Enabled
We don’t always have the words to express thoughts or emotions at the precise moment an event occurs, especially one of great import, impactful for its personal, societal or historical significance. It takes time for most of us to process troubling times. That is why it has taken me 48 hours since I began watching the footage unfold on television January 6th, to attempt to describe what happened. I don’t watch the news often, I read it. A good friend’s daughter lives in D.C. though so after my phone kept blowing up with outraged and concerned texts I finally tuned into the chaos.
Though it is safe to say that as a country we hit the bottom two days ago, I also thought we hit the bottom three days before that and certainly a week before that and undoubtedly a month before that and then at least two campaign cycles before that. It was four years ago when I could have told you that this is approximately where we would end up. My oldest at 23, predicts Civil War. My youngest at 19, is teary-eyed and overwhelmed by the hatred so easily flung at others. November 8, 2016 just before midnight, the writing was on the wall when I wrote my children a letter about the harsher world they would wake to. Emailing it to them, I encouraged them to hold on to each other and to hope, but reminded them that only hard conversations, hard work and civic duty could help us survive a Trump Presidency.
Citizens wanted to drain the swamp that November of 2016, they wanted to shake up things when they filled in the box next to Donald J. Trump’s name. Choosing a reality TV host, a snake oil salesman who’d repeatedly filed bankruptcy, used underhanded means to inflate his wealth, who inflamed racial divides, who wouldn’t release his tax records, who dismissed veterans and their families, who asked foreign nations to spy on our elected officials, a man who left countless people working for him unpaid and regularly made slanderous, dangerous, damaging claims, the people chose him over an experienced lawmaker or politician.
“How bad could it be?” many asked after he was elected.
Though I couldn’t imagine the full extent, I knew then it could be unbelievably awful.
It’s been, in the words of our currently less than articulate President Trump…BAD.
Trump and his supporters will tell you that he’s been harassed like no other President. Though in fact I’ve never heard of such a name calling, cry baby in jr. high, let alone in high office but I’d wager that the death threats, nooses and racism leveled against President Obama (still today) are far worse than the so-called ‘witch hunt’ that Trump’s actions brought upon himself. Tens of thousands of lies have a way of revisiting a person, however, in this case, his lies have returned to haunt us all.
Two days ago, on Wednesday January 5th, 2021, thousands assembled in Washington D.C. to voice their concerns, as is their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. Mere days prior, an hour long recording was released where Donald Trump made claims based in rumor rather than evidence, strong arming (at best, threatened at worst) the Governor and his attorney into “recalculating” the state of Georgia’s vote. Trump asked for 11,780 votes, one more vote than he had lost the state by. This is exactly the type of call to Ukraine that led to his impeachment. Using his influence in this way is a crime.
Since November 3rd 2020, when our country held the general election, there was little doubt that it would take days to officially count the ballots. With a pandemic raging, mail in votes were at an all time high and some states were changing the books on how and when those ballots could be received to accommodate voters in perilous times. As COVID-19 raged and took over 300,000 American lives in November, due to Trump politicizing masks and common sense practice, both liberals and conservatives waited anxiously to know the fate of their party and country. Once the votes were counted and recounted, it was obvious that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had legitimately won. Without a concession speech and without assurances of a peaceful transition,Trump and Guiliani forced talking points and rumor into mainstream media, and that is when the fraudulent election narrative really took off, though the ground work had been laid for years. Evidence was not found, but the Courts had been packed, attorneys put in place, and over 200 million dollars solicited after the election from his minions to afford Trump’s legal challenges. Money, as it turns out, to be used as he sees fit at the end of his term. Pardons for Trump’s associates were doled out, including those accused of federal crimes in connection with the Trump and Russia investigation.
But Biden winning was not the desired result of those planning to protest two days ago, this past Wednesday, and hateful rhetoric, revolutionary talk and memes have populated right wing social media sites for months. These people arrived to protest an election they felt was rigged against them, felt was stolen from the President they wanted to win. These citizens were and are still, constantly informed that it had been rigged. Without basis in fact or proof, repeated fraudulent claims were made by Trump, a sitting U.S. President, fueling a fire in his base. His attorneys exhausted all channels by the time that desperate hour-long call was made to Brad Raffensberger, Secretary of State in Georgia early in January.
Though the facts weren’t with these citizens, their loyalty, ignorance, belief and passion carried them to D.C. to demonstrate. Intolerance for Leftists and Liberals drove the predominately White male, open shirted, face painted crowd there, and hatred raged among them, sporting in rally cries, barrel bellies and bigotry, with racism seen in confederate flags and t-shirts boasting such atrocities as Camp Auschwitz. When their POTUS encouraged the rambunctious, heated crowd to march to the Capitol building and show strength, they did.
Thousands pressed against each other, most maskless amid severe spikes in a pandemic, as hundreds of people claiming to be patriots descended on and breached our Nation’s Capital Building. They took selfies with on duty officers, with off duty officers amongst them. The building was neglectfully ill prepared to stave off the angry mob. Police stepped aside for the White rioters. No rubber bullets, flash bangs or tear gas accompanied the mobs ascent. Breaking doors and windows, these Trump followers flung themselves inside, they defiled federal property, rampaged offices, ripped up signs, stole artifacts and took addressed mail.
Unrestrained and emboldened they sat in the Speaker of the House’s office chair and claimed victory with their feet on her desk. Trumpers scaled walls and ran through the rotunda, taking photos in the seats where our highest level officials sit. That sacred space where our laws have been debated and legislated for well over two centuries was disrespected, and cameras continued to show us to what degree weaponized citizens contained within a bubble of information, without a foot in reality, are willing to go.
Their President, who said he’d be with them, remained in the White House, silent. These same people who called BLM protestors, ‘thugs’, this summer, looted podiums and other artifacts, smashed windows, trashed office space, and left their cigarette butts around the historic space. In one case a computer with sensitive material was taken. Meanwhile our elected lawmakers, in both houses, deemed threatened, were made to seek cover by Secret Service and the severely understaffed Capitol security. Aides retrieved the elector’s ballot boxes and fled the area. The entire Senate and Congress were evacuated, grabbing gas masks from under their seats and ducking behind chairs. Shots were fired. Vice President Pence was ushered out but not before a hot mic picked up his question, “Is my message out?”, he had called for a stop to the violence on Twitter. President elect Joe Biden challenged President Trump to speak to the crowds and calm tensions.This all happened during what was to be a routine parliamentary process, the same process that has confirmed 46 U.S. Presidents, from both parties, over our shared history.
Rather than calm, Trump faced and encouraged his mob by posting a one minute video on Twitter further claiming fraud and his landslide win, saying to go home, but only after saying he loved these special people causing such damage to our democracy. Twitter and Facebook removed that video shortly after it was posted and suspended the President of the United States of America. A man with the nuclear codes, couldn’t be trusted on social media.
Some of those people were openly armed, others appeared to pose a threat and one woman, a radicalized air force veteran, was shot and killed by police in the mayhem. Though I didn’t learn until the next day, three others died of medical emergencies while pushing through the throngs of rioters and one police officer later died of his wounds, injured when the mob pushed back against police, who only months earlier, they had drawn a blue line of glorification around.
After the smoke cleared, quite literally, the Capitol was emptied of rioters as this heinous stain seeped into the fabric of our country. Despite the carnage and trauma of the day, our Speaker, Nancy Pelosi called for order and our Vice President Mike Pence, armed with a new sense of responsibility and detaching from Trump, carried out oath and procedure well into the night. By 3:45am, it was affirmed that Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris will be our nation’s next President and Vice President. Anarchy, lack of evidence nor a call for reason and unity dissuaded the 138 Republican Representatives of Congress and six U.S. Senators from challenging the procedural count of state’s electors.
Senators like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, obstructionists and Trump loyalists, finally admitted defeat, asked for reason and repeated that Biden would be our next President, unheeded saying that any delay or challenge would only further hurt our government. Senator Mitt Romney hit the precise tone needed, in his floor speech saying, “We gather today due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of his supporters whom he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. They will be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history. That will be their legacy.” Romney went on to say, “The objectors have claimed they are doing so on behalf of the voters. Have an audit, they say, to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen. Please! No Congressional led audit will ever convince those voters, particularly when the President will continue to claim that the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership. The truth is that President-elect Biden won this election. President Trump lost. Scores of courts, the President’s own Attorney General, and state election officials both Republican and Democrat have reached this unequivocal decision.”
Yes, our government was under attack by seditious citizens, the alternative fact crowd, who enabled by misinformation and ego, criminally shook the bedrock of our country, revealing our weaknesses, the cracks in our foundations.
That very morning, democracy had been in full swing when two runoff elections with record turnouts in Georgia saw our youngest Senator Jon Ossoff elected, a Jewish video journalist with experience exposing corruption announced the winner on the heels of Rapheal Warnock’s win the night before. Rev. Warnock the first Black Senator elected from the south, is the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta presiding where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Warnock and Ossoff elected as U.S. Senators against incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
It’s only been two days and though I’ve written the account, I hardly feel I have the words, though being a writer means I will find them.
We cannot deny the masterful build up to this moment. Crafted messages of hate and intolerance for our fellow countrymen have been peddled so repeatedly as to become white noise (pun intended) since 2015, when Donald Trump began his campaign for President. Falsehood and fear have driven citizens to trust Russians over their fellow citizens and intelligence officers. And Trump has done a masterful job, of sowing fear and victimization to a growing crowd of Whites feeling disenfranchised by leveling the playing field for minorities.
Wednesday night, I tracked the situation and stories on social media, as ABC played out the day, the chaos, the lives injured or lost. In real time, I relied on the consistency and uncontentious truth of Merriam Webster to describe what I was seeing, not trusting my own thoughts to the page. On Facebook at intervals, I posted single words and their definitions to carry meaning, lost as I was to supply it.
Mob. Sedition. Thug.
If Wednesday taught us anything, it is that words and how you use them matter.
As of today, after an attempted coup in the United States of America, and 61 of 62 court cases for election fraud thrown out, including twice at the Supreme Court level, due to lack of evidence or merit, we still have a significant segment of our citizens who have convinced themselves that a free and fair election was stolen. Despite the DOJ saying that this was the most secure election in our Nation’s history, despite Bill Barr leaving his post as Attorney General because he told the truth about no fraud and Donald Trump couldn’t handle it.
More registered voters cast a ballot either in person, by mail or by early vote than ever before in our history, with over 159 million votes cast from 239 million registered voters. In the end, seven million more votes went for Joseph R. Biden, who received over 81 million votes to Donald Trump’s 73.9 million. 66.7% of registered voters came out, the highest numbers since 1990.
Though over 7 million more votes were cast for Biden, those appear little more than a clerical error to Trump supporters. Convinced that too many dead people, Black people and liberals voted, right wing fanatics feel that not winning means something is stolen, forgetting that every citizen has a vote and when counted, reveals a different winner.
Enabling democracy. What would that be like? Enabling every voter to participate, enabling every student to succeed, enabling unity and denouncing vitriol, what might that yield us as a nation? Is it at all possible or wanted? Is it easier to hate the other side?
Unity seems a faraway pipe dream, but if difficult dialogue and creating new systems can enable it, I’m in.
Some of my friends on text or social media are awfully quiet, and have been for months. And I won’t lie, it hurts on some levels knowing the boundaries I have to have around those seemingly good, long standing friendships. Still others whom I vehemently disagree with, I see online are railing on Dems, the Squad, Nancy Pelosi, Mark Zuckerburg and Simon and Schuster (who cancelled Sen. Hawley’s book deal, who challenged the vote and incited insurrection). A few high school connections who I am not close to but have not unfriended are blaming Antifa, though Antifa would have less need to defile a Capitol building already under siege by their opposition or while elected officials were affirming a more progressive President.
Though it becomes more and more tempting, I don’t unfriend as a rule, I like to see what other people are saying, I like to understand the other side as best I can. I engage much to the chagrin of others and I am unfriended occasionally and twice by cousins because of it. But, if I know anything it is that civil discourse and understanding can’t grow or expand in a vacuum. Sadly, many far right people are moving over to Parler and MeWe where they can name call and wish for the death of their fellow liberal citizens and elected officials without their right of free speech trounced on by responsible threat monitoring.
I read a wide variety of thought posts and have been learning not to engage with those off the far end of my views that I know will lead nowhere healthy. Many conservatives I find are not interested in debate with me, so today, when one more socially aware conservative friend on FaceBook posted a query about everything going down, asking for people’s take, hoping to enable discussion, I eagerly posted a long response. Here it is, though I’ve added a few supporting research clues in double parentheses and corrected a few grammatical errors…
“I always appreciate the thought you put into this country/ world we share, and sure, I’ll bite on this chew toy of civil discourse that may lead us nowhere further than entrenchment. Have to start somewhere right?
I’d say that while I’m hopeful that respect and our commonality may bring us closer to each other I’m also hesitant to give out passes for enablers right now. By enablers I mean specifically, people who for four years plus, didn’t denounce vitriol, lies, and spin when it served their purpose, propped only their belief systems and positions in society especially while hypocrisy was at the heart of that belief or action (ie: Supreme Court double standards, thug applied only to POC when retail or statuary was damaged but not when a mob vandalized our hall of democracy, Blue line flags flown before killing a capitol police person in an insurrection, blaming Antifa for (everything) an insurrection because one cannot admit their party or belief is to blame therefore perhaps denying to realize that they are as well (by the way being Anti fascist is a good thing an a Democratic Republic and no I’m not saying violence is ever condoned for any group) and claims of religious morality overtly supported by lies and manipulation…) See, I believe It’s one thing to say that we should all Vote our conscience, or speak our mind and I respect our right to do so but not at the cost of responsibility.
I am a firm believer in everyone having a voice at the ballot box or in speech, but it’s another thing entirely to vote or speak or act in a way that openly hurts others with a claim of righteousness when it amounts to a bigger dollar bill in your pocket and is at the true dignity or expense of others. When ambition of self or party is wielded with impunity or entitlement, when one party or person is in power, acting without thought of future precedent or knowing how turnabout is fair play, then our democracy is eroded without remorse or awareness for how that vote or action may impact others negatively.
I embrace civil discourse, I understand differences are among us and rightfully so given how we all grow up and into such wildly different situations, but in this day and age when access to education, data, evidence, intelligent sources, historical context and truths of other lived experience is so readily available, and fact checking is so much easier, to stay ignorant now is choice. And I do not embrace self selected ignorance by means of denial. I don’t condone cherry picking pieces that work for only some.
Example-Legislating a woman’s body for instance or voting down a ticket to do so because it suits one’s own beliefs while knowingly infringing on others. If God wanted law over the body he’d not have created us with the skill to invent birth control or treatments to save mothers’ lives when a fetus cannot be saved, or given us options creating choice. If God created in his image he would have also understood women’s bodies and legislated sperm, or not allowed rape to occur or allowed free will, or asked us not to judge others. No, it’s man (and largely in America, White men) who want to govern women’s bodies through the guise of religion, assigning less blame to their actions, their aggressions and their bodies as a means of control. No free thinking woman buys into that regardless of their faith. No matter my belief I will not stem or steal the rights of others. If I don’t want an abortion I don’t have to have one. If I don’t want birth control I don’t have to buy or use it. But the audacity of some to attempt to apply one belief over others inherently suggests superiority. And-It is no different in regards to the police- a system set up just post slavery by White males to control Black males… (see 13th on Netflix) How can we expect POC to ever put faith in a system built to control them? Defunding means redirecting money away from militarization, supporting social programs to handle the jobs that police are not trained or prioritized to handle. (See stats on shooting of the mentally disabled) (see stats in untested rape kits) (see benchmarks for responding better to domestic violence elsewhere)
Given that Whites have taken so significantly from BIPOC how can our nation be surprised when they react in ways we don’t understand. When they use their rights to oppose peacefully and are railroaded like Kapernick, of course they’ll take to the streets after George Floyd was murdered (one of thousands, millions murdered over centuries) and in what were overwhelmingly peaceful BLM protests this summer were still brutalized and antagonized by police. I saw that first hand. We all saw it. Or-When you see off duty capitol police helping the mob in DC Wednesday, when they understaffed and underprepared because it was mostly whites coming to protest, and when on duty officers pose for selfies with seditionists how can we trust all police to serve and protect all people? Largely as a nation Whites go about their lives unaware of just how badly abused and marginalized ((see rate of bank loans for POC)) that POC are in myriad ways because it does not affect them. See how deeply COVID affects communities of color… POC are statistically mistreated or neglected in our healthcare systems and have learned not to trust doctors or vaccines after so long being ignored ((Dr. Susan Moore)), experimented on ((Google Marion Sims, no anesthesia)), understand that at least 5,000 Black women were illegally sterilized between 1933–1973, and gene tested ((see big corp profit from Henriettta Lacks DNA illegally used)) within these systems.
So as the Conservative party weakens in the popular vote, and lives in fear of becoming the minority, a narrative around immigration and White victimization was the tonic peddled and sucked down because broadly, Whites started to feel the pinch of systems they created to serve them, which being founded in such imbalance, inevitably would fail them. They, Whites, felt less privileged. And that is where All Lives Matter steps in. Whites have not historically felt the fear, loss of life, loss of ancestry, history or property that POC have. They have not been targeted by police as Black people have ((see many recent articles about this)), POC have not been allowed to leave the scene of a crime ((See Kyle Rittenhouse and others)) without being beaten, unable to breathe under a knee or outright killed. Black Lives have not mattered for so long, so they now must be claimed and made to matter in order to get systems and mindsets to change.
So, for Whites to claim victimization when their slice is simply more the size of everyone else’s is the true snowflake scenario that is repeatedly deflected onto progressives.
And…
I do want a kumbaya moment eventually, but first, it does matter who started this. It matters who incites violence. It matters that our citizenry has been purposefully divided for ambition, and that falsehood was manufactured and spewed to willing believers. Those citizens are being manipulated and that matters. It matters that it was Trump supporters that defiled the Capitol. It matters because until we admit and hold accountable those responsible, we cannot move on.
These are crimes. Sedition is sedition.
Those responsible need to be made accountable or more people will feel emboldened to attempted coup, sedition, hate crimes and other domestic terrorism.
But you know where I sit, you and I question things. The question is do others truly understand the impact of their vote, will they continue to deny their privilege or are they willing to examine their bias and their comforts fueled by superiority in the ripple effect of tax breaks, gerrymandering, education and demographics? Because these systems are now hurting impoverished Whites, will that bring change?… Do folks know that when they won’t vote for tax levies that they’re asking for desperation to take root in certain neighborhoods that will touch them someday?
So. That’s my perspective and some will agree and some will think and others will decry me as knowing nothing but, I’m having the difficult conversations as a rule with any who are willing because, again, we must start somewhere. I don’t need agreement, I ask to be heard and at least better understood. We all can do better, myself included, if we research what we post, and if we reach into ourselves to show restraint and empathy, to lend understanding to our fellow citizens and humans. And yes talking about this over wine would be lovely someday…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/warnock-loeffler-ossoff-perdue-georgia-senate.html