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Throughout the last four years many have searched with hopeful diligence through US history for evidence America has previously slogged through circumstances similar to those that unfolded throughout the Trump Presidency and moved forward intact. Unfortunately, at this moment the most comparable parallels can be found at where we’d least like to look, the US after the election of 1860.

Anybody complaining about the eternity between when Joe Biden was projected the winner of Decision/2020 and his inauguration – still a seemingly interminable 125 hours away as this column is written – was not around in the winter of 1861 when the nation had to suffer “doughface” James Buchanan until March as the Union steadily came unglued. It’s no coincidence that Buchanan was a fairly well established consensus pick by historians as the worst POTUS ever to sully the high office until our civic catastrophe elevated Trump, who now holds the ignominious distinction by a wide and ever expanding margin.

What differentiates the two is that back then most all saw Buchanan as wholly insufficient and dispensable, whereas Trump somehow has created a frothing-at-the-mouth cult fully radicalized to believe his continued relevance is fundamental to US survival. In 1861 most southerners were willing to dismantle the Union based on the lie Lincoln and the GOP meant to abolish slavery instead of merely prohibiting it in new US territories. In 2021 a dangerously significant minority is prepared to dissolve America based on an exponentially more preposterous falsehood, rabidly baseless claims by the vanquished incumbent President they adore that his election loss by more than 7 million votes was the result of systemic voter fraud throughout only the battleground states that determined his defeat. It’s conspiracy delirium that’s both targeted and all-encompassing, detailed and broad strokes.

In 1861 there was nothing the President-elect could say to dissuade seditionists his desire for unity far outweighed any commitment to an abolitionist agenda. Much of the nation was never prepared to recognize as legitimate the man most historians now rank as America’s greatest leader. Right now millions feel exactly the same way about Biden, based on nothing more than our worst President’s relentless promise during both of his campaigns that he would be a sore loser for the ages. The US Capitol was breached last week for the first time since 1812 by a nihilist mob convinced a defeated incumbent’s inane hyperbole to rebrand yet another abject failure ensured by his lazy incompetence equated with the righteousness of our nation’s founding. Think about that one for a moment.

When Lincoln finally did place his hand on the Bible, Southern secession was a foregone conclusion. He would have to build an army by instituting the first military draft in American history. Ironically, he would find greatness for abolishing slavery, a crusade he adopted only after the slave masters refused to take yes for an answer. Southern politicians pandered en masse to initiating a conflict their hubris allowed them only to imagine as a glorious march toward liberation. Now, even after perhaps the most disgraceful afternoon in US history, a grand total of 10 Republicans in Congress found enough shame to hold Trump accountable for the mob violence and looting of the US Capitol he alone incited. In fact, two-thirds of the GOP House caucus still refuses to renounce the lie responsible for radicalism driving the wretched core’s treason.

Today more than 4000 Americans died from Covid-19 yet again. At the current rate of infection, that number could climb to 6-8000 per day. Alabama has near zero ICU capacity available right now. Yet and still, thousands of Crimson Tide football fans gave that grave health emergency not a moment’s consideration as they climbed on top of each other in the streets to celebrate a national championship superspreader style. Covid, shmovid… WWDD (What Would Donald Do.) Flyover America is going to keep us sick and destitute one way or the other, whether it’s celebrating or rebelling. Good times or end days!

Biden is inheriting civic hell, a perfect storm of militant ignorance, white entitlement and grotesque selfishness rebranded as yet another hideous Fox/AM perversion of patriotic disdain for political correctness. How can you possibly negotiate with a political class beholden to such sociopathy? Lincoln had to slog through blood to get to the other side. Biden starts with a killing field. Whatever sensible federal guidance his team puts forward, it is certain MAGA Governors will pursue nullification, or else be burned in effigy.

As the US lurched toward civil war in 1861, very few thought too much about how horrific the genie they were letting out of the bottle could be. After all, picnickers from DC and vicinity came out to witness the first battles. What could go wrong? When all was said and done 620,000 had perished, about half of that total from disease. Today we seem intent on doing it all in reverse, with half a million or more needlessly gone from a deadly virus before we even start with the real killing. What does a country look like with much of its oldest AND fittest gone at once? Last Wednesday Trump’s walking dead appeared willing to find out.

So what is the way forward? The good news is, like circa 1861, a serious man of good faith will replace a dangerous fool at the helm. But the situation is dire. Forget national unity, merely achieving and maintaining functional governance currently seems a lofty ambition. In addition to varying degrees of civil unrest we can expect throughout the country, even if we dodge the bullet of organized extremist violence, the best scenario still suffers the fact that at least a quarter of America’s polity care more about culture war rot and getting even with libs for the constant unfairness their whiney hero suffered than anything actually relating to self-interest. The rational actor model no longer applies.

Just like Lincoln, nothing Biden can say or do is going to change that. They are lost to us as anything other than the pestilence they demand to be. One hundred and sixty years ago America was torn apart by those who felt entitled to a way of life dependent on the original sin of slavery, a culture reliant on the lie of racial superiority. Now we are being dismantled by a group equally obsessed by a right they imagine is every bit as integral to their existence… the freedom to be nasty jerks, entitled to resent and despise most others for no other reason than the insecurity that comes naturally to such a disposition.

For four years one of their own has been President, emboldening them to be their worst without inhibition. Last Wednesday demonstrated the lengths they will go to deny usurpation of the control they felt with their grievance empath in the White House. We paid a terrible price long ago to figure out the cost for unity, which history would decree ending slavery justified. Most now understand, had that wrong been righted at the outset, blood would not have been spilled “four score and seven years” later. What we are forced to fork over in the future will be determined by how long we keep trying to avoid the tab today by tolerating what we shouldn’t. BC