September 11, 2001. That was the last time I felt gut-punched like I did yesterday. That was the last time that someone attacked our government, our democracy, our country. As we did on 9-11, Kathleen and I spent all day glued to the television, flipping channels, and trying to make sense of the disgusting images unfolding on the screen.
As I write these words, I am already breaking my New Year’s resolution to avoid talking about politics in my blog. Obviously, the events of yesterday moved me to take this step and made it impossible to remain silent. As a historian, I had images flashing through my mind of other times when our Capitol was under attack. In 1812, invading British forces took the city and burned the White House; in 1856, a Southern congressman used a cane to beat a US Senator bloody and unconscious at his desk in the Senate chamber because he was an abolitionist who spoke out against slavery; a few years later, that same issue resulted in a civil war in which Washington DC had to be turned into a fortress because the city was under assault from an invading army; in 2001, the Pentagon and White House were targeted by another enemy who sought to destroy our government. Those efforts all failed to accomplish their goal and our country survived. Even yesterday, all that was accomplished by the sickening, lawless mob was a slight delay of the inevitable. Late at night, despite these attacks and weeks of threats and failed law suits by Trump, both houses of Congress officially affirmed Joe Biden’s decisive victory.
For months leading up to the election, Donald Trump warned the voters that the election of Joe Biden would result in anarchy. He was right. He just didn’t explain that he would be the cause of that anarchy. I now have new images of attacks on Washington to join those of my historical memory. Thousands of seditious thugs tried to stop the operation of democracy while their hats, shirts, and flags bore the slogan “Make America Great Again.” They seemed to have no sense of irony at the fact that the four-year-long reign of terror by King Donald has ripped apart and destroyed a formerly great nation. Nor did they see the disconnect between the waving of American flags while attacking the very things that the flag stands for. All of this happened at the behest of their messiah. At a rally earlier, he repeated his lies about a “rigged election,” and exhorted the mob of mindless cult members to march down to the Capitol Building to disrupt the proceedings. (You can now add “inciting a riot” to his long list of criminal acts while president).
It reminded me of a film biography of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that I used to show my students in World History. In 1966, in an event known as the Cultural Revolution, Mao became angry that China seemed to be slipping toward capitalism and away from “pure communism.” He started holding massive rallies with young people and college students, stirring them up with propaganda, and he organized them into groups he called “Red Guards.” They wore red bandanas similar to the MAGA hats and carried copies of a small book called “Quotations of Chairman Mao” (AKA, The Little Red Book). For three years, these people worshipped Mao as a god and became fanatical, marching through the streets attacking journalists, intellectuals, and anyone else who disagreed with their narrow view of the world. (See picture above) Hundreds of innocent people were killed, and by 1969 the nation was so disrupted by their mob actions, that the government had to step in, quietly force Mao into retirement, and try to restore order. Many of the fanatical followers, however, refused to cease their activities, so they were “sent down” to the countryside and forced to do hard labor that sapped their revolutionary energies. I vividly recall a film clip of one such girl who was so unrepentant and radicalized that they harnessed her to a plow in place of a draft animal. The film showed her with a huge smile on her face, happily straining to pull the plow through the fields for the good of China. Perhaps, after January 20th, we can do something similar to the Trump lemmings who attacked our nation yesterday.
Seriously, though, yesterday’s events were all a result of the forces of hatred and intolerance unleashed by a narcissistic president who believes himself to be above the law and who cannot admit to himself that he is a loser.
Something else has been unleashed by Donald Trump, however. During the chaos of the afternoon, the final votes were tabulated in Georgia, and Jon Ossoff was declared the other winner of the runoff election to determine the state’s two senators. In a result that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago, Ossoff, a Jew, and Raphael Warnock, the first Democratic African-American ever elected to the US Senate from a Southern state, will now become part of a Democratic majority in the US Senate, US Congress, and the White House. They, like President-Elect Joe Biden were pushed over the top by people voting for the first time, many of them Black, people who were moved to exercise their right to vote by the dangerous excesses and dictatorial power wielded by Trump. The events of the past four years moved them to take this step, and, like me, it became impossible to remain silent. And make no mistake, the electorate, like the country, is changing. Voters of the near future will be younger, more engaged, and more accepting of differences in race, color, sexual preference, and religion than the people who elected this horrible man.
Hopefully, this dramatic change in government leadership is just the beginning of something that will, indeed, make our country great again.