Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire
How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! Charlotte Brontë
Liberty or death!’ A rebel, armed with a blood-stained pitchfork, shouted over-and-over. David Cook
Hard towards himself, he must be hard to others, and in his heart there must be no place for love, friendship, gratitude or even honor. Mikhail Bakunin
The only thing we knew for certain was the American Civil War was not a prelude to a kiss. Aberjhani
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel
The world needs people who have survived mistakes, tragedies, and trials to help the rest of us through. Kimberly Giles
I feel somewhat sheepish bothering you with yet another post so soon after the previous two, but this is an anniversary that I could not bear to let pass by.
One year after many of us within the US were transfixed with a brazen act of insurgency that we in the US should probably have seen coming, and as many outside the US were left to wonder if we had firmly entered “failed state” territory, there is little confidence in many quarters that the violence which was allowed to take root at the US Capitol has been sufficiently weeded from our national life.
If anything, the lines of ideology, even of reality, are increasingly sharp. As I wrote last week, we have become quite comfortable taking shots at each other across a bow of willful misunderstanding and even enmity. There are few voices now willing to stand apart from the chasms which define our culture, our values, our politics, stand apart not to remain aloof in its own right but to try and make space for choices beyond following an increasingly angry and stiff-necked herd.
This stiffness has taken many forms and is not confined to any one of the herds which now occupy and relentlessly defend their own pastures.
On the political right, we have seen and heard many insurgent voices, including ostensibly “religious ones” parroting conspiracies which could easily be debunked if folks were only willing to trust their senses more than the angry, victimized language communicated to them and from which some never seem to be satiated. We have seen the spike in gun sales, we have heard the voices from radios and pulpits calling for “patriotic” violence, we have recoiled from the “lone ranger” fanatics willing to shoot up schools and shopping malls in some instances as their last gasp attempts to gain some measure of “patriotic” infamy before departing this life for whatever might come next.
What is most chilling about some of these incidents is the levels of financial and even political support which perpetrators of this violence receive from those in their herd. Some of this support takes the form of vitriolic rhetoric, but also of silence, an approach which, even more than malicious or conspiratorial words, suggests that what happened last year on this date was “no big deal,” even as we now recognize that this hand of insurgency was being dealt from the highest levels of the US government.
It is hard for the rest of us at times to remember that this form of insurgent outrage is not new to this country; indeed our history would suggest that the current cultural configuration – love your country and distrust its inhabitants — has more or less been stitched into our national fabric. We have long taken each other for granted if not altogether exploited one another; we have long stoked culture wars, not only between believers and unbelievers, but among believers themselves; we have long proclaimed our cherished values and peaceful dispositions while arming ourselves to the teeth and using our power to unfair advantage over diverse races and cultures; we have long packed ourselves into cities and then denigrated those who still work the fields and mines essential to our urban lifestyles; we have long extolled those who “win” at money and power as though that game is not also rigged in favor of those who already control institutions and define pathways of access.
In the tribes which I more regularly frequent, we who mostly never fought in wars or saw fit to engage in other forms of national service seem to feel quite satisfied with our university educations, our jobs with health insurance and other social benefits, and our access to power and to those who hold it. We, too, look after our own interests as though there was something vaguely sacred about them, as though these interests were somehow also baked into the rules of a game that has long been tilted in our favor.
One of the frustrating aspects of this year for me and many has been the slow pace of justice, including justice for those who fanned flames that erupted last January 6 after what had been a long and steady burn. We in my tribe generally stand fast in our defense of the “rule of law.” But where has this “rule” been hiding? Indeed, as I have maintained in other contexts, one now presumably faces more severe legal jeopardy for stealing a Red Bull out of a convenience store than for launching an assault on the US Capitol.
Clearly, we in our liberal bubbles also have things to answer for: Have we done much of anything over this past year to remedy this legal travesty? And while we are at it, have we done enough over this past year to heal our broken politics, to eliminate gross inequalities of access to income and education, power and influence, to put the corks of discipline and service back in the bottles of military and police command, to promote notions of “freedom” which apply to all and not just to some and which are more textured and communally-binding than merely “doing what I want?”
I don’t think it can be considered in any way conspiratorial to conclude that I and others are collectively failing to meet the moment. We have allowed deficits of justice and kindness to fester while increasing hostile divides and giving unearned comfort to those content enough to face additional “wrist slaps” in order to continue their assault on democracy. And those wrist slaps, by the way, pertain to those well beyond the January insurgents themselves, those with plenty of money and the will to buy whatever and whomever can be bought — which appears to be most anyone now in government or contemplating a run for elected office. January 6 did not announce threats to democracy but did pull back the veil on how that threat has evolved and been duly monetized over time.
We are going to hear much over these days of political officials scared to death – as well they might have been — of the mob (and their enablers) who invaded the Capitol last January 6 and who have largely yet to face proper justice. But the storm that is coming and for which we remain ill prepared is one which promises more destruction, more enmity, more chaos. We need voting rights, yes. We need a revitalized response to the world’s “huddled masses” including those huddling due to our own economic and security policies. At the same time, we need to fix what is wrong with ourselves, not just wrong with “them” but wrong with us, those of us locked away in blue state bubbles, those of us who make fortunes in our urban canyons and then place them beyond the reach of any public good, those of us who flaunt our degrees and other credentials as though they were primarily a sign of virtue rather than of privilege.
One year on, we must insist on accountability for the insurrectionists and their political enablers still prepared to do violence to uphold their own victimizations and conspiracies. But we must also promote avenues of reconciliation with such people, people every bit as much citizens of this country and, if you will, children of god as we are, people who have reason to fear our largely-unaccountable political and economic hegemonies as much as we fear their weapons and reality-challenged leanings. Simply put, our vaunted and oft-exported democracy does not work for everyone, if it ever did. We need to narrow those gaps before further eruptions of violence force us to shut down our democratic experiment altogether.
One thing that seems to be clear as we approach this troubling anniversary – we and those we oppose on ideological grounds have something important in common – the deep trauma we feel courtesy of a global pandemic, climate and economic uncertainty, cultural upheaval and all else that has prompted many to retreat to our isolation chambers and hide under the metaphorical covers until it is time to lash out – with prejudice, with stereotypes, with conspiracies, with dismissiveness, with anger, even with guns.
The attack on the Capitol requires justice with urgency and determination, but it was also a symptom of national angst more than a cause, the flaring of a virus we have been carrying around long before COVID-19. If we are to avoid the fascist-style outcomes some now predict for us, it is incumbent on we and our institutions – churches, schools, media and more – to help us find the language and actions which can soften hearts and stiffen resolve, the resolve not to give up on ourselves, on each other, nor on the democracy that so many of our ancestors gave their lives to preserve. We know more, it seems, about how to inflame emotions and harden opinions than to search for common ground and reconcile one to another. And while we may well lament becoming a country allegedly “free” to choose its facts as well as its opinions, the “fact” also remains that we have much work to do – on our country and on ourselves – to fulfill the promise of our national creed.
As much as nationwide vaccination, the need for nationwide reconciliation remains acute. Time is running out for the people of this country to revisit and apply those skills.
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