The US Capitol Protests
Violence erupted outside the US Capitol Building yesterday when a mob of right-wing protesters marched in solidarity with President Trump in a desperate last-ditch attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It did not take long at all for violence to start, once the mob reached the Capitol. The protesters had attended a rally at which they had been instructed to go to the Capitol by President Trump, citing the reason as support for the few Republican Senators who were objecting to the ongoing electoral college certifications, and to intimidate those who were not objecting. Trump, who has said he will never admit defeat, did not join the protesters (despite saying he would). Five people have died as a result of the violence, including a woman who was shot in the neck by Capitol security. The electoral college conformation hearing was ongoing as the violence started on the Capitol steps, and the joint session of Congress was suspended due to security concerns.
Protesters breached the building, smashing windows and ramming doors to gain entry, and quickly dispersed into different areas of the building. There are images of protesters with their feet up on the desks of representatives, there is an image of a man behind the podium of the Senate Floor, who reportedly shouted “Trump won that election!” Police and security had to go through corridors, door by door, to find and eject the protesters, and after a few hours the session of congress was resumed. The rest of the state’s electoral college votes were counted without incident, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were confirmed as the next President and Vice President of the USA. The objections to the votes by Representatives and Senators, and the meaningless violence and loss of life, did nothing but slow down the process.
The Recklessness of Donald Trump
This is the peak of what Trump’s reckless self-devotion has fostered. The Capitol Building has not been breached in such a way since the War of 1812, over two-hundred years ago. The fact that it was carried out by American citizens after what was described by Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security as “the most secure election in American history”, shows a deep, and very serious problem. Every single one of the thousands of Trump supporters who did this, believed that the election was won by Trump by a landslide, that votes were stolen by Democrats, that the election was abjectly fraudulent, and that Joe Biden is a criminal. Every single one of these beliefs have been proven, time and time again, to be lies and falsehoods. No less than sixty-two court cases have been lost by the President’s team. Not a single piece of evidence they presented was deemed admissible by Trump-appointed judges. Nothing the President has said about the election has been true, yet he continues to say it. It has been reported that the only thing Trump talks about, in public or in private, is how he won the election, and it is being stolen from him.
The 25th Amendment
The idea of invoking the 25th Amendment has apparently been floated to Vice President Pence, as concerns over the President’s mental health continue to develop. The worst part about this is, that there are still those who believe everything he says, still those who take him at his word every time, backed up by lies and bent truths by far-right news outlets and scores of alt-right social media accounts. Trump has said he will never stop fighting for his victory, and as long as Trump is spouting his self-aggrandizing drivel, his supporters, including those with a platform to spread the message, will continue to believe him. Joe Biden has said in a recent speech that, “This is not who we are.” He is wrong. America now has a not-insignificant portion of its population that will never believe a word he, or any Democrat or anti-Trump Republican says, and will live and die by what Trump tweets. These people will never accept an election if the person elected is not Republican, and will continue to spread their poisonous message to anyone stupid enough to believe it, into the foreseeable future. America will never be the same again.
The Disparity of Protests
The fact the the protests reached the US Capitol so easily is astounding. One cannot help but think, that if the mob approaching the Capitol had been a Black Lives Matter march, a crowd not mostly consisting of white faces, that police response would have been more aggressive. Just a few months ago, peaceful black protesters in the same city were beaten, gassed, shot with rubber bullets and treated like insurrectionists, just for standing, peacefully, and protesting, just for the President to walk to a church for a photo shoot. These BLM protesters did not seek to overturn democracy, they did not seek to harm anyone, they did not seek to incite violence, yet they were subjected to police brutality nonetheless. The Trumpist protesters on the steps and in the hallways of the Capitol building yesterday did seek to overturn democracy, did cause harm to people (four people are dead), obviously incited violence (it was the first thing they did when they reached the Capitol), and were given a fraction of the response the BLM protesters were subjected to. Anyone who says that there is no systemic racism in American society is kidding themselves. Imagine if one of the Trumpist protesters had fired on police. What if one of them had a bomb? What if one of them sought to kill politicians? The response provided by the security forces would have done nothing to stop the violence from escalating into something far more serious. The National Guard was not mobilised to suppress the attack on the centre of US democracy until hours after the insurrectionists had broken into the building. The state of things in America would be laughable, if it wasn’t so depressingly disappointing.
A Divided Nation
Joe Biden has an extremely tough job ahead of him. The social divisions in America have reached a peak not seen since possibly the Civil War, or perhaps the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. If all the population believed him to be a legitimate President who was in office legally, it would still be a hell of a job to unite the country, but tens of millions of Americans believe he attained his office illegally, and as such, I cannot see a scenario in which the Biden administration can bring the country back together, if it ever was together in the first place. There are people who still have a hard time accepting the result of the Civil War, let alone elections. Trump has exposed the worst parts of the American psyche; the greed, the selfishness, the undignified dishonesty, the racism, the unquantified prejudice, the outright refusal to accept anything less than what he wants, and denouncing anything to the contrary as a fraud, as illegitimate. He is a certifiable, diagnosable malignant narcissist and sociopath, he had no business being President, and those politicians who endorsed or supported him should feel ashamed. Shame doesn’t even cut it, they should be disgusted with themselves, for selling their integrity, the integrity of their nation’s democracy, the integrity of their party, for a favourable tweet. For the past four years, despite unwise decisions and right-wing appeasement in my own country, I have thanked my lucky stars that I am not American. If this had happened in my country, I would be ashamed to be a citizen of it.
Looking Forward
The one piece of solace I find in this mess, is that the march of progress is so named because it cannot be stopped. Things will get better, it has been proven time and time again. In the past, no-one expected the country to go to war over the rights of slaves, but it did. No-one thought that women would ever be given the right to vote, but they were. No-one expected that blacks would be given the same legal rights as whites, but they were. No-one expected that the US Supreme Court would legalise gay marriage, but it did. The march of progress is inevitable. Society progresses, societal views change, old customs and outdated practices are discarded, and life improves for those once disenfranchised. The march of progress may be slowed, delayed, but never stopped or reversed. America will see better days, but it will probably take longer than expected. Progress has been forestalled in the past four years, and will take some effort to re-start it. I do not expect wounds to be healed and significant progress to be made in the coming four years, but I do expect that in the four years after that, things will start to get better. Hopefully.
stay safe.
/e
