Protesters gather on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, in Washington.
By Lauren Camera ( usnews)
After the Capitol insurrection, President-elect Joe Biden expressed his disgust by saying, ‘This is not who we are.’ But what if it is?
AFTER A MOB OF TRUMP supporters stormed the Capitol building to prevent lawmakers from certifying the results of the presidential election, hundreds of members of Congress were quick to remind people watching the chaos unfold that Americans are better than the thugs who don’t represent their shared values or understand what the country really stands for.
“Let me be very clear,” President-elect Joe Biden said Wednesday. “The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect the true America.”
“This is not who we are.”
But as the smoke cleared, the glass from the smashed doors and windows was swept away and thousands of photos and videos started being scrutinized, it soon became clear that – while the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol included white nationalists carrying Confederate flags, anti-Semites wearing clothes suggesting not enough Jews were killed during the Holocaust, QAnon conspiracy theorists and members of the Proud Boys – they were also, by and large, as American as apple pie.
They were teachers and truck drivers. They were doctors, farmers, CEOs, lawyers and law enforcement officers. They were heads of local Republican committees and elected officials – mayors, more than a dozen state legislators and a newly minted member of Congress.
They traveled from all across the country, flying in from the West Coast, chartering private jets from Texas and buses from Michigan, carpooling from across the Sun Belt states.
And they converged on Washington in the waning days of Trump’s tenure to make it clear that they weren’t going to relinquish control of an America shaped by their vision without a fight.
“This is who we are,” says Becky Monroe, director of the Fighting Hate and Bias program at the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights. “It’s who we will continue to be if we don’t confront the real hard truth about white supremacy and race in America.”
“To hear this repeated, that this isn’t who we are – and I genuinely believe it may be coming from a good place – but it is particularly painful for people who have been targeted for hate for generations,” she says. “This is who we are. It doesn’t mean that it’s all of who we are, but if we don’t confront it, we will never be able to address it.”
In successive speeches since Wednesday, Biden, who ran on being an unifying force who would heal the soul of the nation, acknowledged as much.
“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesters yesterday that they wouldn’t have been treated very differently than the mob that stormed the Capitol,” he said Thursday. “We all know that’s true. And that is totally unacceptable. And the American people saw it in plain view and I hope it sensitized them to what we have to do.”
But Trump, in equal measure, has continued stoking false claims of voter fraud and a stolen election, pledging to this throngs of supporters that this is just the beginning of a new era in conservative politics.
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future,” Trump said Friday morning after his Twitter suspension had run its course. “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
It was a shot across the bow of the traditional political establishment – a warning meant for Democrats and Republicans alike – that the president may not live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come Jan. 20, but he’s taking his supporters and building something bigger and better.[
It didn’t take long for the sentiment to come through. Indeed, when members of Congress, after being ambushed, reconvened Wednesday evening to certify the results of the presidential election, a handful of Republican senators and more than 100 Republican representatives stood by their decisions to vote against the certification process.
“If the daily news is about something other than what’s going on in Washington, it could turn the temperature down,” she continues. “It’s not going to fix the divisions, but it might give us a little reprieve, and it might help us remember that the other side isn’t an existential threat.”
With the incoming administration focused on controlling the coronavirus pandemic and rolling out an aggressive vaccination campaign, Erickson says that, too, should help tensions simmer.
“If we can leave our houses and get back to real life, that will help,” Erickson says. “We’re all angry and pent up and sad, and it’s all exponentially worse because we’re locked in our houses. If we can go to school, go to the movies, go to work, I think that will help turn down the temperature, too.”
Of course, it’s not simply about turning down the temperature. It’s also about getting public officials, like Biden, to confront the reality that America isn’t always a “citadel of liberty,” as he described it Thursday. Quite often, especially for the most marginalized people in the country, America is and has been a very difficult place to live and love.
But a path forward does exist, Monroe says.
“That’s the part of America that I think we can all get behind and recognize,” Monroe says. “That despite having every reason not to, the people who are most targeted are also the most committed to making it better.”
Monroe and others point to Biden’s diverse nominations and appointments for his incoming administration as an important first step in getting the country to better match the vision of America he and other public officials insist it is.
“We can hold both,” she says. “It can be true that this is a country that is still living and suffering from ongoing racism and discrimination, and that the very same people who could have given up on it a long time ago are still fighting to make it better.”
“It’s not just them,” says Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy and politics at Third Way, a Washington think-tank that focuses on cultivating common ground on policies. “They’re responding to something that’s going on that is real.”
A new poll from YouGov Direct confirms that, finding that 45% of registered GOP voters said they actively supported the actions of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol, with 43% opposing.
In fact, the poll, which surveyed nearly 1,500 registered voters about Wednesday’s events, found that a majority of Republican voters believe that Biden is to blame for Trump’s supporters storming the Capitol on Wednesday. Just 26% of Republican voters blamed the president for inciting the violence, and another 26% blamed congressional Republicans who vowed to challenge the official tally of Biden’s Electoral College votes.
“I think the only hope is that Joe Biden’s presidency is the most boring presidency of all time and we just don’t have to talk about politics,” Erickson says.
“If the daily news is about something other than what’s going on in Washington, it could turn the temperature down,” she continues. “It’s not going to fix the divisions, but it might give us a little reprieve, and it might help us remember that the other side isn’t an existential threat.”
With the incoming administration focused on controlling the coronavirus pandemic and rolling out an aggressive vaccination campaign, Erickson says that, too, should help tensions simmer.
“If we can leave our houses and get back to real life, that will help,” Erickson says. “We’re all angry and pent up and sad, and it’s all exponentially worse because we’re locked in our houses. If we can go to school, go to the movies, go to work, I think that will help turn down the temperature, too.”
Of course, it’s not simply about turning down the temperature. It’s also about getting public officials, like Biden, to confront the reality that America isn’t always a “citadel of liberty,” as he described it Thursday. Quite often, especially for the most marginalized people in the country, America is and has been a very difficult place to live and love.
But a path forward does exist, Monroe says.
“That’s the part of America that I think we can all get behind and recognize,” Monroe says. “That despite having every reason not to, the people who are most targeted are also the most committed to making it better.”
Monroe and others point to Biden’s diverse nominations and appointments for his incoming administration as an important first step in getting the country to better match the vision of America he and other public officials insist it is.
“We can hold both,” she says. “It can be true that this is a country that is still living and suffering from ongoing racism and discrimination, and that the very same people who could have given up on it a long time ago are still fighting to make it better.”
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