This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

An essay in the Washington Post this morning caught my attention for a simple, yet profound, reason.

This:  The words in the essay indicate what is at stake for America as we contend with the Donald Trump led attempt to re-make our government in his own image as a dictator and authoritarian.

Consider these words written by Sam Tanenhaus, an author who is

writing a biography of William F. Buckley Jr., and is a former editor of the New York Times Book Review.

“Internal assaults on American government usually come with the promise of greater freedom.  ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,’ Thomas Jefferson wrote. He was referring to Shays’s Rebellion, an uprising of 4,000 Massachusetts citizens in protest of taxes imposed by the state’s governor to liquidate Revolutionary War debt.

“Seventy-five years later, the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, explaining another rebellion, said the South had no choice but to ‘take up arms to vindicate the political rights, the freedom, equality, and State sovereignty which were the heritage purchased by the blood of our revolutionary sires.’

“To its participants and their emboldened intellectual allies, the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was another such ‘battle cry of freedom’ — a patriotic exercise against tyranny.  

“President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might deplore this as an ‘assault on our democracy,’ but ‘what they mean by our democracy is their oligarchy,’ the author and journalist Roger Kimball said in a September speech at Hillsdale College.  The protest against them may have become unruly, but it was by no means an insurrection.

“He may be right, though for reasons different from the one he gave. Militant protest, as Garry Wills wrote in ‘A Necessary Evil,’ his history of American distrust of government comes in different forms.  At one end of the spectrum are insurrectionists, who ‘take arms against the government because it is too repressive.’

“At the opposite end are vigilantes, who ‘take arms to do the government’s work because the authorities are not repressive enough.’  They become ‘vigilant,’ Wills writes, in times when they believe ‘the government is too slow, indifferent, or lax.’

“Vigilantism seems to be the defining strain of American conservatism today, embraced by both the mob and intellectuals.  Kimball is one of many who, emancipated by former president Donald Trump, feel licensed to lead their own campaigns against the country as it becomes more egalitarian and inclusive.

“In their minds, the storming of the Capitol on January 6 was meant not to subvert democratic ‘traditions,’ ‘procedures’ and ‘norms’ — the terms we hear so often — but rather to restore them through whatever means were necessary to stop a ‘stolen’ election, ‘rigged’ by the true enemies of ‘our democracy:’  The election officials and vote counters, the judges in courts across the land, even Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr.

“So, too, the chilling words ‘Hang Mike Pence’ were shouted in protest of the vice president’s refusal to ‘do the right thing,’ as Trump recently said — which in this case meant decertifying the election won by Joe Biden.”

Strong, thought-provoking words from Tanenhaus,  

They hold huge implications – negative ones — for this country as we head down an uncertain and dangerous road.  Make no mistake – more insurrections and vigilantism are on the horizon.

So, which is it – insurrection or vigilantism?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter because, whichever it is, the huge risks are there.  But, I found these definitions:

• Insurrection:  A violent uprising against an authority or government.

• Vigilantism:  Law enforcement undertaken without legal authority by a self-appointed group of people.

Both are involved as Trump lovers position themselves for the 2022 mid-term elections, as well as the 2024 presidential election.

As we look back on the startling actions of January 6 and the intentional planning that led up to the insurrection or vigilantism, the prospects are foreboding.  For what we saw on the 6^th is bound to happen again in this country as Trump and his acolytes – either former government officials or regular citizens — bid to overthrow America as we know it, even by violence if necessary.