Early in Season 4 of the Cohen brothers’ Fargo, as the heat turns up between warring Black and Italian crime families, the “Don” of the Black syndicate, (a brilliant Chris Rock) reminds his Italian counterpart that, in the eyes of the white establishment, they are both second class citizens. This is brought home when the Italians bring their wounded leader to a hospital and the head doctor turns them away with, “…we don’t treat your kind here.” Then, in episode 4, in a tense meeting between the consiglieres of the two families, we get this speech from the Italian:
“When first I come to America i know nothing. How to dress, what to eat. On the street I hear this phrase… you know this phrase, American Values. And I think, what does it mean? Financial values I understand. Money. What a thing is worth. Human values, this also makes sense. The things we love. Family, i bambini. But this American values… land of the free home of the brave. This I don’t know. And then I learn the history of this country. Your slavery, the smallpox in blankets, how you stole the land from the natives. And I realize… to be an American is to pretend. Capisce? You pretend to be one thing, when really you are something else…”
For that beat, we are looking squarely through the “People’s History” lens — and then they go back to killing each other.
Fast forward to now as we track the polls in the run-up to November 3rd: 52/43 (national) 53/44 (approval) 51/43 (Mich.) 50/45 (Pa.) 52/43 (Wis.) We’re winning. But it begs the question, who are the 43 percent? Who ARE these people?
Who are these people willing to look past the racism and the sexual predation and the corruption and the children in cages and 231,000 dead Americans. 43 percent are somehow onboard with all that. They walk among us. (It could be a Twilight Zone episode.) 43% of us are pretending, “…to be one thing, when really you are something else…” Pretending to Make America Great. What is this “America” to them?
We have always pretended. There has always been a looking away from horror and inconvenient truths. Who are these people? They have always been here, and in numbers far greater than 43%. They looked away from the systematic annihilation of the indigenous people already here when we arrived. They looked away from the smallpox in blankets and the trail of tears. They looked away from the slavers that packed Black bodies into the holds of ships and dumped the dead overboard. They looked away from our bloody wars of conquest in Mexico and Cuba and the Philippines. They looked away from the Klan. They laughed and smiled and posed for photos at lynchings. They looked away from Jim Crow in all forms; segregation, separate and unequal housing and education, redlining. And they are still looking away from the prison industrial complex, police profiling and brutality, from ICE and children torn from their parents, locked in cages. These are the 43% still among us.
They are represented by the powerful in congress and in the WHITE house. They amass and cling to power with a ferocity we are only just coming to terms with; McConnell’s determination to make Obama a one term president and the Republican Senate’s “just say no policy” on all Obama legislation and appointments; the refusal to hear witnesses in the impeachment trial; the Merritt Garland shutdown and the theft of the Ginsburg seat. Ruthless.
There will be one of two outcomes from this election: 1) We win, or 2) the election is stolen through some combination of voter suppression and/or raw legalistic power grabs at the state level.
When Biden wins there may be a spasm of right wing outrage. Proud Boys and their ilk may perpetrate scattered acts of violence, but I’m not so worried about that. They just don’t have the numbers. Picture any of a number of incidents where they gathered: big tough babies strutting around with guns on the steps of state capitals; polo shirted dudes marching with Tiki Torches. The images are scary, but think about the numbers. How many of them are there really? Not so many. Pathetic. Are they going to march on Washington? The Pentagon? I don’t think so. Now think about Occupy or the Women’s Marches — just masses of people. That’s us.
If Biden loses in a wanton and obvious power grab, with ballots thrown out, or not counted, or electors not voting the will of their state, or Bill Barr stepping in, or the new SCOTUS putting their thumb on the scale, then it will be time to shut the country down. General Strike. Masses of people in the streets. And it will happen. We will not idly sit by and let this monster steal our country (again.) To the barricades!
When we win (I’m being hopeful now) there will be much work to do and it will be OUR turn to wield power and wield it ruthlessly. First, there’s just so much bad to be undone. It will NOT be time for us to be squishy and “reach across the aisle.” Fuck that. No, you showed us how it’s done. Now it will be our turn to take and hold and wield power — for good. And what about the 43 percent? I’m tempted to say that it will be time for a cultural revolution, for re-education. But not by putting them in camps (obviously) unless it’s the kind of lefty summer camps my parents sent me to when I was twelve and fourteen (good times!) No, we may just have to wait them out while we fix things, starting with VOTING — a revival of the voting rights act, universal registration, online voting, an end to gerrymandering, etc. They’ve already admitted that the more people vote the more they lose, so let’s just do it. And yes, PACK THE COURT. Hey, you brought it on yourselves by stealing two seats in a FUCKING row. So I don’t want to hear the whining. Just STFU. And, oh yeah, back to Paris for climate. Back to Iran for real peace and an end to the nuclear arms race. Putin will implode. Kim will implode. Ertogan will implode. Bolsonaro will implode. The 43% will diminish and die off eventually. Maybe that’s the lesson of Covid: FINE, don’t wear a mask. Be an idiot. Time to stop pretending.