RICHMOND, California — I woke up Wednesday gratified. An African American and a Jew had won the two Senate runoffs in Georgia. The Democrats would dominate the Senate. Mitch McConnell would be minority leader. Chuck Schumer would be the majority leader. I was working in the garage converting wooden wine boxes with my new Dremel saw into whatever. My wife said, “come up stairs, you’ve got to see this.” The elation was short lived. I watched television from 10 am to 11 pm as I flipped between CNN, MSNBC and FOX, which dropped its “Fair and Balanced” motto in 2017.
Crowds outside the Capitol, clowns sitting in Vice President Pence’s Senate seat, another in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seat with his shoes on her desk. POTUS, a mendacious narcissist, egged on his loyalists to insurrection, treason, sedition, domestic terrorism, charges far more potent than trespassing.
Who were these thousands of people? Two images suggested xenophobic white anti-Semites who were economically and socially threatened by African Americans and non-Christians. Three flags flew at the capitol, the American flag, the Trump flag and often repeated image of a single Confederate flag. My wife saw a photo on Facebook of a demonstrator wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with “Camp Auschwitz” over a skull. This has the stench of anti-immigrant and birther conspiracies.
The police response is complicated; who knew, unprecedented terrain, not part of our exceptional North American experience. Democracies typically respond slowly to affronts by command economy totalitarians. It’s the risk of an open society. We don’t want to chill dissent. A conspiracy novelist of the Designated Survivor ilk, could postulate that an insider facilitated mob access, perhaps, I’m not pointing fingers.
Congressional disfunctions, filibusters, shutting down government for lack of a budget, closely watched controversial ideological judicial appointments, venal corruption and other irritants, are part of our democracy and, is the price we pay in a government of 330 million people that prizes life, liberty, the pursuit of freedom, individualism and the amassing of property.
I was drawn to listing world shaking events over the last 100 years. Hitler’s role in German history, the November 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch, the Reichstag fire in February 1933, the Anschluss German takeover of Austria in March 1938, and Kristallnacht in November 1938, all had affected my grandparents and parents living in Germany and Austria.
My memory fluttered back to April 1989, I was teaching in Omaha, and the Tiananmen square pro-democracy demonstrations bloomed in Beijing. Hong Kong was transferred from the British rule to the Chinese in 1997. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 was followed by an attack on the Russian White House in Moscow as Boris Yeltsin solidified his power. A Radio Free Europe youtube provided a reminder, “25 Years ago: The Day the Russian White House Was Shelled.”
Rudy Giuliani was Mayor of New York when the Twin Towers were toppled on September 11, 2001. His second term ended on December 31, 2001. He thought he had done such a good job as mayor that despite being term limited, he should be permitted to have a third term. It did not happen.
No doubt committees will scrutinize police intelligence, organization and response to the assault on the Capitol. The differential and deferential treatment of whites-only insurrectionists appeared starkly light handed by comparison to the treatments of last summer’s Black Lives Matter activists. The Electoral College may be one big step closer to being replaced by a national standard of direct election, one person one vote.
What shall it be called? Shays’ Rebellion occurred in 1787. Political scientists and historians have a rich language trove to draw from. It is midnight. I will need some sleep to face Thursday, and 14 more unpredictable and uncertain days notwithstanding COVID-19.
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Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D., J.D., a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and a lawyer, a member of the Institute for Historical Study, is a correspondent now based in Richmond, California. He may be contacted via oliver.pollak@sdjewishworld.com
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Great observations. A sad day for our democracy. Get him out of there