The phrase is as euphemistic here as it was over the summer. This chaos, too, was inflamed by irresponsible actors and has origins that should be studied.
The phrase is as euphemistic here as it was over the summer. This chaos, too, was inflamed by irresponsible actors and has origins that should be studied.
W hy did that ugly scene at the Capitol happen? Why was the certification of the Electoral College result delayed? Why did that poor woman die in the melee?
Tucker Carlson pleaded on his show last night for America’s leaders to move a step beyond condemning the riotous actions that delayed the counting of the Electoral College vote and left several dead. Carlson demanded that they (and we) try to understand why they happened, why thousands of people descended on their own government’s Capitol building. Carlson granted that they believe that their democracy is rigged against them. “Rather than trying to change their minds, convince them and reassure them that the system is real,” Carlson said, “our leaders will try to silence them.” He added, “If you don’t bother to pause and learn a single thing from it, then you’re a fool. You lack wisdom and self-awareness.”
Carlson has a point. The scene will very likely be used to justify expanded surveillance of right-wing groups, and more suppression of right-wing speech on social media. Much of the action was just shambolic, with the Capitol’s occupiers goofing off, taking selfies, chanting, and banging on doors. An insurrection? A coup? That seems to be dignifying it. But it surely wasn’t a mere protest, either. Hearken back to a phrase that gained currency over the summer, and it might have been what this MAGA mob would call their “mostly peaceful” occupation of the Capitol.
That’s as euphemistic here as it was over the summer, to be sure. It was also lawless and misguided, with deadly consequences. But Carlson brought up the matter of reassurance and leadership. One leader did not try to change suspicious minds, but sought to spread and profit from distrust. The president of the United States, just days after pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn the election, started a pressure campaign in private and in public against the vice president of the United States. He encouraged the delusional theory — one that had circulated virally in the QAnon fever swamps — that Mike Pence could somehow refuse to count the votes from the states Trump lost, and thereby make Trump president. In front of his “Stop the Steal” rally, Trump threatened Pence with his displeasure.
As the rally ended, the vice president released a letter affirming that he obviously had no such power to disenfranchise states at will. Then, Trump tweeted this:
Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!
Then things got hot in Washington, D.C.
But let’s go one step beyond and try to understand what’s happening here. I’ve been trying to understand it myself. My old friend James Poulos observed the scene yesterday and commented: “When it is absolutely impossible to remove those from power who hate them, people eventually go berserk. Politics 101.”
I asked another Trump-friendly friend if he was LARPing by pretending Mike Pence had the power to keep Trump in office. His response: “The correct answer to that question is: no one cares. I don’t think the CIA has the power to secretly set up the president using fake intelligence dossiers. And yet, here we are.”
I think my friends express the thing exactly. A substantial portion of people, identified with the Right, no longer believe the norms and institutions of American life protect them. They believe the rules are applied by the dictates of an implacably hostile enemy. For them, the evidence is everywhere. A government in which they had a meaningful say would have noticed declining life expectancy among middle-aged whites earlier and treated it as an emergency. A government in which they had a meaningful say would not promote synthetic ideologies about transgenderism. If truth is no defense for them, and lies are no handicap for their enemies, why should they continue to play the game?
“Mostly peaceful” is now the leaden joke phrase among conservatives to describe the riots that the media tried to minimize in the summer of 2020. But, in a way it’s fitting for the MAGA rampagers as well. Like the BLM movement, they believe American institutions are irretrievably corrupted by a hostile ideology. Instead of “Defund the Police,” it might be “Defund Social Science and the Media.”
That doesn’t make it righteous or right, of course. I think that going along with fantasies and lies will, in the long run, lead to the same failure and frustration they have with the system as it is.
But we have to confront this problem head on. Growing and increasingly influential sectors of public opinion are giving up on politics and governance as we know them. A “mostly peaceful” future awaits us.