Azzi: Wolves and shepherds at war in America. Let's pray the shepherds win.

“We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are,” Anthony Marra wrote in "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena," an extraordinary first novel I just finished that, while rooted in five days during the Chechen war in 2004, is both historical and predictive.

Presciently, it reminded me of all that America risks by failing to recognize and confront the wolves attacking our democracy; that by failing to post sentinels and shepherds vigilant against traitors and insurrectionists who are waging war against our nation we are in jeopardy.

Marra's tale of war-scarred desperation in a far-off land is our story today.

This week the FBI, acting on a legal search warrant issued by the Department of Justice, searched Mar-a-Lago, the home of former president Donald Trump. The search occurred after the FBI — led by Trump-appointee Chris Wray — called Trump's Secret Service in advance and gave them a heads up they were coming.

In spite of the resulting tumult and chest-beating, it was neither raid nor assault.

The National Archives had respectfully been in negotiations with Trump for months in a non-confrontational effort to retrieve documents they allege he improperly possessed. The FBI, finally believing negotiations to have failed, executed a search warrant and found, secured, and returned to the government classified materials Trump had removed from the White House, allegedly in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

This week they removed 12 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago, aided perhaps by a confidential source who tipped FBI agents off as to where Trump was storing classified materials.

Indeed, the truth is that Donald Trump could easily defuse the whole situation — and ease America's collective anxiety — by releasing a copy of the DOJ warrant and the inventory list of what the FBI removed from Mar-a-Lago.

Today, as I write, I am reminded - as all America should be - that this is the fifth anniversary of the March on Charlottesville. On Aug. 11, 2017, more than 200 members of anti-Semitic, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and pro-Confederate groups and supporters marched chanting “You will not replace us” “Blood and soil” “Jews will not replace us” and “White lives matter.”

Those wolves of Charlottesville, a march of racists and anti-Semites embraced by President Trump as including "very fine" people, was an early declaration of the war on democracy and justice we confront today.

What does it mean that today some so-called Republicans - even so-called mainstream ones - are defending Trump and excoriating the FBI; some even suggesting that the FBI may have planted evidence to incriminate Trump?

“When one runs with the wolves," Trotsky told us, "one must howl with the pack.”

What does it mean that some so-called Republicans have not denounced calls for violence against the FBI - that some so-called Republicans believe that any investigation of Trump is inherently illegitimate?

“When one runs with the wolves, one must howl with the pack.”

I know what it means.

There is no Republican Party; there are no Republicans.

I am tired of people calling upon Republicans to step up and rescue the GOP from Trump and his followers. There is nothing to rescue. Today's GOP is a risible collection of white apologists sliding into an intellectual dotage from which there is no return.

There is nothing to rescue. One doesn't negotiate with wolves.

More wedded to their racism and traditions than to truth, more wedded to Scarlett O'Hara's Tara than to The Constitution, today there are packs of Americans threatening the end of our Republic and nearly 250 years of democratic governance.

One pack, for example, knows the truth about Donald Trump: they don't believe his lies and know he is morally, intellectually and temperamentally unfit for office but are willing to align their interests with his because it provides them with power and profit.

Another pack believes Trump's lies, whether about stolen elections or stolen documents. Extolling Christian nationalism and white supremacy they believe themselves sanctioned by Trump to oppress all those unlike themselves.

Together, such packs conspire to overturn elections, deny women bodily autonomy, disenfranchise voters, burn books, dictate curriculum, dictate who can marry whom, deny rights to LGBTQIA+ peoples, and preference one race, one religion, over others.

America's shepherds have failed the nation as well. Naively believing that other Americans have been acting in good faith they have been too slow to realize that America is in a war for its very survival.

Let us hope it is not too late.

“The wolves’ prey upon the lambs in the darkness of the night," Kahlil Gibran wrote,  "but the blood stains remain upon the stones in the valley until the dawn comes, and the sun reveals the crime to all.”

James McHenry wrote in his journal in 1787: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy - A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” (sic)

Whether we can keep it will be determined by the outcome of the war between shepherds of our democracy and the wolves who threaten it; by our understanding of the tension between what we owe our Founding Fathers and owe our grandchildren.

By understanding that whether the blood on the stones comes from wolves or shepherds is dependent on us.

"... inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are."

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: Wolves and shepherds at war in America. Pray the shepherds win.