HOW MUCH DO THEY MATTER?
There are some ugly truths.
I was out skiing in the woods behind my house around one o'clock on January 6th. It is 2021, the new, better year. A lovely day, the snow perfect. It wasn't until 2 o'clock or so when I came inside that I picked up on the string of notifications that had been piling up on my phone. The Capitol Building had been breached by Trump supporters.
Like a lot of people, I was shocked, yeah, but not surprised.
You don't live through a couple of years' worth of demonstrations with people carrying Trump flags (Flags? With the President's name? Really?), reading about fantasies of pedophilia rings in the government and Trump portrayed as the pedophile slayer (Q-Anon wackiness), and Proud Boys and the like marching here and there with anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-Black shouts, without knowing something is afoot. No presidents, none of them–ever–have been postered against all reason as some sort of cartoon-like Messiah/Terminator/Action Figure as has this elderly, overweight, jowled, pissed-off-looking narcissistic individual–you know the one–the one with the comb-over to beat all comb-overs.
This is what took me aback: I stared into CNN's coverage the rest of that crazy afternoon. I watched as the mob broke windows, wandered around inside of the building, entered offices and the House chamber, massed on the steps and on the plaza. I saw the occasional Confederate flag. I could pick out police here and there, small groups, vastly outnumbered, trying, mostly without success, to hold the line on the plaza and later, at the doors, and still later, in the halls. CNN voices kept announcing that they had had word that reinforcements were en route from several different counties, and the National Guard was on its way. I kept watching, but nothing changed. I still saw only ineffectual groups of police. It was hard even to spot them amidst the mob. What the hell? Where was all this security? C'mon, this is our Capitol!
Now and then a camera panned to lines of fresh police, standing somewhere, waiting. Another camera showed what I thought might be National Guard troops positioned somewhere else. Maybe they were martial types in camo. When it came on six o'clock, after curfew time was announced, police who had been standing for as much as an hour apparently waiting for orders finally, leisurely, walked in and firmly but gently pressed the crowd back, away from the steps, and eventually away from the plaza. No bullhorns, no batons, no big pressure. Take it easy, folks.
I'm old enough to have been to several protest Marches on Washington (not including, unfortunately, the most famous one when Martin Luther King spoke), all mostly peaceful. I was involved in a protest on the Lexington Battle Green in 1971 (only locally famous) when over 450 of us from the town, including some 100 Vietnam Veterans Against the War, were arrested. The police, summoned to do this by the Lexington Selectmen, arrived at about 3 AM in full riot gear, although almost all of us were by this time simply sleeping–or trying to–on the Green. (That was actually our offense.) The police were polite, even smiling, some of them, because they weren't really crazy about arresting their fellow townspeople, much less war veterans, some of whom were disabled. They knew us. They didn't fear us. We were like them.
Fear of "the other," that is at the heart of this. Masha Gessen in The New Yorker said this of the Capitol police actions:
"Black Lives Matter protesters are other to the Capitol Police. So are survivors of sexual assault or women who protest for the right to choose. But an armed mob storming the Capitol, and their Instigator-in-Chief, are, apparently, familiar enough to be dismissed as clowns. (Some of them, in their face paint and strange headgear, even seemed to embrace their identification as clowns.) The invaders may be full of contempt for a system that they think doesn’t represent them, but on Wednesday they managed to prove that it does. The system, which shrugged off their violence like it had been a toddler’s tantrum, represents them. It’s the rest of us it’s failing to protect."
This has already been pointed out by many observers. Following nearly every police shooting of a Black person, there have been, predictably, demonstrations. These protests tended to attract plenty of police fitted out with riot gear, pepper spray, tear gas, and occasionally rubber bullets. Protective barriers were often set up well before even the threat of a protest. This level of security was on full display when Trump took his infamous walk from the White house to St. John's church to wave a prop Bible around. The crowd had been peaceful.
Pro-Trumpers don't threaten white people very much. Many white people have friends or relatives who are Trumpers, and Trumpers live among us in mostly white communities. What's to fear? A few paramilitary right-wing types seem scary, but not your run of the mill Trumper. Some of us may find them annoying, aggravating even, but for the most part we don't feel endangered by them. We're white, after all. I don't feel physically threatened by any local Trumper because I know they would see me as just another misled white person. On the wrong side, but, hey, I'm white!
A thought experiment: Imagine the Trump mob in Washington (or maybe the one in front of your own State Capitol) as a group of Black Lives Matter protestors. Pretend the protestors are mostly Black. Picture them angry. Maybe they have weapons. Picture the security: Is it mostly white people? When the protestors try to storm the building, picture the results.
As to the above question, the answer is not enough.
WHAT ABOUT THE 74-PLUS MILLION?
Over 74 million people voted for Trump. In any democracy there must always be a viable opposition. At times that opposition can be particularly fierce. But in this case many, or maybe most, of these 74 million live intellectually and emotionally in an entirely difference universe than the other millions. This is something new and different. Social media has helped create that parallel universe. Pro-Trumpers are securely represented in our government too, as the well over one hundred Congresspeople who bought into Trump's lie of a stolen election will attest. Many of these elected officials, I would hope, know better, but are thinking, cravenly, of their constituents. For these constituents anyone holding a view unlike their belief in Trump risks not getting their vote.
I suppose representatives should reflect their constituents' views, but what about educating them? What about leadership? What about moral responsibility? If no one was able to lead others to better ways of thinking, wouldn't we still have slavery?
As for those members of Trump's party who have decided it's time to disassociate themselves, what's there to say? How brave are they?
“Resigning with two weeks left feels less like some moral stand and more like leaving early to beat traffic.” Jimmy Fallon
“It’s very brave of Republicans to start speaking out against Trump only 99.9 percent of the way through his term in office. You know, not to quibble about this, but for someone to ‘lose it,’ first they must ‘possess it,’ mustn’t they?’ James Corden
On PBS there I saw a documentary called "A Thousand Cuts" about the rise and rule of populist Philippines President Duterte. A struggling democracy, the Philippines is one of the world's poorest countries, its people widely invested in social media. Duterte's reign is like a fun house mirror of what has happened in this country. There was no coup, no grand takeover, but rather a chipping away, bit by bit, cut by cut, of democratic values. Duterte lies regularly, and uses social media and social media stars to amplify his lies; he is explicitly mysogynistic, rewards his cronies, calls the press his enemy, and he is feared. The result is a democracy divided, a population living in two parallel universes. The majority of the population has absorbed the lies, no longer believing in or supporting a free press, and has learned to look away, or tolerate, or even admire "wiping out drugs and criminals" by his sanctioned policy of murdering them. When first elected, Duterte admitted in a TV interview to having personally killed "about three people." In a chatty telephone call with Duterte in May 2017 Trump said this:
"I just want to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that." Confidential transcript of telephone conversation (Washington Post)
"You are a good man....If you want to come to the Oval Office, I will love to have you in [the] Oval Office. Anytime you want to come." Confidential transcript of telephone conversation (Washington Post)
During a personal meeting with Duterte in November 2017, Trump shared a laugh about journalists, "...you guys," said Duarte, you are the spies, you are." Ha ha.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Kamala Harris is our new Vice President. This may hold even more promise for the future than Joe Biden being our new President. True, we already had a Black man as President, but it's almost as if that was a really good first try, an attempt to raise the country to a higher plane and blur that ancient racial divide. The real division before 2016 was only beginning to become an abyss. Social media was already feeding conspiracies. Still, few of us knew how far this would go. Or what would happen when the electorate threw a metaphorical bomb at our government, embodied by Donald J. Trump–someone who would say and do all the things many white people had thought, but long suppressed.
Well, now we know.
