Patriot Day

 

As it must every year, September eleventh has arrived once more. 

Cue the inevitable scab-picking that occurs on each 9/11 anniversary.  Even at this remove, it is difficult to believe it actually happened.  Watching the live coverage that Tuesday morning I clearly remember the abrupt sickening feeling when I watched the second plane strike the South Tower, turning what at first looked like a bizarre accident into a chilling blow to our presumed safety and security.  

I don’t think it does much good, though, to commemorate the day as MSNBC did for several years after when it rebroadcast the news coverage of that morning in real time.  The National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, and the History Channel have repeatedly run 9/11 documentaries in the last few days in their own annual ritual.      

At some juncture, we must take a sober, detached view of the event.  After twenty years, we owe ourselves that much.  This is particularly true to me when I consider that a significant number of my students nowadays were born after the fact.  For them this catastrophe is a terrible, but abstract historical event.  Gen Z views 9/11 with the same emotional detachment my generation has toward Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination.  These events were terrible, but not in a way they can access emotionally. 

True to form, we made heroes of a few.  Twenty years later, the victims the public holds in its collective memory are the participants in the Flight 93 passenger rebellion.  While we mourn the Pentagon victims and the first responders who perished at the World Trade Center, we mostly mourn them as a faceless mass absent individual personae.  (If you doubt this, I challenge anyone who wasn’t a family member, friend, or coworker of any of these people to identify any one of them by name off the top of their head.)  The unresolved deaths of Sneha Anne Philip, who may or may not have been at the WTC when the towers fell, and Henryk Siwiak, who was the only murder victim in New York City unconnected to that day’s attacks, hold some public interest but they are outliers. 

Tellingly, we almost never acknowledge the deaths of the workers—receptionists, security guards, cleaners, maintenance personnel, food service workers, among others—whose very lives seem almost to have been beside the point for the public.  This is because in the warped calculus of American values, the lives of ordinary workers count for less than those of a few businessmen. 

Consider the Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died while their boss was out of office to enroll his daughter in kindergarten…and consider how many CF employees would liked to have been with their own children that Tuesday morning.  The boss was appropriately contrite to the media, of course, but that does little to mitigate his privilege-borne guilt.  And it is the privilege divide which bounds the narrative of that day. 

I think in particular of the so-called “Falling Man” caught in the famous photo taken by Richard Drew outside the North Tower as people trapped on the upper floors jumped to their deaths rather than be incinerated.  Drew tried for years to identify the man, to no avail.  Drew surmised that Falling Man was probably a cook or kitchen helper as he was wearing a white shirt and checked pants.  Aside from this detail, there were scant clues to Falling Man’s identity. 

Unlike Falling Man, many of the executives who died lived charmed and fulfilling lives, save for their final hour or so.  By contrast, the Falling Man was someone they would have ignored: a person of color, very possibly an immigrant, working at a low-wage service job the main purpose of which was to ensure their own convenience.  Even if he had been positively identified at the time of his death, it’s unlikely that Falling Man’s wife would have been invited by President Bush as a special guest at the 2002 State of the Union address. The Falling Man was deemed expendable twice over—first by his capitalist masters, and then by the militants who took his life.  He is an anonymous cipher in the larger narrative.  

Mass disasters point up societal values.  Much like the tens of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians who have died since 2001, the fates of 9/11’s working class victims simply aren’t relevant.  They are the losers of the neoliberal world order, fated by their informed personal and cultural inferiority to live in service to the wealthy and their managerial underlings.  If they die, well, there’ll be more to take their place.  New York, Kirkuk, or Kandahar…it’s all the same story.  

We have been told that the attacks brought out the best in us.  Perhaps so.  It also brought out the worst.  The immediate aftermath of the attacks set the stage for an assault on freedoms in the name of freedom.  There were the ham-fisted official measures such as the PATRIOT Act to be sure, and the horrors of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and “extraordinary rendition.”  But many signs were more subtle, because they were socially imposed.  It’s natural to seek solidarity in a time of crisis, but in the autumn of 2001 wore on some of it was clearly forced.  Whether it was bank tellers fired for refusing to wear an American lapel pin or the harassment of Muslim schoolchildren, the reactionary response to the attacks produced a chilling effect.  

This chilling effect was reinforced by popular culture.  Numerous TV shows, particularly if they were set in New York City, referenced the attacks.  This was understandable, but white working class culture dialed the sentimentality up to eleven.  From Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” to the renewed popularity of that godawful Lee Greenwood song, to the bombastic tributes to the troops at sporting events, the years immediately following 9/11 inspired either a sense of inspirational unity or one of disorienting alienation. My own initial shock rapidly gave way to the latter.    

As the last Americans left Afghanistan, I could only wonder at the futility of it all.  Afghanistan, Iraq, the War on Terror, what was it all for?  What do we say to the thousands of Gold Star parents?  How do we ameliorate the rise in racism and xenophobia that has persisted into the present?  The answers are elusive for us all.  Unfortunately, it appears 9/11 may become still another tragedy whose lessons will go unheeded.

 

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

Who Is This For?

I’ve been back in the classroom the past two weeks, albeit on a mixed, online / in-person basis.  I’m pleased to report that mask compliance is 100%.  Can’t vouch for the vaccination rate, though, since until a few days ago we were on the honor system. 

I continue to be amazed at the news reports of confrontations over mask mandates and the willful ignorance of governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis when it comes to the health of the citizens they purport to serve.  The Delta variant surge, particularly prevalent among the unvaccinated, should by now have put the fear of God in the most trenchant skeptics. 

For my part, I have gradually been easing myself into something resembling normal life since May.  I never bought into the Hot Vax Summer hype, and my public forays have been characterized by an abundance of caution.  Over the past months I’ve resumed routine, taken for granted activities such as grocery shopping, regular haircuts, and the occasional restaurant meal.  I even went to a concert a few weeks ago.  The difference is that I masked whenever required, washed my hands scrupulously, and, most importantly, waited a least a week at home before venturing out again. 

That is not an option for me anymore now that my on-campus presence is required at least two days a week between now until mid-December.  My nervousness aside, I look forward to normal.  But the mask and vaccine refusal problem pose a direct threat to reopening.  Although the loudest voices opposing COVID-related public health measures claimed they want reopening to happen sooner than later in the interest of the small-business economy, the resisters have actually prolonged the crisis.  Part of me wants to shrug my shoulders and chalk it up to Darwin but there are still people whose welfare is at risk. 

I’m referring to those who cannot or are not eligible to be vaccinated.  Amongst the hysteria surrounding the return to the classroom we hear from parents saying they won’t vaccinate their kids after its authorized for them because children can’t get COVID.  (They most certainly can.)  Anti-vaxxer stupidity was just one more bit of irrationality to scoff at before the pandemic, but being that we are in the midst of the worst public health crisis in a century it’s downright anger-inducing.  Confrontations over campus mask mandates still make the news.  COVID woo is still reeling people in; last year the CDC reported 4% of those asked had ingested bleach as a prophylactic measure.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this is still going on. 

Just once, I wish level heads would prevail.  But irrationality knows few bounds in this culture, and the adults seem to have left the room.  As the coronavirus spreads and mutates on account of this irrationality, the crisis will go on and the damage will mount.  The light can be seen at the end of tunnel.  We just have to walk in the right direction.

 

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

Indecent Interval

The U.S. has dispatched troops to Kabul to evacuate American personnel in anticipation of the Afghan capital’s imminent fall. 

So ends our two-decade intervention in Afghanistan.  Looking back, the present endgame was inevitable.  It was typical American hubris to believe the United States could bring order among an unconquerable people.  That assumption, of course, arose from America’s historical amnesia.  We never learn because we never remember.  

The misbegotten idea of American exceptionalism also played a part in bringing about this latest debacle.  The experience of the British and the Russians were irrelevant to the extent they were considered at all.  That we helped facilitate the latter’s defeat likely skewed perceptions of our chances of victory. 

Not that any of this was in the forefront of the discourse surrounding the decision to intervene.  The 9/11 attacks were a fresh, raw wound in the fall of 2001, with the events of that day endlessly replayed and rehashed on the cable news networks.  A national adrenaline rush in anticipation of unknown horrors yet to come combined with a collective grief blocked rational discussion.  When the invasion began that November, it seemed victory was in sight despite the Bush administration’s warning that the War on Terror would take many years.  (This was about the only prediction they got right.)  

We are easily distracted, and issue saliency is perishable.  In this case, it was the lead up to the Iraq War and the grueling stalemate which ensued that shifted our attention from the Afghan War.  By 2009 matters had deteriorated to the point where the incoming Obama administration ordered a “surge” comparable to the one implemented in Iraq a couple of years earlier.  It was deemed successful, but was really a Band-Aid on a fatal wound. 

Now we are back to square one, with nothing to show for it.  The Taliban have taken Kandahar and Herat and it’s only a matter of time before they are in the capital.  I’m seeing visions of people lining up to board helicopters on the U.S. Embassy roof. 

Comparisons to the fall of Saigon are inevitable, though the North Vietnamese exercised a bit more decorum than the Taliban.  Hanoi observed a “decent interval” between the U.S. withdrawal and launching its campaign to take the South.   The Taliban began to aggressively sweep the country even before U.S. forces had fully withdrawn.  The execution of the withdrawal raises eyebrows, with troops abandoning bases shared with Afghan government forces in the dead of night.  I’m sure that did wonders for morale.  The Afghan National Army is collapsing just as surely as the ARVN did in 1975, but more rapidly. 

The return of the Taliban as Afghanistan’s masters does not bode well for human rights, particularly women’s rights and the rights of ethnic minorities.  There will undoubtedly be retribution against the Taliban’s enemies much as there was when they came to power the first time in 1996.  In any case Afghanistan will become even more unpleasant than it already is.

But as always, the American public is scarcely aware anything is happening outside its hermetic world.  It’s true that there are a lot of serious distractions at the moment, but even if things were “normal” it’s unlikely anyone would pay attention.  Our failure in Afghanistan is destined to be another foreign policy lesson unlearned.

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

Soft Underbelly

It’s been quite a week.

The semester ended Friday.  I naively thought I would have grades in before the weekend was over, giving me time to decompress before summer session begins.

If only.  My institution’s data management systems—website, email, LMS, everything—fell victim to a ransomware attack last Wednesday.  I wasn’t too concerned at first, and some of my colleagues didn’t seem to be either.  (Though one prof on the faculty Google Groups site speculated whether a “pissed off student” might have been behind it.)

Services have been partially restored but I’ve been getting desperate emails from students saying they can’t access the LMS, even though other students were successful.  It doesn’t matter right now; grade rosters are still unavailable.

This is a localized problem, of course.  A cyberattack on a community college is of little interest elsewhere.  But it’s part of a pattern.  The recent attack on the Colonial Petroleum pipeline disrupted the southeastern economy for days, and news of other ransomware attacks have become more frequent in the media.

Before 9/11 focused attention on the terrorism threat, there were a number of articles discussing threats to critical infrastructure apart from Y2K.  Infrastructure was arguably less software dependent twenty years ago, but a policy focus on resiliency and redundancy seems to have fallen from public notice.

Perhaps we should take heed before the severity of attacks result in real and lasting damage.

 

Update 5/27/2021 Business Journals - "Expert View: Colleges Could Be Prime Targets for Cyberattacks This Fall"

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

Headlong into the Past

 

It was only a coincidence, but a fitting one just the same.  This past week, I’ve been bingeing The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu.  Absently scrolling through my newsfeed as I watched, one headline caught my eye.  The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in a case involving a Mississippi statute banning abortion after the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy. 

While such a story is troubling under normal circumstances, the ideological shift of the federal judiciary to the right during the Trump administration provokes outright angst.  Before 2017, any ruling re Roe v. Wade was tempered by a reluctance to overturn it outright.  For instance, when Chief Justice John Roberts was undergoing his confirmation hearings in 2005 he noted that Roe was settled law. 

But perhaps not for much longer.  The influx of right-leaning judges into the federal courts, together with the new conservative SCOTUS supermajority, puts that into question.  A president’s lasting legacy are his judicial appointments.  In that sense, Donald Trump has created a threat to hard-won rights that will persist years after his tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

The world of The Handmaid’s Tale is a funhouse mirror version of a right-wing utopia.  More to the point, it’s a reflection of present-day phenomena which, on a slippery slope, might result in something like it.  

Life in the postrevolutionary theocracy of Gilead is chockfull of slightly tweaked aspects of daily American life in 2021.  We have militarized law enforcement and omniscient public surveillance.  There is a growing tolerance of officially meted punishment in the guise of justice, with “othered” minorities particularly singled out.  Politicized evangelicals influencing public policy.  Propaganda and misinformation substituted for news.  

The series was especially prescient with Gilead’s backstory.  In the series universe, a terrorist attack against the White House and U.S. Capitol led to rule by decree by a cabal of religious fanatics. The Great Redneck Riot of January Sixth was an eerie evocation of an otherwise unthinkable event.  (Imagine what could have happened if the rioters had been organized…and planned ahead.) 

The rest of the quasi-fictional nightmare could be made more real through the law courts.  Central to the narrative of The Handmaid’s Tale is an unspecified environmental disaster affecting fertility rates.  Women who could still conceive were rendered as property, stripped of their old identities and forced into reproductive servitude to the male “commanders” who govern Gilead.  Although The Handmaid’s Tale is speculative fiction, it is also food for thought in the face of a gradual erosion of the personal rights gained by women over the past century.  

Concerning the pending abortion case, an outright overturning of Roe v. Wade seems attainable for the first time.  SCOTUS has bounded and further refined the legal protections afforded by Roe, but until now they remained comparatively slight.  No longer. 

Although it has no direct legal bearing on how the case is argued and decided, public opinion’s effect on politics cannot be ignored.  Over time I’ve detected a worrisome trend among my students, particularly the working class white males.  They are quite forward with their anti-abortion stance and their taste for authoritarian policies.  I think I know why.  Populist conservatism’s appeal stems from the feeling that the economic immiseration of white workers and America’s supposed loss of greatness is the result of our abandoning traditional values.  Traditional values which privilege men and subordinate women and people of color.  Things will get better if we just turn back the calendar.  After all, that’s what Jesus wants, right? 

The three most recently appointed justices were chosen with right-wing policy objectives in mind.  The views of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are no secret.  The touchstone issue, the long-running litmus test for the conservative base, is abortion. This in turn is prompted by a retrograde worldview informed by evangelical Christian tenets.  Taken literally, biblical law affirms ideas which privilege some and abuse many.  

Here is what is at stake.  Several states have enacted six-week abortion bans; a few more have passed bills imposing an outright ban in anticipation of Roe being overturned.  Should the Mississippi law be upheld, as it very well may, then we have taken the first step in rolling back equal rights for women.  We all must ask ourselves if this is the kind of society we want to live in.

If you want a nightmare vision of what that society may end up looking like if present trends persist, watch The Handmaid’s Tale. 

 

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

Your Feelings and Mine

 

Fuck Your Feelings

 

That charming sentiment cropped up frequently in the runup to last year’s election and its immediate aftermath, culminating in the Beer Belly Putsch[1] on January 6^th.  It was meant to signal the defiance of real Americans in the face of political correctness run amok, to show one’s allegiance to the way it’s always been done, to trigger the libs. 

The conceit of this maladroit attempt at in-your-faceness is that liberals and progressives actually care about what the alt-right thinks.  They don’t.  

You see, most people left of center reject the legitimacy of the alt-right’s ideas.  It follows that any ad hominem attacks from them aren’t worth taking seriously.  To cite an admittedly puerile retort from my youth, it’s a case of mind over matter.  I don’t mind, because you don’t matter.  

Time to get serious. As a social scientist, I was taught to be a detached observer.  I trust neither emotions nor intuition.  But I’m fully aware that being human means we can never be fully separated from our sentiments, regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum. 

Let me offer an example.  Just before the Iraq War began, several colleagues in my graduate program and I organized a public forum on its implications.  While generally successful, we experienced a few hiccups.  Our intention was to offer an interdisciplinary discussion, pulling in professors and grad students from several departments.  We envisioned a calm, rational dialogue. 

It was wishful thinking.  Both ends of the political spectrum tightened the rhetorical rope around our necks to further their narrow agendas.  There was the activist group who wanted to not only set up a literature table inside the auditorium but a voice on the panel as well.  We grudgingly granted the first but not the second.  They sulkily accepted the arrangement.  Then there was the news crew from the local Fox affiliate who were there to capture the spectacle of a bunch of snotty, unpatriotic college students telling the world how much they hated America. 

That was galling enough, but there were two incidents at the panel which stand out in my mind nearly twenty years later and help illustrate the point I’m trying to make.  

They came when we opened the discussion to audience questions.  One question was more of a statement from an undergraduate who proclaimed the pending invasion would cause millions to die.  While we had already covered the considerable death toll the coalition had imposed on Iraq through its embargo since the 1991 ceasefire, apparently this wasn’t enough for our interlocutor.  When one of us asked just how she knew this was inevitable she keened, “Because I feel it!”  Much of the audience broke into applause. 

The second was an attempt at distraction from the opposite direction.  A middle-aged woman whom last summer's kids would have labelled a “Karen” stood up next to a young man clad in a collared shirt and khakis.  Karen introduced the young man as her son, a soldier recently returned from our adventure in Afghanistan.  How dare we question his sacrifice?  

Karen missed the point, as Karens often do.  She was trying to flip the script with a bald use of sentimentality to justify decisions at the top regardless of their outcome.  She was manipulating the attendees to shift the focus from a sober weighing of consequences to a visceral patriotism nationalism unfettered by facts. 

Our panel did not question the woman’s righteous indignation.  We most certainly did not say to her, “Fuck your feelings.”  We implicitly understood this was a display of sentimentality mistaken for moral certitude.  

And that is the heart of the issue of feelings with conservatives generally.  Most are so certain of their own inherent virtue that their gut reactions—their feelings—are not recognized as such.  To them, they are unerring truths.  

This certainty of infallibility, albeit arrived at emotionally, creates a condition in which conservatives cannot accommodate ideas at odds with their own.  Consider their reaction if you suggested that public policy should not be guided by their belief in a deity whose existence cannot be empirically proven.  Consider their reaction if you pointed out that gun violence is attributable in part to the widespread and poorly regulated availability of firearms.  You would be met with anger and resentment—an expression of feelings even though they would never think to label them as such. 

This is because feelings to those on the right are experienced only by the weak and inferior.  Their own emotions come from a place of certitude and thus are not “feelings.”  Requests to be mindful of the rights and sensibilities of those historically repressed by people like them fall counter to their truth and are thus to be ignored, and if that doesn’t work, to be mocked.  

The whole eff-your-feelings attitude, then, is merely an exercise in denial and projection on the part of a demographic whose social influence is on borrowed time.  Having invested their identities in a received wisdom, any counternarrative poses an existential threat.  Belittling those posing the counternarrative imparts a sense of security. 

So here we are.  I find myself forcing down my feelings in response to yours, forcing myself to be rational in the face of your irrationality, forcing myself into excessive self-restraint.  Perhaps this is what you mean by  “Fuck your feelings.”  

Returning to the third person, it appears conservatives in general and the alt-right in particular are indulging in a paroxysm of unrestraint as a means of bounding and containing threatening social forces.  Perhaps it is still another example of denying these social forces.  It probably doesn’t matter.  Denial postpones but will not avert the ultimate reckoning.

 

 

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

 

 

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[1] Credit to Thomas Knapp for the neologism.

Year Two

 March 13th.  The first day of the second year.

Interface

It has been many weeks since Mr. Bear last strolled the neighborhood.

Mr. Bear is, well, a bear.  I didn’t name him; my neighbor did.  Each visit from Mr. Bear followed the same pattern.  About an hour after dusk, the neighbor’s dog would start barking.  The porch light would come on, and my neighbor would lean over her deck railing shouting, “No! No, Mr. Bear!  Go away!”  The name stuck in my mind.

Bur anthropomorphizing wildlife is problematic.  My mountain community is at the wildland-urban interface, a potential hazard to both existing ecosystems and the humans encroaching upon them.  My neighbors are bemused by the ursine incursions each autumn, and the foraging animals pose little immediate threat aside from the occasional ransacking of an unoccupied vacation cabin or car whose flatlander owners foolishly left food inside.  But the critters are just one cause for concern.

This region is deceptively picturesque.  The legions of tourists who arrive in the wake of every snowfall ski and snowboard with nary a thought of its occasionally brutal natural history.  Less than a mile from where I sit, a wagon train of settlers stranded by an especially harsh winter lost more than forty of their number to starvation and exposure nearly 175 years ago.  But increasingly it’s been the sparseness of snowfall around these parts that has become troublesome.

I’ve lived up here about twenty years.  The first ten winters were fairly predictable. We would get moderate snowfall from late October through late December, with a week or two to recover between storms.  As one might expect, January and February brought more frequent weather systems and heavier snowfall.  March and April would see a tapering off, though snow in May wasn’t unheard of.  We had to cancel final exams and postpone commencement at the end of one spring semester because a storm had made the roads impassable.

What constitutes a normal winter now is hard to describe.  The snowfalls of 2017-2019 were normal; every other year since 2011 has seen drought conditions.  Last winter was comparatively dry, and yet we had light snowfall the first week of June (the Sunday before summer session began).  Even the summers have brought atypical weather, with windstorms, lightning, and the occasional heavy downpour. 

And then there is fire season, which promises to become a year-round thing with the unusual number of dry winters we’ve had.  Even the good winters of late brought ample rainfall at the lower elevations, which in turn provided fuel in the form of vegetation growth.  The 2017 Napa Valley fire and the horrific 2018 Camp Fire are the shape of things to come.  Some of my neighbors’ insurers agree and have refused to renew their home insurance policies.

My town and the surrounding area haven’t experienced a large-scale wildfire in nearly a century.  We’re about due; it’s a matter of time.  The community’s prepared, at least according to plan. 

But plans seldom come off in an actual emergency.  If a wildfire of the scale and speed of that which ravaged Paradise struck my town, we would see a similar outcome.  My homeowner’s association has put together an evacuation plan in conjunction with the local authorities, which is undoubtedly doomed to failure if put to the test.

I know this from an incident a couple of years ago.  I was going out of town, and I intended to leave early ahead of a major snowstorm.  So did the hordes of flatlanders who had come up for the weekend without consulting the weather forecast.  I live on a side street just off the main drag, which in turn connects to the interstate.  As I loaded my luggage into my car, I noticed a very unusual sight for my lightly trafficked lane. 

It was a long line of stationary cars.  Walking to the end of the driveway, I saw that the traffic jam extended up the street for as far as I could see.  The highway patrol was metering westbound traffic entering the freeway.  The airport I was departing from was 40 miles in the opposite direction everyone else was going, so if I could just make to the main street I’d have it made.  Not having a choice, I got into the car and joined the line.

A half hour later, we had moved less than a hundred feet.  As the wait dragged on, I eventually lost patience.  I’m usually a cautious driver, but cautious wasn’t going to cut it in this situation.  I turned out of the idle line of cars and raced down the shoulder to the intersection.  As soon as I saw a momentary gap in the crosstraffic, I jackrabbited a quick left turn and was finally on my way. 

I later read that many of the out of towners spent that night in their cars, which brings me back to my hypothetical wildfire.  After what I saw during that winter storm, I’m skeptical that the authorities could successfully evacuate the town ahead of a fast-moving firestorm.  The egress routes are too few.  I foresee a repeat performance of the Camp Fire: Some will get away by car, others will flee on foot, and others will be fatally trapped. 

The prospect of disaster is not enough to motivate me to leave, though.  No place on earth is free of risk.  Climate change is making the magnitude of many of these hazards worse, however.  Our inaction on this crisis stems from the seemingly piecemeal, scattered nature of its attendant disasters.  A Florida hurricane causing many millions of dollars in damage is unfortunate, but I don’t experience its effects here on the West Coast any more than drought and wildfire here affect Floridians.  It’s hard to tie such geographically localized phenomena to a single cause, even to those of us who are not denialists.  Barring a sudden, single, widespread catastrophe, we are unlikely to see a concerted effort in this country to address the climate predicament in the foreseeable future. 

In the meantime, I wait at home on the edge of the wild warily watching a changing world.

 

 

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

Disgrace

Nearly a week later, I am still in disbelief.  The events of January 6^th at the U.S. Capitol shock the conscience.

That is, if you have a conscience.  The redneck mob that assaulted the Capitol after being whipped into a frenzy by their lame duck President lacked this essential element of character.  The resulting melee hasn’t deterred the base; this morning an FBI bulletin released to the media warned of more armed demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol and all fifty state capitols.

The optics of the forcible occupation elude its perpetrators.  The death of a Capitol police officer and the injury of several more doesn’t seem to faze them.  Neither does the threatened prosecution of its identifiable culprits nor their loss of employment in some cases.

No, instead we hear about the San Diego woman shot to death by the police as she forced her way through a broken window.  Her husband described her as a “patriot,” a term debased by conservatives over the years and trampled in filth over the past four.  Although her death was unfortunate and perhaps even tragic, she nonetheless met her end committing a violent criminal act.

And to what end?  The mob delayed certification of the Electoral College vote by six hours and caused considerable damage to a national monument which will fall upon the taxpayers to repair.  Attempting to subvert a constitutional process, to undermine the United States Constitution itself, is the polar opposite of patriotism.  All identifiable participants should be prosecuted for sedition.

It’s unlikely they will.  White privilege will out.  The small police presence on Capitol Hill last Wednesday was rooted in an assumption that a demonstration by white people was not a potential threat.  Contrast this to last summer’s George Floyd protests, which were not only met by local law enforcement in the larger cities but by a constellation of state and federal police agencies and the National Guard to boot.

Consider the intentions of some of the invaders when we raise the question of penalties.  One had threatened to shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head on social media.  Another was photographed in the Senate chamber carrying zip tie handcuffs as if they planned to take hostages.  Then there was the gallows erected at the Capitol steps.  One could go on with like examples.

There is little doubt concerning the crowd’s sentiments, as evinced by the Confederate flags and Nazi paraphernalia about.  If you needed further convincing, take the bitter remark one woman made to Andrew McCormick of The Nation concerning the police.  “They’re shooting us,” she said.  “They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.”

There you have it.  It’s law enforcement’s job to kill civil rights activists, not rioting white supremacists.  The destruction of a display honoring the late congressman John Lewis further underscores the racist nature of the insurrection.  In any case, the actions of law enforcement officers varied from actually doing their job defending the Capitol and its occupants, to making themselves scarce rather than confronting the assailants, to mingling with the rioters and posing for selfies with them. 

Meanwhile, buzz on the alt-right is framing the riot as a subversion.  It was the fault of the ever-elusive “outside agitators” and “antifa.”  The base continues to stick with is its narrative of deep-state conspiracies and pedophile elites.  No fable is too wild to be believed.

The Dems for their part, despite their victory at the polls, continue to flail impotently at the sociopath occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  The House is moving to impeach a President whose remaining time in office is down to mere days.  If they somehow succeed, and the Senate somehow convicts, the only effect will be to afford Mike Pence the distinction of serving the shortest presidential tenure in history.  Any attempt to invoke the 25^th Amendment is a nonstarter considering Pence’s refusal to even consider it combined with multiplying cabinet vacancies. 

January 20^th will be here soon enough.  Trump refuses to attend the inauguration, and it’s just as well.  But it’s foolish to assume the nightmare will end.  Talk of street protests in DC and elsewhere is rife, and will almost certainly take place.  Having had a taste of the potential havoc they can unleash militant rightists will feel empowered to repeat it.  Even as I write, Texas officials are concerned Trump’s visit to the border town of Alamo will lead to further violence.

For all their loud talk of freedom and love of country, the base poses an existential threat to our constitutional order and the liberties and rights it guarantees.  It’s doubtful many of them actually understand these.  Or care to.  I’m reminded of how common Russians welcomed the 1917 revolution believing that freedom meant absolutely no constraints on their behavior.  As we know, they were soon disabused of that notion, but I think a similar attitude animates the MAGA crowd.

It took almost four years, but I’m fully cognizant of how bad the situation truly is.  I never distrusted my own people until now.  The worst of it is there’s no escape.  We have so mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic that few countries will admit Americans.  I can’t even believe I’m entertaining thoughts of expatriating; I used to scoff at people who said they would leave if the candidate they opposed won.  Now I’m in the bizarre situation where I’m considering it myself, even after the guy I voted for won.  I want to live somewhere inhabited by sane people, if or when that becomes a possibility again.

In the meantime, it looks like the inmates will continue to run the asylum.  Don’t expect reason to prevail any time soon in the madhouse our country has become.

 

 © 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

More Headlines

“US Capitol Breached” / “Mob Invades Capitol” – CNN

“Pro-Trump Mob Brings Chaos to DC” / “DC Mayor Declares Curfew” – MSNBC

“Trump Addresses Capitol Violence in Taped Video as National Guard is Deployed” / “Some GOP Congress Members to Object to Electoral College Certification” – Fox News

“Pro-Trump Protestors Swarm U.S. Capitol, National Guard Deployed” – Reuters

“Capitol Breached by Protestors; Woman Shot Inside” – ABC News

“Biden Calls Capitol Riot ‘Insurrection’” / “Pence to Mob Storming Capitol: Immediately Leave the Building” – Gannett

“Trump Enters Burn-it-Down Mode” - Politico

“World Leaders Express Shock at Storming of US Capitol” / “Biden Calls on Mob to ‘Pull Back;’ Urges Restoring Decency” – AP

“Trump Sends Mixed Messages That Inflamed Tensions” / “Democrats, Republicans Blame Trump for Inciting ‘Coup’” – Washington Post

“A Surreal Scene Unfolds in Washington as Donald Trump Tries to Undo the Election” - Time

“The Storming of Capitol Hill Organized on Social Media” – New York Times

“National Guard Will Head to the Capitol to Tamp Down Pro-Trump Insurrection” – CNBC

“Fox News Host Claims ‘Entire Society is Rigged’ after Trump Lawsuits Fail” -  Newsweek

“Democratic Lawmakers Say They Will Try to Impeach Trump Again Following Riots Over Election Conspiracy Theories He Pushed” – Business Insider