A famous American feud involved the Hatfields and the McCoys.* These two extended families lived on either side of a border stream called Tug Fork that separated West Virginia and Kentucky.
Nobody could remember what started the feud. Some said it had to do with the American Civil War where the McCoys were Unionists and the Hatfields were Confederates. Others said the fight started when Rand’l McCoy accused a Hatfield of stealing one of his hogs in 1878. Whatever the original sin, the first killings didn’t happen until 1882. The fighting went on to the end of the 19th century and finally ended sometime early in the second decade of the twentieth.
Like many long-term disagreements, the origins aren’t always clear but continue to be fueled by ongoing incidents. On a much larger scale, we have seen historical “feuds” that last for centuries. Many are founded on religious disagreements which can go beyond factual reasoning. It is not usually a disagreement of fundamental beliefs, although such factors may be used as an excuse, but most are about power and control.
If we look at the two main Islamic sects, the Sunni and Shia, their split goes back 14 centuries when there was disagreement as to who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad as leader of their faith. The resulting split went 85-15 with 85 percent becoming Sunni. While the split was initially peaceful, by the late 20th century extremists in each sect began a fight for religious and political supremacy. The minority Shia faction is prominent in Iran, Iraq, and a few other countries. The Sunni Muslims are primarily in Central Asia (including China), Europe (including Russia and the Balkans), South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Arab World, Turkey, and among Muslims in the United States.
It was the fight for political power advanced by Muslim religious fundamentalists of both sects that widened the chasm that was made worse following the two Persian Gulf Wars, the US ouster of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime in Iraq, and the regional uprisings known now as the Arab Spring that started in 2011.
That last reference to the Arab Spring was a drive for increased democracy and cultural freedoms among Muslims that started with a single incident in December 2010. It seems that a Tunisian street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest of the seizing of his vegetable stand by the police for a permit violation. With his sacrifice, protests erupted and led to the overthrow of the authoritarian president who had ruled for over 20 years. The success of this initial protest fueled other grassroots movements elsewhere.
In another Arab Spring moment in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011 and was dragged through the streets, tortured, and executed. In Syria, things were different, and Bashar al-Assad remains in power.
All of this is to say that, while the excuse may be religious doctrine, the real motivation is political power. It is like what we have here in the US. We have a Christian extremist minority making serious inroads into our democracy using religious doctrine as their excuse. While they don’t have the numbers to win in a democratic fashion, they do have a strong will and a fanaticism that seems to motivate even the non-religious among us to action.
No one could mistake Donald Trump or his MAGA movement as one founded in religious piety, but their willingness to act in concert with this Christian minority has been meaningful. The overthrow of Roe v. Wade with his trifecta of appointments to the US Supreme Court is just the beginning of another grab for the reigns of our government and the power it wields. While we know that Donald Trump is not a religious person, we also know he is an opportunistic grifter who will use support where he finds it. If the religious right votes for him, he will support their actions to federally ban all abortions.
In recent surveys, Americans are so distrustful of our public institutions that many are now willing to accept that a violent overthrow may be their only way to “right the ship.” More people are willing to abandon democracy in favor of authoritarian rule. The violence in Portland Oregon in 2020, and Trump’s deployment of federal law-enforcement agents in tactical gear against the wishes of the government of Oregon (mayor of Portland and governor of Oregon) was to be a harbinger of Trump’s efforts that culminated in the violence of January 6th. The difference in Washington D.C. was that Trump was the insurrectionist.
Trump’s actions in Portland in 2020 and later in Chicago were clearly in violation of our constitution. While a president has the power granted under the Insurrection Act of 1807 to quell an insurrection, he is also required to do so AFTER a formal proclamation and only when state laws cannot be enforced to protect the constitutional rights of its citizens. Eisenhower did this in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1958 and George H.W. Bush did it during the L.A. riots of 1992. Trump issued no formal proclamation and neither Portland nor Chicago citizens were having their constitutional rights threatened. This mention here has nothing to do with using religion as a weapon only that, once democratic norms are trampled, all other rights can suffer a similar fate.
Pitting the left and right against one another under a banner of Christian righteousness seems to be a page out of the history books being wielded by a man who doesn’t know history. Perhaps he knows someone who knows history. If our democracy is overturned under the guise of some convoluted religious logic, misinformation, and an existing political system that has been twisted by interested parties for financial gain, the outcome will have us questioning how we got here.
Whatever the result, there will always be someone willing to take advantage of a disgruntled populace through any means necessary. For many the cause will be the advancement of some religious ideology but there should be no mistaking the true motivation is just a lust for power and the financial rewards that follow.
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*Postscript: One theory regarding the Hatfield v. McCoy feud that I ran across mentioned the possibility of a genetic predisposition for adrenal tumors known as von Hippel-Lindau disease, which may explain why the McCoy family members were so violent. Such tumors ran in the McCoy family and are known to cause surges in adrenaline that can lead to violent behavior. Eleven-year-old Winnter Reynolds is a descendant of the McCoy line and she and other family members have the disease. In 2002 a symbolic peace treaty was signed by Hatfield and McCoy descendants. Members of Winnter Reynolds’ family have attended Hatfield-McCoy reunions for years and have been swapping stories about their distant cousins all their lives.
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