Note: Welcome to the first of my redux posts. Occasionally I’ll dig out a banger from the Ghost markdown export of my old blog that seems timely or still relevant and give it some new life. Instead of a straight copy paste there will be slight updates. Less of a re-release and more of an update. Like when George Lucas put the original Star Wars trilogy back in the cinemas with some added CGI. For better or worse.

Today I’m regurgitating an earlier one from my old blog, the groovily-named Dystopia.Report. The Internet Archive didn’t back it up very well. The text is there minus the website design and some images. It’s fine. Why re-run it now? Welp, we’re at the beginning of Year Two of the Trump regime, and I think it still resonates. I’ve tweaked bits that annoyed me for clarity or typos.

Preface to the current edition

It’s been a long year, but it’s only been one year of Trump Round 2. Here’s a small sampling of items from the highlights reel: Earlier in 2025 the new White House administration started off with an attack on USAID (with the help of Elon), obliterating it and leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths before the year was out and still counting. It also weaponized the DOJ against Trump’s critics and opponents. This administration also created its own secret police force of unaccountable, masked thugs who disappear people from the streets and sometimes smuggle them to planes for exfiltration to third-country prisons without due process. It’s put in place a Health Secretary who actively works to increase viral sickness. Today it has invaded another country and abducted its president. The president’s cuts to healthcare access have been particularly targeted at women. This could go on, but it isn’t meant to be the whole laundry list. Add your own top Trump traumas to the list. It’s estimated that this MAGA regime has already fulfilled up to 50% of what Project 2025 had promised, so there’s a lot to choose from. There are still three more years left.

Even before he returned to the White House, Trump repeatedly referenced the Insurrection Act of 1804 as a way of putting the military on U.S. streets to enforce mass deportations. It was one of many things President Biden refused to fix during the brief Trump intermission. But in that time people thought about insurrection in a different light. Federal prosecutors charged about 1,500 people in relation to the January 6, 2021, mad siege on the Capitol Building. The Democrats made a website about them. On his first day back in office, Trump granted blanket clemency to the lot of them the same year he talked up using the Insurrection Act against protests in several cities. He’d end up using other legal mechanisms to send troops, or at least try to. But he’s got three years still to use the Insurrection Act, and he’s been gagging to do it during both terms in office and the golf break in between. I’d put betting money on it happening. It’s time to accept that Insurrection isn’t a dirty word… contextually.

From October 10, 2024

Insurrection is a value-neutral term

As we get ready for another election in the U.S., insurrection may become a left-wing value again. That’s fine.

As another U.S. presidential election looms — one that’s entirely too tight to call — history threatens to act like a needle skipping on an old vinyl record, back when music happened on physical replay artifacts. We may well be in for a continuity of the current regime or the second part of the preceding one, in which case we’ve just had a four-year intermission in what can fairly be called the Trump era.

A lot of us were heavily relieved when Trump lost the 2020 election. It concluded a four-year misery in which every day seemed to feature some new shitshow. It both seems like an age ago and just the other day. If Trump loses this election, his supporters will likely run riot once more. If he wins, they may just do so as well. But there could be worse outcomes if/when America once again has a president that’s bent on dismantling democracy itself. It’s at times like this that we need to get really pedantic. When the Powers That Be are rapidly trying to redefine everything around us, we need to remember that words mean things. Depending on how bad things go, we may need to reclaim the word insurrection. But really, we never should have lost it.

Many news outlets covered the melee on January 6, 2021 in different ways. Riot, mob, attack, siege, etc. were all pretty fair descriptions of the crazed throng of MAGAs throwing one last hissy fit after their saffron-tinged despot wannabe lost the election but refused to admit it. Some coverage, editorials, and no small amount of extremely online political pundits really latched onto the insurrection angle. I didn’t. In fact, I actively avoided it. It was problematic, to use the parlance of our time. Not because the attack on the Capitol by the angry if dim horde didn’t qualify as one… maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. The word carries legal weight and shouldn’t be thrown around willy-nilly, but this isn’t the main reason to use other words if the point is to be critical.

Why? Well, one reason is that using it buries what people were really angry about when we saw that riot. We were angry because the mob was protesting democratic systems and the Constitution and were trying to subvert a reasonably good system for transferring power with a flailing temper tantrum. No one was really angry about an insurrection, but that these people wanted to destroy good things.

Insurrection is not a pejorative word. It’s inherently value-neutral. Our opposition or support of one is based on two things: the system it opposes, and whatever it seeks to replace that system with. Given the right context, nearly everyone is for an insurrection somewhere. It’s a mechanism. The U.S. exists because of one; France is a republic; Haiti freed itself from its slaveholders. Be the regime change you want to see in the world.

In the TNG film, Star Trek: Insurrection, Picard and the crew uncovered Starfleet Command’s secret alliance with the Son’a to forcibly displace the indigenous people of Ba’ku from their planet for resource exploitation. They soon joined forces with the besieged people and turned on the Federation. I think we can all get behind that one.

Depending on how things go in the U.S., over the next year or four, you, mainstream liberal or left-leaning person, may find yourself not being entirely opposed to one. Never say never.

Original post meta info:

title: Insurrection is a value-neutral term
slug: insurrection-is-a-value-neutral-term
date_published: 2024-10-25T23:39:10.000Z
date_updated: 2024-12-01T21:25:36.000Z
tags: all politics is local

Afterword

Happy new year. It’s 2026. How are things going?