Harpers Ferry Redux

 The events at the United States Capital Building yesterday (6 January 2021 for those reading this in the distant future) brought to mind an event that presaged the second American Civil War (the American Revolution was really the first). On October 16, 1859, John Brown and 21 followers seized the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His goal was to start and arm a slave revolt in the hope of abolishing slavery in the United States. The raid became a prism that clarified and magnified the issues facing the United States over the issue of slavery in light of the collapse of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Kansas and Nebraska Act of 1854. It may very well have been the event that lit the fuse on the powder keg issue that was slavery.  

I believe that yesterday's events may be a case of "history not repeating, but rhyming". In the same way that the South realized following Harpers Ferry that sentiment in the North was an existential threat to its way of life, the elements of American society that have steered the ship of state for the last 100 years or so were given concrete evidence that the populist movement that has pushed back against the growth and intrusion of bureaucracies in Europe and America has metastasized. The problem for these technocrats is that Donald Trump (much like John Brown in 1859) is a symptom, not the cause of this movement.

Even if Donald Trump drops off the face of the political landscape (not likely), the Republican Party today is a dead man walking.  I believe it is destined to fall by the wayside just as the Whigs did in the late 1850's. Tied to a legacy of failure to confront the issues most important to its constituents, a new coalition will rise from the ashes of this past election.  We can only pray that this new battle for the soul of the Republic can be limited to a transparent and trusted ballot box.  If not, I see a Balkanization of the United States that will be more unstable than Yugoslavia in the early 1990's.