America under attack

January 7, 2021

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by fascist forces aligned with the Republican Party. An armed mob of white people waving Trump signs and Confederate battle flags stormed the Capitol Building in Washington DC to block certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

The Republican rioters rampaged through the center of American democracy, vandalizing the chambers and offices owned by the American people and ransacking the symbolic public square of our nation’s history and culture.

The mob was formed and incited at a nearby Trump rally by President Trump himself, aided by other demagogues such as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who called for “trial by combat.” Among the armed attackers were Proud Boy thugs, QAnon conspiracy fanatics, and terrorists who placed two pipe bombs nearby and who came prepared with rifles and Molotov cocktails. Hours after the violence subsided, President Trump released a video in which he tried to have it both ways, telling the assailants to go home and adding, “We love you.”

This right wing assault on democracy must not be allowed to stand. There have been calls by Democrats and even some Republicans for President Trump to be impeached again and for the 25th Amendment to be activated to forcibly remove him from office. These measures are unlikely to occur in his 13 remaining days in office. But I fervently hope that once he is out of the White House, that he is arrested and imprisoned for treason and corruption. And I hope that he and many of his fellow Republican traitors get long prison terms for their assault on the United States Constitution and their attempt to overthrow American democracy and the will of the people.

There are many individuals and groups to blame in this debacle: Messrs. Trump and Giuliani, Republican enablers such as Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter which are complicit in allowing toxic misinformation to spread widely, right wing news media such as Fox News, conspiracy groups such as QAnon, the gun lobby, and the unprepared Capitol Police.

To be fair, many of the Republican rabble roused by Mr. Trump have been brainwashed by social media and by right wing media. They believe Mr. Trump’s lies about a supposedly fraudulent election, and they’ve been told that they are defending democracy and the Constitution by protesting a stolen election. Most of them are decent human beings. I know, because two of my family members and two friends are Trump supporters. Even so, ignorance is no excuse for fanaticism, and people need to take responsibility for their education or lack thereof.

Also in fairness, it is not only conservatives who engage in violence and anti democratic behavior. On November 7, 1983, a bomb exploded in the U.S. Senate, a device placed by the radical left wing group Resistance Conspiracy. On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire in the House of Representatives, wounding five congressmen. Sometimes anarchists in antiwar demonstrations or Black Lives Matter protests have engaged in looting, vandalism, and assaults against police and other citizens.

Yes, we need law and order, and yes, we need strict gun control. We also need greater regulation of social media and news media to require them to stop spreading false information and conspiracy theories. And we need to restrict hate speech from politicians and extremists.

But our problems are deeper than political issues. Spiritual and cultural decay at the root of American society are the real causes of social unrest and economic inequality. The cult of selfish individualism encourages greed and corruption, leading to mass poverty and environmental destruction. Honesty, kindness, and generosity of spirit are held hostage by fear and by the American gun and money religions. We need to find a better balance between capitalism and the good of the community and the Earth. We need a new vision of morality.

In the short term, our nation is under attack from Republican extremists driven by fear, greed, hunger for power, and ignorance. We need to defend ourselves by voting, educating ourselves and each other, and appreciating and protecting our democratic inheritance.

But in the long run we need to raise our consciousness as individuals and as a people by recognizing the oneness of all Americans and all human beings, and by taking better care of each other and of our planet.

Almost 80 years ago President Franklin Roosevelt rallied the American people by denouncing the December 7 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor as a “date which will live in infamy.” Let’s hope that yesterday’s Republican attack on democracy will serve as a catalyst to awaken the American people to the dangers within our body politic and our culture.