“To devastate is easier and more spectacular
than to create”. - Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, 1962
After Donald Trump exhorted his cult followers to lay siege to
the United States Congress on January 6th, 2020, five people
lost their lives. This week the House impeached him for the
second time in a year. This second impeachment has important
symbolic significance and a degree of political value, but what
lies ahead, after the impeachment, is what I fear most. Trump
plans to sit out Joe Biden’s inauguration in his Wolfsschanze
(Hitler’s, Wolf’s Lair) in Palm Beach because he knows that what
he has unleashed in America will not dissipate after Joe Biden
takes the reigns of our democracy. Trump’s rhetoric has opened a
Pandora’s Box of anti-authoritarian fury over the last 4 years
that has spawned hundreds of armed paramilitary groups ready to
burn down the very government that has permitted them to
flourish.
While some of the “revolutionaries” who stormed the Capitol
looked like extras in a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show
- with a smattering of the remnants of The Village People - the
leaders of these militant groups looked deadly serious. And each
group of dissatisfied American citizens has a story to tell and
a set of individual grievances that cannot be remedied within
the parameters of yesterday’s American identity. Democratic
campaign slogans like Joe Biden’s: “Our Best Days Still Lie
Ahead” or Pete Buttigieg’s: “A Fresh Start for America”, or
Elizabeth Warren’s: “I Have a Plan for That” look ironic when
compared to the grievances these right-wing terrorist groups
espouse. In one way or another, these groups are organized under
one broad set of principles, one abiding set of truths: American
government represents an oppressive need for conformity; it is
hopelessly corrupt and hypocritical; it is an agent conceived to
sap one’s sense of individuality by demanding surrender of the
self to the dictates of the State. No, they don’t believe that
“we are in this together”, and no, they don't believe that “we
are one nation, one destiny”.
Donald Trump’s anti-government posse of right-wing extremist
organizations such as QAnon, (a conspiracy group that sounds
much like End Times Christian eschatology); the Proud Boys, (a
testosterone only fascist hate group dedicated to political
violence and white supremacy), and the Oath Keepers, (Donald
Trump’s “Band of Brothers” - a group that, according to the
Southern Poverty Law Center, “claims tens of thousands of
present and former law enforcement officials and military
veterans as members, and is one of the largest radical
anti-government groups in the U.S. today". Hitler had his
Brownshirts, Mussolini had his Blackshirts, and Trump has his
Oath Keepers.
These domestic terrorist cults are the soft underbelly of what
the New York Times describes as “the squalid realities of
America’s political system”. While the man attired in a bespoke
ensemble made of bear skins and buffalo horns is representative
of good, old-fashioned psychosis, to dismiss these organizations
as collections of psycho crackpots is to not see the forest for
the trees.
Clearly, this assault on the Capitol had no realizable objective
other than to shock the nation, no endgame other than to
terrorize an already exhausted citizenry suffering under the
burden of a deadly virus, loss of jobs and businesses, and the
existential fear of what might come next. Trump’s riot was
motiveless violence - domestic terrorism intended to cow an
already fearful nation intent upon removing him from office.
But perhaps this event was inevitable.
For decades we have been fed a steady diet of anti-government
rhetoric - from Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Inaugural speech:
“…government is not the solution to our problem; government IS
the problem…” - to his 1986 wisecrack: "The nine most terrifying
words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and
I'm here to help". But it wasn’t only Reagan who ran against
Washington and won. Politicians from both parties have
campaigned against government, claiming that as “Washington
outsiders” they would not fall into the corruption and venality
of “the swamp”. But while most politicians now campaign on
anti-government rhetoric and pose as “outsiders” - once elected,
they become part of the very government they disparaged. Thus,
have politicians created a belief among Americans that has
resulted in a disdain for their own government and a disdain for
all politicians because, in order to govern, these purported
Washington outsiders must become part of the very institution
they publicly condemn.
And then came Donald Trump: a fake populist and non-politician
who has actually governed the way all politicians actually
campaign. He campaigned to burn the whole thing to the ground,
and of course, he has come close to fulfilling his promise.
What did we expect? As Paul Waldman wrote in 2014: “When you
broadcast every day that the government of the world's oldest
democracy is a totalitarian beast bent on turning America into a
prison of oppression and fear, when you glorify lawbreakers like
Cliven Bundy, when you say that your opponents would literally
destroy the country if they could, you can't profess surprise
when some people decide that violence is the only means of
forestalling the disaster you have warned them about”.
In Donald Trump’s America, where the lack of any effort by the
federal government to quell the spread of the coronavirus
pandemic that is predicted to cause the deaths of almost half a
million souls; and in an America where the table scraps of a
bloated plutocracy have increasingly served as food for all the
rest – it is a cosmic understatement to say that we should have
seen this coming.
Rebellion is a romanticized idea in America. And a distrust of
government is clearly reflected in its founding documents and
its prescient establishment of a government comprised of checks
and balances. But with Donald Trump, this politically inspired
contempt for government has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Politicians have been waging war against American government for
over 40 years with their rhetoric, and we have believed them
when they campaigned against it. We believed them so much that
we elected a fascist politician who sought to burn it to the
ground and not replace it. We shouldn’t be so surprised by
Donald Trump’s attempted coup. It is a Promise Kept. |
