Let’s Examine The Distance Between A Statesman And A Shitposter

What Would Charles Sumner Do About The Billionaire Who Loved Hitler Memes?

Last week, the NY Times published an Independence Day column, an interview with Zaakir Tameez about his new biography of integrationist Charles Sumner by Jamelle Bouie, The Civil War That Never Ended. Sumner learned from John Quincy Adams (post-presidency) that the Declaration was a promisary note and a pledge that needed to be fulfilled (“All men are created equal”) and that “the only way to bring the Constitution in line with the Declaration was to amend it.”

When Sumner was first appointed to the Senate, explained Tameez, “Anyone who was being appointed to a cabinet position or to any position that the Senate had to confirm would be asked about their opinions on slavery. All the committee chairs in Washington would not have been selected if they held antislavery political positions. The leading members of the Senate are all coordinating to ensure that slavery is expanding within the Southwest. Sumner is appalled and deeply disturbed by this… For the first two years, Sumner is getting a lot of pressure from his abolitionist and antislavery constituents to speak out and to make a bold antislavery speech. His base, so to speak, is furious with him for remaining relatively silent at first… He’s one of the founders of the Republican Party… At the first Republican National Convention in 1856, they are chanting Charles Sumner’s name in unison. The Republicans print Sumner’s speech “The Crime Against Kansas.” As many as three million copies are printed by the Republican Party. He’s very much one of the first Republicans and one of the symbolic founders of the Republicans.”

This is after the big event— when he was caned on the Senate floor by South Carolina Democrat Preston Brooks in 1856. “By this time,” said Tameez, “there were four million enslaved people in the South. Roughly one-quarter of the Southern population is enslaved. Slaveholders are terrified of domestic rebellion. And as part of that, they are seeking to suppress abolitionist dissent by any means necessary. [I]n Washington, a slave city, many of Sumner’s antislavery colleagues are nervous to speak out against this terrible threat to democracy. They themselves are getting harassed and accosted on the streets. They knew that there were consequences for speaking out against slavery, particularly if they spoke out in very strong language. If they were muted and quiet about it, they were safe. If they spoke out strongly, they were at risk of attack because Southern slavocrats in Washington followed the same social mores of South Carolina and Georgia: If you spoke against slavery, you would get hurt. In this context, Sumner decides after thinking it over that he needs to speak out, that if no one else will, he will do so. And Sumner doesn’t know moderation. If he’s going to speak out, he’s going to go all out... He knew that he was putting himself at risk, and he did so anyway because he saw the political utility for the antislavery movement if an incident ended up occurring... [T]he North is appalled by seeing this outpouring of violence and the celebration of violence by the South. The South sees it as a necessary act to discipline the abolitionist agitators of the North and show them who’s boss.”

In the aftermath of the caning, the North is galvanized. Frederick Douglass said that no one act did more to rouse the North to antislavery sentiment. There are tens of thousands of Northerners gathering in what they called indignation meetings to lament over the caning and to organize action afterward. It’s really an organic, grass-roots Republican agenda, Republican program, that emerges across the North.

…Sumner writes an article laying out his theory of Reconstruction in 1862, way before anyone else was even thinking about it. And then, in fact, he doesn’t publish it because he notices that the country’s not quite there yet and waits a little bit longer before it gets published in The Atlantic. And in that article, Sumner basically lays out his theory that Southern states had committed suicide. It’s called the state suicide theory.

The logic here being that when Southern states decided to rebel against the national government, they had effectively killed themselves as legal entities. And now those Southern states had reverted to a territorial status, which means that Congress has plenary power over them. Sumner emphasizes that Congress should play the key role in these states after the war.

And what should Congress do? Sumner argues that Congress should require Southern states to have new constitutional conventions where Black people could participate and draft new conventions, constitutions. Sumner wanted to add certain provisions to this. He wanted to require mandatory public schools across the South.

He wanted to ensure the voting rights, of course. He also wanted there to be mass land redistribution. He said: Shatter the plantations and give the pieces to the slaves. He plays a role both in public and also behind the scenes.

After he died, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in his honor, but eight years later, the Supreme Court, which Sumner believed had no right to do this, overturns the law in the civil rights cases. And within a few years after that, you saw the rise of Jim Crow, which would have been effectively illegal under Sumner’s bill. And it wasn’t until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that this idea of a right to public accommodation was nationally authorized again.”

Elon Musk is no Charles Sumner. As a matter of fact, former Republican William Kristol, in his essay, One Cheer For Elon? wrote that Musk “isn’t someone you can count on. He’s also not someone with whom you want to associate. Musk is a loathsome person who’s done a lot of damage to this country and the world, both as part of the Trump administration and otherwise. He’s certainly no reliable ally in the fight for a decent liberal democracy…  But Musk does seem to have figured out that the best way to go after Trump is to embrace Trumpist conspiracy theories, and ask why Trump is abandoning his conspiracist promises. To hurt Trump, you have to go hunting where the MAGA ducks are. And they don’t dwell in the budget spreadsheets. They paddle around in the conspiracist pond. Prying some of those extremist and conspiracist voters away from Trump, and from Republican candidates in the midterms, would be a good thing. It would help increase the chances that more Democrats, who believe in liberal democracy, would win.

Is it an unfortunate reflection on the situation we now face that such an expedient may be needed?

Perhaps. But the current situation, an ongoing authoritarian takeover of our government, is grave.

Is it an unfortunate reflection on human nature itself that such an expedient may be necessary, or at least useful? Yes. But it may simply be a fact that sometimes it takes a conspiracist to pry away some conspiracist voters. It takes an extremist to pry away extremists. It takes a bigot to pry away bigots. Such devices aren’t pleasant. But they could be helpful.

… One tip-off that Musk is on to something is that Donald Trump seems worried.

“I think it’s ridiculous to start a third party,” Trump told reporters Sunday evening. “It’s always been a two-party system, and I think starting a third party just adds to confusion… Third parties have never worked, so he can have fun with it but I think it’s ridiculous!”

A little later that evening, Trump seemed to move from pity for Musk’s effort to alarm about it, writing on Truth Social:

I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely “off the rails,” essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks. He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States— The System seems not designed for them. The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats, who have lost their confidence and their minds!

Make no mistake: Trump doesn’t fear disruption and chaos in general. Trump fears disruption and chaos in his coalition. We should welcome disruption and chaos in Trump’s coalition. It would be a very good thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I loathe Elon Musk just as much as I loathe Donald Trump. Indeed, given his apparent lurch over the last 24 hours, via his AI Grok bot, from mere longstanding sympathy to fascism into flat-out pro-Hitlerism, I’m open to the proposition that Musk is more loathsome than Trump.

But Trump controls the federal government. The threat to our liberal democracy comes from him and his administration. Trump can deploy the National Guard and the army. Musk cannot. Trump controls DHS. Musk does not. Trump can use the Justice Department to go after his enemies in a way Musk cannot.

Elon Musk won’t save us. Ultimately, he is part of the problem, not part of the solution. But first we need to deal with the present. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Sufficient unto today is the damage Elon can do to Trump.

Sumner stood for the proposition that a republic could be redeemed through courage, principle and the slow grind of justice. He understood that progress would come not from clever maneuvering or moral compromise, but from calling evil by its name, even if at personal cost. He was beaten nearly to death for daring to say that slavery was not only an economic and political system, but a moral abomination that had no place in a free society. And still he returned to the Senate and kept pushing forward, knowing full well that history only bends when someone dares to push it.

Musk, by contrast, is the grotesque funhouse mirror of that tradition. He may even be envisioning his new party to be monarchial. He's certainly a man with no principles, no integrity, and no discernible moral core, playing at politics like a boy setting ants on fire. He is not brave; he is not wise; he is not decent. He is rich, bored, and unmoored— and therefore dangerous. If he disrupts Trump’s grip on the authoritarian right, it won’t be because he believes in democracy, but because he’s bored with the man he once admired and wants the attention for himself. It’s not strategy; it’s vandalism.

In a functioning republic, we wouldn’t need a nihilistic tech bro to neutralize a fascist strongman. But this isn’t a functioning republic. This is America in decline, grasping for lifelines in the muck. If Sumner was the high watermark of what the Republican Party once dared to be, Musk is a symbol of what happens when the tides of principle recede and the swamp rushes back in. The best we can hope for is that both swamp monsters devour each other.