Only by coincidence was I watching television on the afternoon of January 6th. I am a political scientist by training and a nerd by disposition and so I was watching the official counting and certification of the Electoral College vote on my iPad while working through a sink of dirty dishes in need of attention. And even then I was only halfway listening as my house and more specifically my kitchen often sounds and feels a bit like Grand Central Station. Moreover, again, really only by sheer happenstance did I and the newscaster see the same flash of movement at the same time and as she exclaimed, “did you see that?” I had roughly the same thought in my head as Mike Pence was whisked out of the well of the Senate. Pence had been presiding over what would be the first of several objections raised to the certification of certain states electoral votes (a process that curiously enough only involved states won by Joe Biden) when Secret Service Agents poured into the room and quickly took him off the dais. This was the first sign that something was happening in the Capitol Building. The full scope of that reality would only begin to be approximated over the coming weeks and with the presentation of the House managers at the second impeachment trial of the former President Trump.
Taken from Wikipedia
Over the last three days, those tasked with the prosecution of the case have walked the Senate and the nation through the events of that day in methodical, excruciating, and chilling detail. The first day, their opening statement was centered on a 13 minute long video in which footage from the Capitol was woven together with the words and tweets from then President Trump. Some of what they showed had been run and rerun on cable news since that day. Other portions of it had never been seen by anyone outside of law enforcement and those select few members of the house now present at the trial. The cumulative effect was devastating—both in terms of the course of the proceedings and the psyche of the nation. Even from the comfort and safety of one’s home it was incredibly difficult to watch (and all the more so I am imagining for those Senators who were actually there when all hell broke loose). The violence enacted on law enforcement, the vitriol directed at all who were present on the Capitol grounds that day (to an extent that, I believe, transcended political party affiliation), the chilling chants of, “Hang Mike Pence,” shouted by the thousands of people who had made the 1.7 mile journey from the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse in front of the White House to the West Side of the Capitol after they had erected gallows, the voice—one part Jack Torrance from the Kubrick classic “The Shining” and one part nursery rhyme—calling out, “Nancy” as he roamed the halls looking for the Speaker of the house, a scared Sen. Mitt Romney turning and running from an oncoming mob, the graphic layout of the Capitol with moving dots showing just how close the nation came to watching Senators and Representatives being killed on live television, the whole of the facade of the Capitol from the ground to well into the sky being left a smoldering mess all painted a picture of the horror movie quality that consumed that day and that space. By the end of day 2, the impeachment trial, as necessary an exercise as it was for the functioning of government, re-traumatized the nation as a whole to a degree that we would do well to not merely sweep under the rug.
Taken from Time Magazine.
We are in the midst of the most chaotic time in the nation in my lifetime. The only thing that I have to compare it to within the recent collective history of the nation is the summer of 1968. A combination of polarized politics, social unrest, conspiracy movements, and a global pandemic have combined to form a swirling cauldron of uncertainty and fear. Half a million of our fellow citizens and two and a half million global neighbors are dead. Protests that have sought to condemn racial animus and the disproportionately statistically high deadly encounters between law enforcement and persons of color have turned violent with violence, looting, and death being the outcome. Food insecurity has swept across the whole of the country leaving food banks and other resources taxed beyond their capabilities. 17,000,000 children are going to go to bed hungry. And while all that should bother us, unless it directly affects us we can turn off our television screen, relegate the suffering of others to communities of which we are not a part, or simply become so inwardly focused that everyone else simply ceases to exist. But, what happened on January 6th feels fundamentally different. It was not just an attack on a certain place and at a certain time. Nor was it one side of the political spectrum rising up against the other. Nor was it even the equivalence of a flash mob arising seemingly out of nowhere to wreak carnage on the halls of power. It was, rather, the denizens of “earth 2,” those who live in the ether of QAnon craziness, racial superiority, or simply sycophantic obsequiousness direct at the would-be emperor of the world, rising up against those of us residing on “earth 1,” where facts are real, elections are fair, and we don’t have a king, and there is no doubt that absent a significant pushback, this will happen again and again. Once something has exited the recesses of demented minds and is released out into the world there is little chance that there will not be those who come after who do a thing better, with greater precision and effectiveness.
The internet is a wonderful thing. It has already changed basically everything that we do in the world and it has not yet reached even a tenth of its potential moving into the future. It has taken a gigantic world and shrunk it to the size of a cellphone. It has allowed persons living in a village in northwest Waziristan access to the same collection of information as the college student living in Athens, GA. And, ever how much we might hate Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is right about one thing, it has surely made the world feel a little less lonely and disconnected. And yet, it has also been the most fertile of ground for allowing whole communities of people to live into a world that is fundamentally disconnected from reality.
In the darkened corners of the net are communities of White Supremacists, QAnon believers, anarchists, and all manner of people who are happy to burn whole systems down to the ground just to dance in their ashes and the world wide web provides these groups with a shared (digital) space and instant connection with one another. Within this environment, it is not hard to gather 1,000 people who all see the world in roughly the same way as you. Moreover, the shrinking of the world via digital connection allows several of these groups to linkup in a common virtual clubhouse. It is for this that 4chan, 8chan, Gab, and other groups that are even deeper into the dark web, if such a thing is possible have been created. The events of January 6 show the power that such a union can produce and that should cause all of us to stop in our tracks.
Taken from NBC News
That being said, it is not these people who should concern us the most. Rather, it is their enablers—those who occupy the same halls of power that were ransacked, smeared with blood (and other things), desecrated, and defiled—that should really concern us. Alongside the Ted Cruzes, Josh Hawleys, Tom Cottons, and Lindsey Grahams, the ones who play dumb on television and pretend that they, too, live out in the nebula on earth 2 (even though only the most gullible could possibly believe that) are those whose lust for power and political sway declare themselves unmovable even in the face of venom, fright, and death. The Senators and those they represent who have now watched three days of trauma inducing tragedy, violence meted out against Capitol and Metro police officers, vile language intended to spur his followers to action by the then sitting president, and the eloquent words of members of the House of Representatives pleading with them to care. In response many worked on paperwork, some doodled, one put their feet up on the chair in front of them and paid attention to little being said or shown.
Yet, things actually get worse if you get outside the beltway and into the rest of the country as the political lens through which everything in our culture is seen has caused polling to fall roughly along party lines. 52% in favor of conviction. 46% against. More revealing is another poll which found that 40% of self-identified Republicans believe that politically based violence might be necessary. That’s in 2021. In the immediate aftermath of an horrific attack on our Capitol Building and our system of government, playing on live television, in which actual people died, almost half the Republicans in the country believe actions like that to be potentially justified as a response to an opposing political party possessing power in one or more branches of federal governance.
As this impeachment trial continues to press on, even as the outcome seems foreordained, I am, for the first time in my adult life not exactly sure how to move forward in the country. If elections become a competition between whether we are going to live on earth 1 or earth 2, and if in response to losing the contest, people can be convinced that the election has been stolen, or that the other side cheated or that hundreds of thousands of illegal votes were cast for the supposed winner, or that voting machines switched votes from one candidate to the other, or that the election was rigged, or a hoax, or unconstitutional and half of those believe that violence directed at those who won power, then the scene that occurred on January 6th that has necessitated this trial in the first place will only serve as a practice run for future violence that will be far more deadly, effective, and daring.
I am convinced if this is actually where we find ourselves, then we are already irrevocably shattered and there will be no chance of putting it all back together.
God have mercy on us.