Just a few days ago, I felt the major event of last week was the constitutional and electoral crisis that was averted. The attack on the Capitol, while egregious, was not a defining issue. As events have unfolded, both in the nation and in my thinking, that attack has assumed more and more importance. It has in turn produced national and even personal reactions that are violent, which raise important questions, for our future and our present.
The attackers have been variously labeled rioters, protesters, terrorists, revolutionaries, traitors. Attacking a federal building and an entire branch of government does not seem like what a rioter or protester does. If they had 'won' (whatever that means) I suppose they might be labeled revolutionaries. Terrorism implies to me an attempt to achieve a political result through fear and anonymous attacks on civilians. This was not a terrorist act, and the word has been over-used in trying to describe a particularly heinous action. The attackers are, I think, most accurately labeled traitors, attacking their own government. This carries significant implications; the punishment for treason in America is death, no other.
Those who attacked the Capitol did not represent the Republican Party or Conservatism as a political entity. Rather, they seem to be loosely organized right-wing extremists, who view the election as illegitimate and an assault on American values. They see the appropriate response as a rising of The People, a concept that appears not infrequently among such groups. As much as they have allegiance, it is to Trump, and I will refer to them as Trump's followers, distinctly different from those who voted for him. All his followers voted for Trump; not all who voted for Trump are his followers.
The issue of what the attackers are blends right into the issue of what Trump did. As I noted last week, Trump's speeches and actions have been highly damaging to the Republican Party and the nation as a whole. It's impossible for me to see his acts as anything but a self-serving effort to remain in office. I don't even have the sense of an unfinished agenda. It feels personal, an issue of ego. His rambling speech, readily available on the internet, is self-aggrandizing. He repeatedly refers to himself as the winner, the biggest vote getter in history, cheated, etc.
The claims he incited his followers are based on his call for them to walk down to the Capitol. There is no explicit call to attack the building, or to use violence. Liberals call Trump's words dog whistles, a concept as vague as systemic racism, and as easy to wrongly blame. I don't see a call to violence, and Trump promptly asked them to go home, something the media and liberals ignore completely.
What does this make Trump? It doesn't seem to me he directly incited violence. He did urge Pence to take actions outside the legal and constitutional framework that constrain all elements of our government. He perpetuated a story line that the election was stolen. Is he a traitor, the leader of what amounts to a coup? Did he commit acts sufficient to be tried or impeached? This is why what we call the attackers makes a big difference. If they are traitors, then Trump could be considered this as well. Trump, however, is not directly responsible actions taken by his followers, any more than the director Taxi Driver was responsible for John Hinckley shooting Reagan. Trump has incited them broadly in continuing to claim the election was fraudulent, but there is no 'smoking gun' of a call to violence.
Trump has been banned from several media outlets, and the outlet on which his followers planned the attack, Parler, has been banned by every major carrier. This has prompted cries of censorship and First Amendment violations, which are specious. The First Amendment applies to the government, not to private companies. Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc can all decide who to permit on their sites and what to promote. The immediate shutdown of Parler simply reveals how pervasive is the control of our monopolistic media companies. The banning of Trump is best understood if you think of him as an Iranian Mullah. Had a group of Iranian protesters attacked our Capitol after a suggestive speech by an Iranian leader, you can be sure that person would be banned instantly from Twitter et al. Trump continues to call the election fraudulent, and is posting inflammatory and false material. He has done so repeatedly, one of his greatest weaknesses as President. He, regrettably, deserves banning.
So what should be done about Trump? Options being discussed and prepared include trial for treason including hanging, impeachment, imprisonment, and censure. The relevant issues to me are what we call the people who attacked the Capitol, and to what extent they were under Trump's control. The case for treason and execution seems very weak. There is no evidence the attackers were under Trump's direct control. He did not specifically call for violence, and he promptly told them to stop. A stronger case can be made for impeachment or censure. Trump's speeches and messages have persistently undermined faith in US government and elections. He has repeated known falsehoods to the detriment of America. I can see a reasonable case being made for impeachment. The politics, however, are rather different. Regardless of who won the election, 74 million Americans voted for Trump. We're not all white supremacist crazies, and almost none of us wanted to attack the Capitol. Impeaching Trump post facto looks like churlish vengeance more than it does a considered reaction.
Public opinion must also be considered in other ways. 50-80% of Republicans believe the election was manipulated. This is comparable to the 2019 proportion of Americans who believe Trump colluded with Russia, after exhaustive hearings showed no such collusion. Regardless of how liberals feel about prosecuting Trump, they must govern the entire nation. We have veered from one party to the other in the presidency, each side becoming more and more violent in their words and acts, until now we have street riots and an attack on the Capitol. Someone is going to have to stop this before we have widespread bloodshed. It is always incumbent on the winners to extend the hand of peace, not for the losers to beg, and to offer unconditionally, not while humiliating or chiding the losers. Trump failed in this duty four years ago. Perhaps Biden will get it right.
These behavioral issues extend to the personal level. I have friends of all political stripes, but on Facebook I have had to block 72 people for personal attacks and foul language. All but one have been liberals. I have been called a racist, a homophobe, sexist, xenophobic, mostly by people who don't know me at all. More troubling, friends and family members are engaging in this rhetoric, some directly at me, more out into the electronic ether. They advocate rounding up anyone who disagrees with them and killing them, excising the 'poison' in our nation, hanging Trump, hanging protesters. This from family and intelligent, educated friends.
The very liberals who cringe at the thought of bullying are calling for literal blood. They who claim open-mindedness want to suppress, kill, or re-educate people for their political beliefs. Just as Trump has damaged the nation with his comments, these kinds of words are highly damaging not just to personal relationships, but to our nation. We are in need of a reconstruction similar to that after the Civil War. Then, Lincoln wanted a kind reconstruction. Radical Republicans wanted a harsh one, and got their way, giving rise to the KKK and Jim Crow. Their harshness caused 150 years of pointless racial strife in America. Trump's harm is finished. He has been banned from electronic platforms, and will soon be out of the presidency. The poison that remains is as much liberal as conservative. Punishing Trump will not make our toxic national politics go away. Taking time to seriously explain apparent election statistical anomalies, and reaching out to all Americans would do much more good.
Ted
Once again a well written commentary. Trump did nothing to incite a riot. BLM, Aitnfa, and other radical leftist groups can riot and the Vice President-Elect has said that those riots will not end.......they will continue. If we condemn Donald Trump for encouraging those who were attending his political gathering to march on the Capitol then we need to condemn Kamala Harris for the same type of thing when she encourages the BLM and Antifa rioting and that it should continue. A despicable verbal move on her part as a future leader who claims to want equality, justice, and balance in our society. She should condemn rioting of any type by any grou as should we all. Protests that are peaceful and orderly are certainly in the purview of groups who have an agenda that they want voiced in public. The groups who were violent and who stormed the Capitol building were certainly a tiny minority of the protestors and demonstrators. In fact, the overwhelming majority of attendees who marched to the Capitol have denounced the violence. But......where is the public condemnation of the BLM and Antifa movements violence by the future leaders of our country. Almost non existent. Ted, I loved your post and agree completely with your point of view. Thanks for writing what so many of us feel.
ReplyDeleteLLMcCauley
Did President Ford do the correct thing in pardoning President Nixon? I have thought back to the 1970s during this tumultuous time because our nation needs restoration, and what Ford did was to attempt to put Watergate in the past in order to begin healing. As the current sitting president only has one week left in office, perhaps an official congressional censure would express appropriate condemnation of his actions, while also avoiding the potential chain of riots throughout the country that could very well ensue from reactions to an impeachment.
ReplyDeleteThen comes the hard part: the future, trying to bring peace and encouraging productive dialogue/debate, which is something hard to do in this fight-encouraging age of social media.
-D-
There were no torches or weapons, no looting or arson. I find it hard to see this protest constituting "treason" or "insurrection". As for stopping a government proceeding, in NYC that charge is "interfering with governmental administration", which is a misdemeanor. As you may recall from our years at Penn, sit-ins and office occupations by the student body were considered non-violent and appropriate. Let me ask again, what part of "Now you will march down to the Capitol, peacefully, as patriots in support of Republican legislators trying to defend our democracy" constitutes incitement to riot or treason? He also said "You are loved". WOW!!!
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree in general with your commentary, I cannot agree with your comment, real or implied, that all who participated by entering the Capitol are traitors and should be punished by death. That does not help to stop the "poison" spreading through our politics. Just as shutting down Parler doesn't stop conservative ideology.
ReplyDeleteIf Trump can be tried for treason and/or removed from office, no political dissent will ever be protected again. The issue for Dems is that they want to eradicate all opposition by any means possible.
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