Stealing, Murdering, and Raping Like the Barbarians of Old

The Republican Party has come to embrace stealing, and in its worship of the gun culture and stand your ground laws, murder…

 

Republicans are always complaining about class warfare but since 2001 they have been on what can only be described as an extended plundering expedition on behalf of the rich. Their most recent activities since the Gilded Age may have begun in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have hardly let up since George W. Bush left office. The only difference now is that while before it was foreign nationals and American taxpayers shared the dangers, today American citizens are their victims, and the annual Ryan Budget has become the crown jewel of this scheme.
The ancient and medieval worlds were plagued by attacks from outside what were considered “civilized” areas, by what were deemed “barbarians.” My ancestors were members of one of these groups, the Norse. The Norse had a concept of what they termed, in Old Norse, the innangarðr (the community) and utangarðr (the lawless wilds). The innangarðr was sacred and enjoyed frith, or peace. Those who violated this peace were outlawed and forced into the utangarðs (where life, in Hobbesian terms, was nasty, brutish, and short) for their sins. In a historical side note, Leif Eriksson was one such outlaw.
But while bands of Norsemen would raid those in the utangarðr, for example, Ireland, France, England, etc., and Norsemen from one locale would raid Norsemen from other locales, they did not plunder their own communities. And don’t get the idea that the so-called civilized lands of Medieval Europe were superior, except in their own minds.
But my point here is, if my ancestors qualify in most history books as barbarians, what does this make the Republicans, who don’t spare a second thought for their own community, who look upon their own people with a rapaciousness once reserved for the utangarðr?
Tacitus wrote admiringly of the Germans in 98 CE that, “This is what they consider the strongest of bonds, the sacredness of the home, the gods of wedded life” (Germania). What is sacred to the heathen mind is the community. The community, the inangarðr is the home of luck. In it, people dwell “in luck, in frith, in honour.” while the wilds, the utangarðr “is waste, the home of evil and unluck.” (Grönbech, 111). The wild is a joyless place, lacking not only the comforts of home, but the necessities of life.
And it has never been more clear that the Republicans want to deprive those of us in their own community of the comforts of home and the necessities of life, right down to the food we eat and the water we drink, and even their air we breathe. Depriving us of medical care seems to be just a bonus for them, a few more profits to squeeze out of the victims of their plundering before consigning them to their deaths. Gated communities will form the new inangarðr in the plutocratic Utopia. The rest of us will slave in a dystopian, distinctly Hobbesian, utangarðr to sustain their shameless lifestyles.
Where is their morality? As James C. Russell defines it, “the standards of ethical conduct among the Germanic peoples appear to have been ultimately derived from a sociobiological drive for group survival through in-group altruism. Ethical misconduct thus consisted primarily in violating the code of honor of one’s kindred or one’s comitatus.” (Russell, 204). But there is no place for altruism in the Republican worldview unless it is that of one rich person for another.
Grönbech illustrates the depth of these differences:

Family tradition constitutes the entire ethical standard. A fixed line of demarcation, separating evil from good, was not known. There was, of course, a broad average, as among all peoples. The Germanic people knew that certain acts, stealing first and foremost, murder, and some few others, brought dishonor upon a man, whoever the culprit might be (Grönbech, 74).

The Republican Party, on the other hand, has come to embrace stealing, and in its worship of the gun culture and stand your ground laws, murder. Where is the morality, you ask? There isn’t any. The Republican Party has done away with the inconvenience of morality. It is not congenial to their profit margins. Their view of economic and social justice is as warped as their view of religion.
It is easy to see why they would oppose the idea of liberal governance. Government, we are taught, is of the People, by the People, for the People, and as such, it is an unhappy barrier between the 1 percent’s desires and its victims. Government restrains. What the Republican Party wants is a government that, rather than regulating corporations, facilities their plundering of the taxpayer. Corporate welfare, obscenity that it is, is only the tip of the iceberg.
If, as studies show, America is fast becoming a second-rate nation, there is a very good reason for that, and one need look no farther than the Republican Party and its rich patrons, who have become the new barbarians at the gate.
The U.S. Constitution is the tenuous barrier between us and them, and it is wearing thin as Republican lawmakers do their utmost to outlaw the Constitution wherever and whenever the opportunity arises. And we have a Supreme Court that, rather than closing the gates, has opened them, letting these new barbarians run rampant through our streets, stealing, raping, and murdering like the raiders of old.
The question is, what can Americans do about these barbarians and what are we willing to do? It was Justice Roberts himself who told Americans that they had two choices: accept plutocracy or revolt. The poor, historically, have a very poor record against the wealthy, with a few exceptions, and our pitchforks are more metaphorical than real these days, but we are not without power even so. The question is, what will we do with it, and will we do it before it’s too late?