Not Bad Apples but Rotten Slices of Pie. Deadly to Democracy if Served.

Prioritize threats. Trump’s cohorts challenged democracy. But in the decade or decades ahead, these Trumpists will continue to threaten. Apologists claim this was a fever that broke. It’s not. A cancer isn’t feverish. It metastasizes.

Recognize the leading cause. Not income inequality, loss of manufacturing jobs, anger at being ignored. Plenty of Trumpists aren’t stupid. They know fat cat tax cuts feed inequality. They know most manufacturing jobs fled 20, 30 years ago. Most never worked in a factory, and wouldn’t want to. If being ignored made revolutionaries, the world would have ended a long time ago.

The leading cause is ethnic fear. In the US, that’s mapped onto skin color. As heinous as it sounds, it’s not surprising. No country’s ethnic majority becomes a minority without mayhem. Between 1960 and 1980, whites in Brazil fell from 60% to 50%, the deadly zone. Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil had a military dictatorship. By 2050 20% of Germany and France may be Muslim, and the far right is already ramping up fascism. Around 1998, Muslims eclipsed Christians in Cote d’Ivoire. A civil war started in 2002. In 1850, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and especially South Carolina had more African-Americans than whites. The Civil War began 10 years later. Some author will write a shocking book exposing how this has happened all over the world, and it will gain 15 minutes of chatter fame. But it’s not one of a thousand problems — it’s the leading cause.

When a dominant ethnic group feels it’s demographic power slipping, it panics. What can we expect? In most places, the military aligns with, or is taken over by, the threatened majority. It imposes martial law or a permanent state of emergency.

I was in Cote d’Ivoire during it’s civil war. Insurrectionists were not goons. They used the language of aggrievement, but their palpable concern was ethnic hatred. They felt Muslim groups were not human. Religion mapped to ethnicity. Christians had been dominant during most of the 20th century, and now their status was threatened. They planned and plotted. Christians and Muslims controlled different parts of the military. The civil war lasted from 2002 to 2005. The resolution involved a Presidential election. The Christian incumbent, Gbagbo, lost to a Muslim, Ouattara. Gbagbo’s courts invalidated the results of Muslim departments. Conflict resumed, until Ouattara’s forces swept him to power.

The loss of ethnic power and privilege is the leading cause, but what is the greatest risk? In the U.S., right-wing media keeps propaganda flowing. Mendacious politicians promote hatreds. Social media enables conspiracies. But these are not the greatest risk. That remains the security forces. Just ask rebels or fascists who want to overthrow things. They’ll tell you it’s about the control of the military and police.

Police and the military will play the key role, if the U.S. fails its ethnic transition. Don’t expect a layer of cautious, democratically-minded generals to hold the line. When ethnic conflict ripens, there will be colonels ready to assume authority. Likewise, police chiefs are spokespeople. It’s sergeants who call the shots.

The most important thing to do, to prevent this cancer from causing the nation’s democratic death, is to aggressively treat the penetration of the military and police by insurrectionists. They’ve got to be purged and rigorously monitored. Easy to say, and plenty say it. To do it means making hard choices.

Those who want police reform should exploit the apologies of opponents, who say “it’s just bad apples.” Systemic racism exists, but the problem can’t be solved with racial awareness training. There are plenty of real racists in the ranks, and they’ve got to go. The apple barrel isn’t marred by one or two, it’s full of rot. That’s what happens when bad apples are left in with the rest. 99% are not good cops. Nationwide, the insurrectionist rump is about 1/3 of the entire population, maybe 40% of the white population. They make up over 1/3 of the police, since the police skew white.

The same with the military, which draws a majority of recruits from southern states. As American as apple pie. Ranks are full of white supremacists. Veterans become insurrectionists. Because the military uses metrics that reduce the potential of stupid people to become officers, racial resentment is strongest in the lower ranks. It’s perhaps 50% there, 30% among lieutenants, and gradually less higher up. But higher ups have more power. One or two bad apple generals can spoil an entire country.

This is the gravest risk facing our children’s generation.

That’s the problem we have to prioritize. Solutions will not be painless. The public will focus on immediate drama. Solutions emerge by harnessing public response to today’s crisis in order to address the priority: white supremacists in police and military ranks have got to go.

We have historical evidence to warn us, and lots of people can plan and act. America’s apple pie has many rotten slices. Let’s get them out of service.