this confrontation, but Mandela’s boldness, his clarity and his irresistible integrity were staggering, and as described. And, regardless of whether Mandela said this particular line in this particular circumstance, “That, sir, is a lie” is a pretty ferocious and appropriate response to much of what MAGA is spouting at the moment. Don’t debate them. Beat them with truth. Over and over and over again.]

The second moment that stopped me in my tracks - and that changed my life - I encountered in high school, when we read “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”. Everything about Frederick Douglass deserves more time than we have right now, but hopefully even a brief recounting of this incident will be of use. About two-thirds of the way through his Narrative, Douglass describes what he calls “the turning-point in my career as a slave”. As punishment for his increasing independence of mind, Douglass was sent by his master to live for a year with a slave-breaker named Edward Covey, where he was brutally abused. About halfway through this ordeal, Douglass went to his master asking for protection and to be sent to another home because he was sure that Covey would kill him if he stayed where he was. His master refused and sent him back. Almost immediately upon his return, Covey attacked him again but, as Douglass wrote, “at this moment - from whence came the spirit I don’t know - I resolved to fight”. To lay hands on a White man was punishable by death, but Douglass did it anyway. The two men brawled for almost two hours and Covey got by far the worst of it. Douglass reports that in the remaining six months Covey never laid so much as a finger on him in anger, and that “My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place”. Douglass also writes that “I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.”

It’s that last sentence, formal as it is, that rearranged my head and has stayed with me ever since. In its simplest form: “If you want to beat me down, you’re gonna have to kill me.”

Amen.

Like the great Frederick Douglass - like Nelson Mandela and Volodymyr Zelenskyy and like the millions who came before us, whose sacrifices and accomplishments this traitorous regime would erase and destroy - let us now resolve to fight.

This is Part 3 of 3

Part I: In Which Every Day is Angry White Man Day - is HERE

Part II: In Which We Discover That We’re in a Monster Movie, Not a Police Procedural - is HERE

The Whole Essay (Parts 1-3 as one unit) - is HERE

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