As the “Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue” unfolds, I’ve been thinking about the Ghost Dance Movement of the late-1800s. If you’re not familiar, according to Wikipedia the Ghost Dance was “a religious movement among indigenous peoples of North America, based on the performance of a ritual dance which, it was believed, would drive away white people and restore their traditional lands and way of life.”
In their despair, Native nations — confined to reservations, ruthlessly suppressed by military might and undone by the lies of bureaucrats — believed the dance would “reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits to fight on their behalf, end American Westward expansion, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region.”
It didn’t work out.
The Ghost Dance phenomenon was the consequence of sheer desperation, entire tribes facing imminent cultural extinction. Inundated by white immigrants, they realized they were being “replaced,” their lands occupied and stolen, their values and belief systems endangered.
But the white-dominant culture that replaced them is now getting a dose of its own medicine. Fearing “replacement” by incoming migrants — in addition to people of color demanding to be treated as if their lives matter — white supremacists are feeling the same threat of cultural extinction and the same desperation, which gave birth to the MAGA Movement.
For a time, Trump rallies served as the movement’s “Ghost Dance,” whipping the faithful into a frenzy, hoping “their” country would be rescued from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), the dreaded triple-threat to their cherished privileged social status.
The MAGA Movement, as Heather Cox Richardson has pointed out, is a descendant of the slaveholding culture in the South, whose rebellion was defeated by pro-Union forces in the Civil War, nullifying their attempt to secede.
Through Jim Crow laws and murderous racism, white Southerners enforced a new system of racial superiority, replacing slavery with economic and political servitude. Neither Reconstruction nor the Civil Rights Movement could completely eradicate that lost-cause culture, which not only survived but found new life through MAGA.
This time the rebellion succeeded — so far, anyway. They took over all three branches of our government and are now dismantling it because the only way white supremacy can be sustained is to destroy democracy and replace it with an autocratic oligarchy.
Democracy demands that we-the-people embrace diversity, equity and inclusion. But MAGA won the battles of 2016 and 2024 — and the Pro-Democracy Movement is still in shock. Our venerated system of checks and balances proved so much weaker than we ever imagined, its vulnerabilities exploited by an extremist Republican Party, which laid the groundwork for a stealth revolution.
Both sides of our political divide are now embroiled in a battle for survival. One side must win, the other must lose. Authoritarianism is incompatible with democracy. Our differences are irreconcilable. Compromise is not an option.
Last November, democracy lost, the Constitution lost, truth lost. And the victors have expressed nothing except contempt for the vanquished. But all of that may yet work to our advantage. In warfare, cultural or otherwise, underestimating your opponent is almost always fatal. The last thing they expect from us is to put up a fight.
So we are going to war. With ballots, not bullets. With lawsuits, boycotts, court injunctions, blogs, campaign donations, protest rallies. With satire and surprise. With truth, not lies. With diversion, not deception. Aggressive, not passive. Outspoken, not silent. Defiance, not deference. Disciplined, not disorganized. Principled, not privileged. Feisty, not flighty. Warriors, not worriers. Less civility, more civil disobedience. Mobilized, future forward. Uncooperative, non-compliant. Unconditionally un-surrendering. Never, ever giving up.
In the Civil War, Union forces prevailed because they found the will to wage war against their fellow countrymen when it became unavoidable — and because they were morally right and slavery was morally wrong. We will prevail again because equality is morally right and inequality is morally indefensible.
No more superior-inferior. All humans, created equal, treated equal.
This war — or its moral equivalent — is unavoidable. We didn’t start this conflict, but we will finish it. However long it takes.
And someday, indigenous, immigrants, descendants of immigrants, people of color (whose lives very much matter), women fed up with patriarchy, DEI disciples, ACLU card-carriers, and everyone else who recognizes that democracy is the only path to freedom — including all ex-members of MAGA who accept our invitation — will gather in the biggest tent of all. Not for a Ghost Dance. A Victory Dance.
And white supremacy will be relegated to the slag heap of history, culturally extinguished, ghost dancing in the dark.