"One of the darkest days in the history of our nation:" A Trumpian insurrection
To describe Wednesday’s events at the nation’s Capitol as anything short of an act of sedition encouraged by the sitting president is to ignore the dark reality of Trump’s America.
What the nation witnessed last week was appalling, yet symbolic of Trump’s legacy as the supposed ‘leader of the free world’: on the deadliest day of the COVID-19 pandemic this far, thousands of unmasked Trump supporters, fueled by conspiracy theories and lies spread on social media, stormed the U.S. Capitol in a foolish, yet terrorizing attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election. As they literally attacked the home of American democracy, they shamelessly waved Confederate flags, smashed through windows with an alarming lack of resistance and vandalized offices of Congress’s highest members. They wore shirts and wove flags with frightening slogans such as “Camp Auschwitz,” “Pelosi is Satan” and flashed conspicuous Q’s across their t-shirts. They wove Trump flags and wore Trump paraphernalia as if he were a revered dictator. They left threatening messages in the likes of “We will not back down.”
To think messages of such hate were in full display in our nation’s capital should send a chill through all Americans.
As members of Congress were evacuated into an undisclosed area, domestic terrorists roamed the floor of the U.S. Senate, posing for pictures at desks and scaling the walls of the Chamber. They planted at least two explosive devices – though this action received far too little attention. By the end of the day, at least four had died, including one woman who was shot inside the grounds of the Capitol building.
Instead of condemning their violence, as the President was so quick to do of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters this summer, Trump said to his loyalists with a wink and a nod “we love you” and “you are very special.” There was no mention of their being “thugs” or un-American, and certainly not terrorists, words he used to describe Black protestors and those who refuse to stand during the national anthem. Instead, they were, in his daughter’s own words, “American patriots.”
Had Trump not told his supporters that afternoon that they could “never take back [their] country with weakness,” had he not fed them with lies of a fraudulent election or failed to renounce their dangerous conspiracy theories, the U.S. Capitol might not have been attacked in the way it was, if at all. Trump’s acts are those of unmistakable treason and for that, Trump – and the countless who have enabled him over the past four years – must be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Trump must not be let off with a simple telling-off, or worse, a free pass for fear of his supporter’s retribution. A brief time-out from Twitter will not suffice. An America in which Trump is let off with no ramifications for the actions he has taken is one no American should want to live in. It is certainly not an America that will have any chance of prospering in the future.
Time and time again, we’ve witnessed the President commit despicable acts or make a villainous statement for it only to be swept under the rug, twisted, forgotten or excused by the time of his next outrageous scandal. However, the price of forgetting Wednesday’s events is too high. The day’s events were, as Joe Biden rightly called them, some of the “darkest in our nation.” To fail collectively in remembering them is for America to descend into utter chaos. The next Trump-like figure is waiting in the wings for the 2024 Election with a far more strategic, forceful, and authoritarian approach in mind. We must not signal that the United States is unwilling or unable to resist such a force.
As a nation, we have no collective religion, no common ethnicity or shared race to base our national identity. Our diversity has always been our strength. Our American identity is ideological: a shared understanding, belief and commitment to the American principles of liberty and democracy. If we are unable to, at a minimum, accept (if not implement) the values embedded in our nation’s founding documents, we have little chance for cohesion or unity as a nation going forward. Visible in the events of Wednesday – and those that have accompanied Trump’s presidency over the last four years – is the destruction of that shared national identity based on a shared commitment to American ideology. When 70% of Republicans nation refuse to believe the results of a free and fair democratic election, when over 74 million Americans vote for a President who has shown countless times little commitment to neither liberty nor decency, when politicians would rather pursue their self-interest than defend their oath to the United States, we are on the brink of peril. Perhaps this is what we should be most fearful of following yesterday’s events.
Alannah Nathan is a freshman in the School of Foreign Service and a New Yorker by way of Seattle. She is a prospective STIA major and hopes to guide the future of climate change policy in the international arena.