After the Capitol siege: Coexistence Is the Only Option [View all]

[TomVilmer]

Last edited Mon Jan 25, 2021, 04:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Millions of Americans sympathize with the Capitol insurrection. Everyone else must figure out how to live alongside them.
By Anne Applebaum - The Atlantic

Not all Republicans are seditionists, nor is everyone who voted for Trump, nor is every conservative: Nothing about rejecting your country’s political system is conservative. ... As of this week, 32 percent were still telling pollsters that Biden was not the legitimate winner. ... That’s a very large number of people. For although Trump will eventually exit political life, the seditionists will not. ... We have no choice except to coexist. ...

But how? Drop the argument and change the subject. That’s the counterintuitive advice you will hear from people who have studied Northern Ireland before the 1998 peace deal, or Liberia, or South Africa, or Timor-Leste—countries where political opponents have seen each other as not just wrong, but evil. ...

In the years before and after the peace settlement in Northern Ireland, for example, many “peacebuilding” projects did not try to make Catholics and Protestants hold civilized debates about politics, or talk about politics at all. Instead, they built community centers, put up Christmas lights, and organized job training for young people. ...

I recognize that this is not what everyone wants to hear. ... Some might even prefer an American version of de-Baathification: track down every last Capitol-riot sympathizer and shame them on social media, preferably with enough rigor that they lose their jobs. I know how they feel, because I often feel that way too. But then I remember: It won’t work. We’ll wake up the next morning, and they’ll still be there.

[This is just some blocks from her thoughts. There is much more here:]
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/seditionists-need-path-back-society/617746/

(I was asked to remove some more of her article for copyright reason, which I now has done)