Never Forget


Just four years ago, the US almost experienced a successful coup. That is not hyperbole. It happened. Any of us who were anywhere near a cell phone, computer, or TV would have seen coverage on Donald Trump's self-coup throughout the day, starting at the Ellipse with speeches by Trump and his henchmen that ginned up the crowd to the attack on the Capitol Building grounds. There were injuries and deaths as a result. Congress members' lives were in danger for several hours. The whole thing was so well-documented and footage would continue to stream long after the coup was finally put down. There was no love there. These were not tourists. Even if the insurrectionists don't want to be seen in this light, the reality is that they were terrorists and traitors. 

Trump had telegraphed his self-coup well in advance, laying the groundwork in the early fall prior to the election in 2020. The many lawsuits and schemes for fake electors in swing states that went to Biden were part of the run-up to the coup. Trump's lawsuits would not work, but they did, along with Trump's rhetoric, muddy the waters enough to keep his cult members in line and ready to do whatever he said. Could the coup have succeeded? With that bunch it is easy to want to say no. But the fact is that they came a lot closer than I would have imagined. I expected outbreaks of violence given Trump's rhetoric. A coup attempt was not on my 2021 bingo card. And there we were. For a couple days, it seemed like the fallout from the failed coup attempt would put an end to Trump's political career and he would have to find a new grift. That clarity would prove short-lived. The GOP was more comfortable remaining chained to Trump. The ensuing years have been a reminder that our democracy is a lot more fragile than it appears, and trying to go back to normal is doomed to failure. We've seen an epic effort to create a revisionist history of that awful day in our history. That revisionist history has succeeded, unfortunately. Won't stop the truth-tellers, but we know that we can't count on being listened to or taken seriously.

And now the ringleader of the self-coup in 2021 is about to assume a second term in the White House in a couple weeks. I may be an atheist, but I will just throw this out there: God help us.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The GOP's authoritarian turn - more graphics from V-Dem

Image
I wanted to follow up on a previous post about the authoritarian turn that the GOP has taken this century. Both of the following graphics I obtained from a working paper (no longer online, regrettably) by V-Dem in 2020. I seriously doubt the trends have changed. The Guardian had a good summary of the findings. For our purposes I am using the term authoritarianism and illiberalism as synonyms.  This first figure shows two dimensions: economic left/right and illiberalism (authoritarianism). Both dimensions start at 0 and end at 1. A party espousing economic conservatism would appear closer to 1 on the economic dimension. A party espousing authoritarian approach to governing will be closer to 1 on the Illiberalism dimension. Notice that Venezuela's ruling party actually scores a perfect 1 on illiberalism. The GOP appears in orange print and the Democratic Party appears in blue print. Other governing political parties appear in gray, and we get a baseline idea of where autocracies te...
Read more

The US Republican Party is no Longer Conservative: It is Authoritarian (repost)

Image
Note: This post comes from my academic blog and was published a little over three years ago. I am making some minor edits to account for the year we live in, but am otherwise leaving it unchanged in terms of content, given that I would still arrive at the same conclusions based on V-Dem's data analyses described in the following paragraphs.  The data tell the tale. The mass media and still too many of the US intelligentsia refer to the Republican Party (GOP) as conservative, and its politicians and followers as conservatives. I would argue that the party leadership, its politicians, and its activist base abandoned conservatism a long time ago, and took a much more authoritarian turn. And before anyone tries to get too far into the weeds here, I published some research roughly nine years ago (and I am far from alone I suspect) distinguishing at least some very substantial facets of conservatism from authoritarianism. That there are actual conservatives in the US who want n...
Read more

Ozymandias

When I think of our current era and all of its dictators and would-be dictators, there is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that rings as true now as it did when he wrote it:     I met a traveller from an antique land,     Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone     Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,     Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,     And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,     Tell that its sculptor well those passions read     Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,     The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;     And on the pedestal, these words appear:     My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;     Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!     Nothing beside remains. Round the decay     Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and ...
Read more