Warning: This is a rant! And I am including no pictures of the invasion of the US Capitol because I don’t want to add to the attention the terrorists are getting. We’ve all seen them.
Yesterday’s invasion of the U.S. Capitol feels very personal to me. Capitol Hill was my home for at least five years: I worked and lived there, in the shadow of that splendid dome, noticing the light atop it when Congress was in session. I was in and out of the Capitol building innumerable times, to watch various electrifying or boring moments in the chambers, or to see LBJ lie in state along with a mile-long line predominantly made up of African Americans. On July 4, I walked to the front of the Capitol steps and perched there, gazing all the way down the Mall to the Washington Monument bedecked with fireworks. Even though I was brought up by Canadian parents who cast a very jaundiced eye on U.S. politics, part of me believed in the idea of American democracy. No matter how undercut it was by racism, sexism and many other isms; no matter how founded it was in rapacious capitalism; there was still that idea of “by the people and for the people.”
Apart from my sentimental associations with the Capitol building, my years of study of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands gave yesterday a particular horror. The mob run amuck is disturbing enough – or the sight of people breaking glass and climbing into the Capitol. But here’s what really chills my blood.
1. The terrorists took down a U.S. Flag at the Capitol and put up a Trump flag. To me, this symbolizes the fact that Trump’s base buys whatever he says, no matter how far-fetched. Even after 88 judges have ruled that the election was basically fair, the base doesn’t believe it. They will follow Trump wherever he tells them to go – in this case, up the Mall to violate the sanctity of the leading symbol of our democracy, the U.S. Capitol, during a session of Congress. These people will not simply go away. How will they, and the President and Republicans who enabled them, be held accountable?
2. Law enforcement did not prepare for this completely predictable event. Almost a dozen law enforcement agencies have the job of protecting our Capitol and our democracy. For weeks and weeks, Trump has been building toward this January 6, fueling his most base base and their fantasies that the election was stolen from them. It was no surprise to anyone that Trump assembled a mob on that day. How could it be? He’s done everything but take out ads to bring them to Washington. As President, he just tweets and the world watches, or the media cover whatever he says. And among all the public officials whose job it is to be paranoid, to think ahead about the worst possible case and prepare for it, not a single one thought the Capitol should be encircled with law enforcement that day? They didn’t even have the Capitol police in riot gear, as police have been for numerous peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.
3. Once the situation began unravelling, law enforcement was shockingly slow to respond. The Capitol Police called for help at 1:00 p.m. The National Guard didn’t show up until after 6:00. Others arrived earlier – like the Secret Service and the D.C. and Montgomery County Police. Overall, the scene was confusion. Even the FBI’s SWAT team responded slowly, and it’s just a ten minute walk from the FBI to the Capitol if you’re in a hurry. It took almost four hours (about 1:30-5:30) before the Capitol belonged to the American people and our representatives again. Only after much damage was done, not only to the statues and windows of the people’s house. It’s to our heart as a nation, our permanent memories of public events that we all witness. The minute Donald Trump told the mob to head for the Capitol, any public officials who hadn’t been paying attention should have woken up. Is it really possible that the mob moved faster than police forces could have, if they had been deployed promptly?
One bit of video has stayed with me: an African American Capitol policeman in a narrow marble interior staircase, calling for help with one hand while trying to hold off terrorists with a baton in the other. They backed him up the stairs, and finally he had to retreat. They were in charge. I do not blame the individual for this, but the huge system of which he is part.
Some will say that the law enforcement system was merely incompetent, or couldn’t believe that anybody would hurt our Capitol (criminally naïve), or were overly focused on the Inauguration. NPR reported that Mayor Bowser didn’t want to overdo the show of force because of the nightmares with Black Lives Matter protests. If that is correctly reported, surely someone else could have brought her to her senses. We have to conclude that the far right has enablers everywhere in government, even within the U.S. Capitol. Otherwise, this breach could never have taken place.
4. The smashing of press equipment and the necessity to move the booth three times. At some point last evening, a CNN reporter said in a controlled but highly stressed voice that the press booth had been attacked and moved on three separate occasions. The terrorists insulted her and other reporters, and video shows a pile of cameras and other equipment. The free press is our second line of defense in a democracy.
How can I not think of Amsterdam under the Nazis? How Hitler was worshipped as a god, whose orders caused ordinary people to block out every other reality? How the police colluded with every aspect of the roundups and the Holocaust? How the free press was replaced by Nazi mouthpieces, and people only got real information underground? And most of all, I think of the period when good people like me hoped for the best as their country was taken away from them.
In the present moment, how can we ordinary citizens show our horror in a way that will deactivate these deluded followers of a would-be dictator? At the least, we need to press Congress and our new Administration for extensive prosecution and aggressive investigation of all the individuals and groups who fed this situation. And that includes the Republican Senators who had to be evacuated because of the recklessness they have unleashed. We also need to subscribe to independent journalist outlets (like The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The New York Times) so that they can afford to pay investigative reporters to expose stories like these. And we need to re-assess the maxim “It can’t happen here.” It just did.
