Thoughts on a Coup
Insurrection Goes to Washington
I woke up yesterday morning exhausted from watching the election returns from Georgia; I finally called it a night around midnight when they called the race for Reverend Raphael Warnock. I remember feeling joy; the first Black senator from Georgia? What an awesome sight to see. Maybe that arc is bending toward justice after all.
As we are in the midst of a global pandemic, my children are home doing virtual learning, so the day got going quickly. No rest for the wicked. I chugged down a few cups of coffee and ushered everyone to their respective spaces. Then I got to grading work that had been submitted the evening before. A “normal” day in a very abnormal time.
My son had an orthodontist appointment yesterday afternoon; it’s one of the few times we really get out of the house right now. The drive to the office is stunningly pretty: pine trees, leftover snow, and a windy road. The blue in the sky yesterday was such a welcome sight after the gloomy clouds we’ve had for weeks.
My son went inside, alone, and I sat in the car. I thought about reading the book I’d brought along, but I decided to check the news. I remembered that Congress was supposed to certify Joe Biden’s win. The first thing I saw was a tweet by Tommy Vietor that said something along the lines of, “these aren’t protesters; they are terrorists”. Wait, what? Who was he talking about? I knew there were several senators that were going to object to Biden’s win, but terrorists? As I began to doomscroll, a picture emerged. I sat, mouth agape, as I watched a video of the glass in the door to the capitol building breaking. Reporters, representatives, and senators began slowly painting the picture of what was happening. A group stormed the building and broke in; they were now inside.
I follow Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) wife, Connie Schultz, on Twitter; she indicated that Sherrod and his colleagues were shaken up but safe. However, others were reporting gunshots.
I thought back to my trip to the big, hallowed building when I was in college. I remember thinking it was bigger than it looked on TV but also smaller somehow. It’s a little cold. It echoes. But there’s a reverence there that I haven’t felt in many places; it’s not a fortress. It’s a big, open place that represents our giant, messy, loud democracy. To think of all of the people that have stood in that rotunda readying themselves for floor speeches. It’s a beautiful building filled with the echoes of history. My stomach lurched at the thought of anyone breaching it. But then I saw it.
The Confederate flag.
The flag that represents sedition in its strongest form. One video showed it was being carried around the capitol building; there were people trying to put it up on one of the columns.
I texted my husband from the car: “Do you have the news on? A group has broken into the capitol”. Read receipt. Pause. “I do now; what the hell?”.
My son got back to the car, and we headed home; we usually swing by Starbucks for a post-orthodontist treat (I remember the tightening! A drink helps!). Not today. We headed straight for our house and the TV. The images looked even worse on a larger screen. I’ve seen images like that before, but I’ve never seen anything like it here.
So, there we sat. We watched as photos began to emerge from inside; guns drawn, a man standing at the hallowed podium, a man with his feet on the speaker’s desk, Senators cowering on the floor. I thought back again to my own visit; it was a little boring with just a few representatives giving speeches to a mostly empty room, but the floor of the House was a marvel to see. One of the photos was a man climbing over the chairs; attached to his belt looked like a large number of zip ties. What was he planning to do with those? The thought is too gruesome for me to ponder.
It felt like it took forever for anyone other than the Capitol Police to do anything. Where was the National Guard? Where were the D.C. police? During the summer, they were lined up in full riot gear on the steps of each of those hallowed spaces. They were ready for the protests, and their might was on full display. Where was all of that now when a group had physically breached one of our most sacred places?
Of course, we know the answer to that question; we can see it with our own eyes. The zip ties reminded me of seeing protestors on the ground this summer, faces against the concrete, hands behind their backs bound with bright yellow or cream zip ties. I remember the president’s tweet: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. But I was watching images of people carrying things out of the capitol building; who was looting now?
My mom called, the catch of tears in her voice; how was this happening? Is this who we are? My social media feed was filled with dismay, anger, sadness, shock.
What felt like hours later, the National Guard or D.C. police (or some combo) began escorting people out of the building. And I used the term escorting purposefully. I told a friend that it looked like my friends and me walking in a single-file line out after our tour. One police officer was holding a woman’s hand to help her down the stairs. The juxtaposition between the treatment yesterday vs. the treatment this summer is astonishing but not really surprising. This is America.
We finally got some news on the gunshot; a woman was shot as she tried to breach the doors to one of the chambers. She was warned, but she proceeded anyway. I read a write-up about her this morning; her relatives said she was very passionate about her beliefs. She was an Air Force veteran. But no mention about her being a QAnon supporter who called yesterday, “The Storm”. My sadness for such loss was met with the memories of the write-ups of so many Black men that were shot by police; it seems like every bad act they had ever committed was fair game to scrutinize and to justify. “If they had only followed instructions…”. This is America.
As evening came, we listened to pundits and journalists argue about what happened; we absorbed the firsthand accounts. Bombs were found around the city; luckily, they did not go off. There were caches of weapons hidden in trucks; fortunately, they sat unused. Chilling images were splashed all over the TV. Joe Biden gave an impassioned speech where he called on Donald Trump to condemn this. A video emerged of the president where he repeated his lies: the election was stolen followed by don’t hurt people and I love you. I love you? What?
My social media feed began to change. Anger and dismay were replaced by something else. Skepticism. All of a sudden, the tone shifted. Was it Antifa dressed up as Trump supporters? What if this was a “false flag” operation? As a sociologist, I’ve seen this pattern before. Sandy Hook. Las Vegas. The Pulse shooting. Even 9/11. Occam’s Razor goes right out the door.
Finally, our senators and representatives began to file back into the building; it was time to certify the election. I admire them for getting back to work; there is no doubt that fear, grief, and trauma were swirling around them. They spoke passionately about our democracy and the hallowed space they occupied. Many of them begged their colleagues to just tell the truth. But there were some who refused. In the end, it didn’t really matter; the election was certified, and the events of the day did not change that.
As I was watching one of the speeches, I glanced down at my phone, and a photo popped up in my feed. It was taken right before Congress was reconvened. It showed several Capitol workers, mostly Black men in medical masks, sweeping up the class shards, wiping down the floors, and doing their best to return to some normalcy. This was their space too; the fear they felt yesterday was likely amplified. But here they were, just quietly doing the work. I was struck by their bravery; they are the best of us. They wouldn’t give towering speeches, and they certainly didn’t have the luxury of grandstanding. I thought about all the quiet work that is done after something tragic. It goes unnoticed, but it’s that quiet work that helps us start the healing process.
I made the mistake of looking over my social media feed one more time; the questions about “false flags” had turned to statements. “I know someone that was there! It wasn’t the Trump supporters!”. “It was Antifa! That’s what Hannity and Matt Gaetz said!”. The comparisons to the summer protests were again present, but with a totally different tone: “At least they didn’t DESTROY things like those thugs over the summer”. The conspiracy theories began in earnest, as they tend to do on social media.
I closed the feed.
I’m not sure where we go from here. As someone who studies people for a living, I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around yesterday’s events. They were inevitable; the red-hot, hateful rhetoric can only go on for so long before the rhetoric is left behind for more nefarious actions. The question that needs to be answered is this: how do we work together if we can’t even agree on the facts? It’s a tremendously difficult question to answer. But answer it we must because our democracy and all it represents can only survive if we agree it will; it’s not infallible. It’s not unbreakable. It’s a fragile agreement between We, the people, and we must work to maintain it. Without that, it becomes another grand experiment gone awry.
