Is This the Beginning or the End?
Like most Americans who aren’t alt-right terrorists, I’ve spent the past few days trying to come to grips with the Capitol Hill riots. The images being spewed at us left and right are history book-ready: armed white men decked out in white supremacist regalia and military gear clashing with D.C. police officers, taking confident strides through the halls of Congress and reclining on the desks of some of our nation’s most powerful people. It feels both surreal and bitterly real, a fitting chapter in the jam-packed volume that is Donald Trump’s strategic weaponization of American nationalist rage — the images are different, but the feeling is the same.
Pending more developments, January 6th, 2021, will most likely be remembered as one of two things, depending on what happens next. Is it the end of an era? Trump is supposed to leave the White House in roughly two weeks, and though his attempts to overturn the election will continue until the very end, all current signs point to Joe Biden taking office on January 20th. The more optimistic of us (including my parents) tend to think that when Trump leaves the White House, his rhetoric and dominion over almost half our country’s population will lose a good deal of its power. They’re certainly not alone in that thinking: a while back, my News app featured a spray of news articles portending doom for Trump’s post-White House life, ridden with messy court cases, criminal indictments, and a slow tumble into relative obscurity. Most recently, Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other social media companies hit Trump with an indefinite ban for inciting violence using their platform, a move that some believe might curtail his direct power over the American public. Even those who predict a prominent 2021 Donald Trump still (in most cases) celebrated Biden’s win for a reason; not having a man as glaringly discriminatory and sinister in the highest office of the land is a win and represents a drastic decrease in Trump’s influence.
This, then, could be the ultimate cap on the Donald Trump story: an unrepentant, treasonous attack on our nation’s capital led by his supporters and encouraged by the president himself.
Nothing is more indicative of this potential end than the blowback occurring within Trump’s own party. Just before his evacuation from the Senate chamber, Mitch McConnell (a man long viewed by Democrats as among the most remorseless, malicious people in Congress) gave a speech outlining his strong stance against rejecting the electoral vote in several states — he called it “the most important vote I've ever cast” — and, later, blamed the president for inciting the Capitol riots. The list of flip-flopping Republican senators is short, but pungent. Richard Burr: “The President bears responsibility for today’s events.” Liz Cheney: “He lit the flame.” Tom Cotton: “It’s past time for the president to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people, and repudiate mob violence.”One, Lisa Murkowski, even called for his immediate resignation: “I want him out. He has caused enough damage.” Some of Trump’s most determined loyalists, too, perhaps realizing how bad things have gotten, are starting to peel off: Betsy DeVos. Elaine Chao. Mick Mulvaney. Matt Pottinger. Sarah Matthews.
The list goes on. While too many remain loyal to Trump, so much else seems to be crumbling. This is it, we tell ourselves. They’re calling it for what it is. Mike Pence unfollowed him on Twitter before his account got nuked. This has got to be it.
But I can’t help but feel wary of these forecasts. Time and time again Trump has shown us that he can survive anything; his supporters, like an old person being extorted by scammers, are too far down the rabbit hole to trust anyone but him. What he says, goes. If he says the attack was perpetrated by Antifa, they’ll believe him. If he insists the Democratic senators were in on the whole thing, they’ll believe him. If he simply avoids the blame, puts it on the shoulders of someone else or no one at all, that’ll be the end of the discussion for millions of Americans. “He said he didn’t do it.” Innocent. Done. Game, set, match.
As I wonder if there will ever be an end, I am also forced to consider the former of the two possibilities: could this be the beginning of something worse? As Theodore R. Johnson of the Brennan Center for Justice told The Christian Science Monitor, “It’s not that this is unprecedented, but for this generation, it feels new and like we’ve crossed the Rubicon.”
A few hours into the coup attempt, a woman on the side of the alt-right died after being shot by a police officer — her death would be followed by four others. Lurking through Instagram in its immediate aftermath, I found a video of her lying on the floor in the Capitol building, blood trickling out of her mouth, surrounded by her cohort, who are screaming “Help!” and “Where was she hit!”. A phrase tumbled through my mind: shot heard ‘round the world, attributed to sudden, shocking events that trigger historical periods of mass destruction. The constant stream of photos of armed MAGA terrorists stomping through the halls of Congress pushes our American boundaries of surreality, fantasy, and what we consider normal. It strikes me as a trademark of coup attempts: a defining moment where nothing seems certain and anything seems possible.
I hesitate to write anything off. The tension in this country is the worst that it’s been in more than a century — last time, it led to devastating war. Regardless, the alt-right “revolution” the Capitol terrorists were hoping for remains extremely unlikely, if not impossible.
The much more probable “beginning” we’d experience would be that of the Trump dynasty, which Donald (as patriarch) seems determined to guide into the heart of American politics. His son Donald Jr. has already shown himself to be a worthy heir to Trump’s unique brand of fact denial, confusion of isolationist belligerence with “strength,” and willingness to stoop down so low we can barely see him, let alone follow him. Trump 2024 flags are already being made, and though a last-minute impeachment isn’t off the table, one imagines that the Trump base would warm all too quickly to another Trump — Donald Jr., or Ivanka — or find a welcome home in Jared Kushner, Trump’s scaly son-in-law and senior advisor, who in 2016 found himself one of the most powerful players in American politics. That’s the way weeds work: fail to rip up the root, and it’ll simply grow back right where it was. And this is one nasty, obstinate weed.
In the end, my question of “is this the beginning or the end?” is a blatant oversimplification. Everything I know about the American empire forces me to consider what’s perhaps the scariest, vaguest, and most accurate answer: it’s really neither. Nothing changed. The alt-right attack on Capitol Hill is just a continuation of what this country is at its worst: the champion of the already-strong, the incessant hypocrite, the remorseless predator, the rewarder of greed and selfishness, and an eager participant in discrimination based on anything that makes a person different from a white, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian man.
The careers of those culpable within the Republican party will continue. Rep. Cori Bush’s planned bill to enforce their resignation will probably fail, and though a few Congressmen may experience repudiation at the ballot boxes in two years, two years is a long time, more than enough to bury their culpability in stories of their dedicated service. Regardless of whether the story of Trump moves past this point, the stories of those who allowed him to reach it — those who either found a knight willing to stumble through their battle against American equity and cultural betterment or bowed down to him without a whisper of protest — will still be wreaking havoc on the foundation of our democracy, whether by authoring injustice themselves or merely encouraging it.
The culture of the “silent majority” will continue. A few weeks ago, I watched a brief YouTube video of one of John McCain’s presidential rallies in 2008. A woman takes the mic, fixes McCain in her gaze, and says with utter conviction, “I can’t trust Obama. I’ve read about him. He’s an arab.” Instantly, McCain shakes his head, takes the mic from her, and answers, “No, no. No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.” Then the crowd boos him. Can you believe that — a politician saying something that earns them boos at their own rally! At that moment, I imagined Donald Trump standing there in front of that woman. I imagined him nodding with understanding, perhaps even agreement. I imagined him taking the mic back and encouraging her not-so-subtle racism in a subtle, not-so-subtle way, one that allows deniability: “Well, people have said that. It could be true. I certainly don’t trust him. We can’t have him in office.” That woman was waiting for her Donald Trump — she was waiting for someone with the same dangerous ignorance to rise to prominence and help her (a white, Christian woman) “take her country back.” People like her are out there en masse and will still be out there when Donald Trump is long gone.
Injustice will continue. Many were quick to point out the stunning difference in the D.C. police force’s response compared to responses we’ve seen in abundance this year. This past summer, social media was flooded with recorded abuses of police power, most of which were targeted at Black Americans, events which Black Americans were a part of, or really any protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement (of which there were many). Sometimes, police violence was in response to violence. But many times, the violence was in response to nothing at all. A peaceful violin sigil for a murdered Black man was met with tear gas, pepper spray, and gross, violent misuse of rubber bullets — meanwhile, well-armed white supremacists (some of whom made no effort to disguise their intention to physically harm Congressmen) storm the literal capital building of the United States of America and the National Guard takes hours to show up. Tear gas is deployed late in the day, well after the Capitol building has been breached. Terrorists walk through the halls of Congress unimpeded. It doesn’t take much imagination to wonder what would happen if the riot was perpetrated by a group claiming allegiance with the Black Lives Matter movement and with Black people at its head — we’ve seen far greater punishments for far lesser offenses. Such transparent discrimination is almost cartoonish.
These issues are so much a part of the American machine that it’s hard to imagine Joe Biden doing anything substantial to repair them — at the very least, he will serve as brief respite from having an open racist in the Oval Office. This swapping of presidents, one that so many dedicated people put their heart and soul into achieving, will change some things, but it won’t come close to changing everything. A desperately-needed reevaluation, reconstruction, and renewal of the American society that allowed Donald Trump to rise to power will have to come from all of us.
We must continue to help one another, fight tooth and nail for a better world, find common ground where we can, root out societal evils where we cannot. This is neither a beginning nor an end — it’s a new day spent locked in battle with an old problem.
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/06/president-trump-has-committed-treason/
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/937044524/once-out-of-office-trump-faces-significant-legal-peril
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/What-s-taking-the-National-Guard-so-long-trump-mob-15850959.php
