The Capitol Donnybrook
Dearest Francis,
By now, I'm confident, word of Wednesday's jacquerie at the U.S. Capitol has reached your ears. It is at times like these that I envy how removed you are from the relentless pace of daily news! Like most people in the country, I imagine, I doomscrolled—as the saying goes—through Twitter and neurotically refreshed various online news sites to get a sense of the chaos unfolding in D.C. Needless to say, I didn't get as much work done as I'd hope to that afternoon.
Your understanding of Wednesday's event—which I have taken to calling the Capitol Donnybrook—may exceed my own, but if you'll forgive me, I will present to you a brief tour d'horizon.
In the early afternoon of Wednesday, Jan. 6, Donald Trump graced a throng of his restive followers in D.C., not far from the Capitol building, and proceeded to restate his specious theory that Democrats conspired to wrest the election from his hands. As you know, he's been grousing about this since the early hours of Nov. 4, and on Wednesday his railing against the election took on a desperate, feverish crescendo. After all, not too far away, Congress was meeting to certify the results of the Electoral College, the concluding step of a process that started when voters flocked to the polls in November.
Trump has always suffered from logorrhea, and his speech on Wednesday was no different from any other speech he's given. What I mean is that he spoke for a long time—over an hour—about the grave injustice being done at the Capitol. He then encouraged his followers to march to the Capitol, promising that he would join them (a taradiddle, as it turns out). Here is what he said:
We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol Building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
Now, I want to highlight that last sentence, where Trump uses the word "peacefully," because some people have seized on that part of the speech to argue Trump didn't incite violence. Is that a reasonable argument, Francis?
I don't believe so, for the simple reason that Trump has spent the last two months telling his followers that Democrats conspired to steal the election from him. He's claimed, over and over and over again, that a cabal of unscrupulous Democrats invalidated his supporters' votes. In a democracy, is there a greater sin?
As David French said in his Sunday newsletter for The Dispatch, Trump primed his supporters to take action by spreading enabling lies, which French defines as lies that set the stage for the lies that impel action.
I could go on, but the enabling lies that have rocketed through the church for years share important characteristics. They not only dramatically exaggerate the stakes of our political and legal disputes, they dramatically exaggerate the perfidy of your opponents. Moreover, when the stakes are deemed to be that high, the moral limitations on your response start to fall away.
Francis, this strikes me as the key to understanding the Capitol Donnybrook. The stakes, to Trump's supporters, were not simply high—they were epoch-making. If Democrats believed the election had been quite literally stolen right out from under their noses, you can imagine that some members of the #Resistance would take to the streets, as many did over the summer for different reasons. My point is that what happened at the Capitol is not surprising given the narrative pushed by Trump and repeated by oleaginous politicians and outlets.
I've gone on at some length now, Francis, and for that I apologize. I only want to dwell on one other aspect of the Capitol Donnybrook before I put down my quill and get on with my day. The question I mean to ask is this—how significant was this event? Was it, as many have called it, an insurrection or attempted coup? Or was it a slapdash riot with no greater purpose than the cathartic release of frustration?
Though it appears some members of the throng that pushed its way inside the Capitol had truly unsettling intentions, I suspect most of the tearaways got swept up in the heady feeling of being part of something larger than themselves, and ended up doing things they had no intention doing when they woke up that morning.
As Niall Ferguson wrote:
A closer look at this motley crew of misfits brought me back to reality — that, and the realization that, far from proclaiming presidential rule by decree and securing the TV stations (which is what coup leaders are supposed to do), Trump and his children were vacuously watching the mayhem on television. Just as the QAnon (and KKKAnon) mob were too busy filming their own antics to prevent the members of Congress making their escape, so the putative dictator was too preoccupied with fulminating against his vice president to anticipate his own summary exclusion from the major social media platforms.
I especially like Ross Douthat's mordant description of the riot:
A politically impotent, conspiracy-addled president whips up a rabble of costumed selfie-snappers and then goes home to the White House with no plan except to watch them get rowdy on TV.
And what becomes of Trump? That remains to be seen. He will not repair to his mansions and spend the rest of his days quietly playing golf, of course. We can expect him to continue to fulminate against the forces that conspired against him (except, naturally, his impulsiveness and megalomania)—but from where? His loudest megaphone, his Twitter account, is no more. Facebook is, similarly, closed to him.
He will no doubt find a new way to communicate to his votaries, but I do not think I am alone in hoping his inglorious behavior over the last two months—to say nothing of the last four years!—will have diminished the value of his currency in the Republican Party. Such an outcome is not inconceivable.
And on that note, I shall remove my claim to your attention, Francis. I hope I will hear from you soon.
With love, SEW