Damage Control
How do we respond to a singularly American crisis?
I haven’t written about last Wednesday’s events at the Capitol until now because I was doing work for a freelance project. Frankly, I was also in shock. I wanted to say something, to at least compile some sort of record of the day’s events. I spent a few days frozen by a mixture of adrenaline and horror.
It wasn’t that the MAGA assault on the Capitol was unexpected. This was what the Trumpist movement has been building towards for the last five years, what Republican politics have been hurtling towards for far longer. It felt inevitable. That didn’t make watching it play out in real time any less surreal.
You get a unique sense of terror from watching history happen, the absolute worst and most horrifying kind of history. The waves of rabid Donald Trump supporters, off-duty cops, conspiracy theory true believers, militia members, white nationalists and out-and-out Nazis surging into the Capitol will be seared into my brain forever. I was convinced that I was about to watch members of Congress be executed on live television. It’s a miracle that just five people died, that the siege didn’t turn into a massacre.
All indications are that this is just the beginning. There are reports that attacks will take place roughly a week from today, and on the day of President-Elect Biden’s inauguration. We arrived at this point through negligence and neglect, by choosing the path of least resistance and maximum profit. We arrived here because our institutions, and indeed our very society, are functioning as those in charge of them wish them to function - in a morally broken manner.
We now stand at a crossroads. The can has been kicked down the road over and over again, and now we’ve found that the end of the road sits at the precipice of the gaping maw of Hell. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that the reckoning can’t be delayed any further. It can be. Plenty of people are currently trying to do so. But this moment, this harrowing stretch of January, is the point in the time stream from which all other possibilities flow. Choices must be made, and they need to be made now.
What happened at the Capitol was a fundamentally American crime, an effort by the white power structures of the country to reaffirm their belief that they alone deserve power. Are there consequences for unforgivable actions, or are there merely slaps on the wrist that masquerade as solutions? What does accountability look like?
Is it being banned from Twitter? That finally happened to Trump on Friday night. It didn’t happen when he used the platform to start the birther movement, when he was spreading hate or misinformation about a deadly pandemic, or when he was cheerleading for the mob as it charged into the Capitol. It happened on Friday night. It was only then that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey finally relented and lowered the banhammer on the president.
Twitter also started a crackdown on other accounts. Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Ron Watkins were all banned. Watkins is the administrator of 8kun, the site where Q posts. Some believe him to be the one writing the posts. Ali Alexander, one of the main organizers of Wednesday’s events and arguably the biggest Stop the Steal cheerleader, was banned last night. Dorsey still followed him as recently as two nights ago.
To be frank, the problem has not truly been addressed. Twitter has not banned Rudy Giuliani or Jenna Ellis, members of the president’s legal team who have constantly fueled the false narrative that the election was stolen. Andy Ngo, a far-right influencer who masquerades as a journalist while putting real reporters in the crosshairs of white nationalists, is still free to tweet as he pleases. Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who was at the Capitol on Wednesday, has a blue checkmark and is still tweeting. So is Holocaust denier Michelle Malkin.
Dorsey has seemingly decided to close the barn door long after the horse bolted and started stocking up on ammo. The same is true of Mark Zuckerberg, who has suspended Trump from Facebook until the end of his term but continues to allow radical groups to thrive and recruit on his site. Facebook has famously gamed the site’s moderation policies to benefit the right.
This isn’t a matter of consequences for them. It’s a matter of money and staying out of court.
So what do consequences look like? Trump losing the ability to post whatever pops into his head is not an adequate punishment for directing a mob to the Capitol to keep his grip on power.
This is not a problem that can be fixed overnight. Throwing people in jail won’t make these beliefs go away. That’s because the Stop the Steal movement isn’t about a single election as much as it’s about an entire ontological system. The grievances of the mob at the Capitol were rooted in the foundational American belief that white christians should be the sole proprietors of power.
This is the core of QAnon and Trumpism. It’s why the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers swarmed the Capitol alongside angry, unglued-looking grandparents. It’s why those proudly swinging Blue Lives Matter flags attacked cops and killed one of them - because that flag has always been more about loyalty to white power structures than to police officers themselves.
Trump currently serves as the avatar of that belief, a very real realization of the concept that a white man can do whatever he wants and hurt whomever he wants. Even if he slips into the ether at some point in the future, this perceived crime against what his supporters view as good and just will fuel the movement for years. A new figurehead will emerge, whether it’s Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, or someone else.
Nothing that can feasibly take place over the coming months will make white rage disappear. That doesn’t mean that action shouldn’t be taken. In fact, it’s imperative that action be taken as soon as possible.
The first two orders of business should be the removal of the president from power and the expulsion of the members of Congress who endorsed the Stop the Steal lie. Articles of impeachment will be introduced today, despite the baffling reservations of some top Democrats. Newly elected Congresswoman Cori Bush said that she also plans to introduce a resolution to handle expulsion.
It is imperative that both of these efforts succeed. For them to fail would send a message that there is no punishment for trying to install fascism. To not even attempt to immediately bring these measures to a vote would be the peak of cowardice.
Democrats have also called for a thorough review of the Capitol Police and any far-right sympathizers within their ranks. The CPD had a hilariously small presence at the Capitol on Wednesday and claims to have not known about the extent of the MAGA presence descending on Washington, despite the fact that the event was openly planned on social media. A number of reports from the scene depict disturbing conduct by some CPD officers. The rioters also seemed to possess uncanny knowledge of the building.
Naturally, Republicans are talking about the need for “unity” and “moving forward” in response to Democrats - and the country - demanding retribution. They claim that throwing Trump out of office would only further embolden his most violent supporters, as if 147 Republican members of Congress didn’t do just that when they objected to the election results just hours after the mob ransacked the Capitol. They’ve already begged Biden, whose entire message has been misguidedly focused on unity, to lobby his party to back off on impeachment.
Biden should tell them to shove it. The Democrats, after decades of incrementalism and trying their hardest to not upset any racist independent voters who might vote blue if the party doesn’t do anything too radical or too helpful to social justice causes, should grow a spine.
There is going to be more violence over the coming months (and likely years) regardless of whether or not the Democrats move to hold the liars accountable. It has already spread to state houses across the country. The insurrectionists will be back in Washington soon. Even if that wasn’t the case, letting democracy be held hostage would be unacceptable. The Democrats should act accordingly.
For five years now, people have been desperate to deny what the GOP has wrought. The family separations, the Muslim ban, the shocking treatment of the Parkland victims, the not-at-all-subtle calls for violence from the podium, and the morgues overflowing with COVID victims have not been enough for some to realize that any measure of complicity in the furthering of Republican goals is unacceptable. There’s never been any tolerable room for excuses, but even the tiniest shred of deniability is now gone.
There will be no moment when the party awakens out of a haze, as if throwing their lot in with Trump was the result of some sort of spell. The same people who eagerly visited harm on so many will not suddenly come to the bargaining table with good faith. Biden does not seem to understand this. He does not seem to understand that there is no going back.
Trump - the man himself, and the ideology he represents - is fundamentally dangerous to the lives of people everywhere and to democracy itself. That has always been the case. It’s been true since Trump descended the golden escalator to kick off his campaign. Along the way he’s been enabled by a host of Republican politicians, social media companies, grifters, and the media. The Democratic party has put up a woefully ineffective fight, when they’ve bothered to fight at all. The price for all of this has been death.
There will be more death. It is the American way for the machine to grind the vulnerable to pulp. That wrong cannot be corrected without first ensuring that there are consequences for what happened on Wednesday.