I live six blocks from the Capitol and stroll through its grounds several times a week as part of my goal to log in 10,000 steps a day. Inevitably, I pause to gaze at the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol and reflect on what it means to be an American. I love this building and our National Mall—the great boulevard of monuments and Smithsonian museums that stretches before the Capitol-with a passion only exceeded by my love for my family. Every time I step on the Capitol grounds I am filled with awe and appreciation for the fact that I was born an American. This last week has been unbearably sad for me and I want to share a few thoughts with you about just how terrible what happened at the Capitol was.
For most of our lives my husband and I served our country with great pride, spending most of our time in countries in crisis. As a reporter, I covered coups, insurrections, and civil wars. I learned that maintaining a democracy is every bit as difficult as achieving it in the first place. Experience taught me that culture—be it in Middle East or America—evolves slowly. I always had faith, however, that no matter how much strain we Americans put on our institutions, they would hold us together.
Over the last few days, I have been taking my usual walks. Tall cyclone fences surround the Capitol grounds. National Guardsmen have deployed and are stationed every 100 feet throughout the area around the House and Senate office buildings. I give them a thumbs up and stop occasionally to thank them for being here. These men and women from all across America are defending America from… Americans.
The security cannot mask the cold, hard truth: The People’s House is now behind barricades as if it were the American Embassy in Baghdad or Beirut. As we are learning, a well-armed mob of White Supremacists (with Confederate flags and Nazi tattoos) swarmed the Capitol, erected a gallows complete with a noose to hang Mike Pence, and broke into Senate and House offices with the intent to “capture” members and assassinate some, including Nancy Pelosi. They were well-armed with weapons and had maps of the Capitol complex. They killed a Capitol Hill Policeman. Another policeman has committed suicide. Four others died. More than two dozen police sustained injuries. Some are still in the hospital. With each day we learn a new horror of what these so-called Americans, heads filled with extremist propaganda, tried to do and, according to the FBI, have plans to do again.
Historians, in tracing the roots of this insurrection, will offer lots of explanations and spread the blame. But, make no mistake: this is what Trump and Trumpism have done to our country. This is what happens when GOP politicians lie to Americans and business leaders turn a blind eye to the lie because they like deregulation or a climbing stock market. Having lived most of my adult life overseas in countries in crisis, I knew exactly what Donald Trump represented. I knew exactly what the right-wing media was doing to our country, stoking white grievance, pretending that white supremacist militias were not a real problem, stifling serious debate in the House and the Senate, and telling their followers the really big lie that America could magically go back seven decades and become a mystical land dominated by white people. I tried to warn friends and family about just how dangerous this all was, but only a few could imagine how bad it would all get. And, even after everything that has happened, too many still seem to be in denial.
In January 1945, my Republican grandfather gave a speech as president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to several hundred writers who had been supporting the war effort. In what I have come to see as a very prescient address, he warned them, “Let’s not underestimate the threat. There is a tendency to soft-pedal the spread of alien doctrines of intolerance. The theory, I suppose, is that the best way to treat a disease is to pretend that it doesn’t exist. That is a cowardly theory and worse, a futile one.” He added, “It seems to me that honest diagnosis is the first and indispensable measure in meeting the challenges of propaganda and whispering campaigns directed against foreigners, against Jews, against Negroes.” He warned, “The thing that needs emphasizing, day in and day out, is that the spread of intolerance is not primarily a threat to the intended victims but to the whole country. Once the poison enters a nation’s bloodstream, the entire population is doomed…If the day ever comes in this country when tolerance gives way to internal enmities and persecutions and discriminations, it will be the end of American civilization…should intolerance triumph, it will mean, as a matter of course, that free government is stamped out.”
We have come perilously close to witnessing free government being stamped out. I woke up this morning to the spectacle of a bunch of Republican representatives and senators whining about how if Joe Biden wants national unity, we must just let this go. These people do not want national unity. They want to slither away without having to accept responsibility for the miserable roles they played in bringing us to this awful place. There can be no national unity until the GOP leadership accepts responsibility (isn’t “personal responsibility” what Republicans are always talking about?) for their big lie that brought us to this point. As Mitt Romney said, his fellow Republicans must tell Americans the truth: Joe Biden won this election and the election was free and fair. There was no significant fraud. They must apologize to the 81 million Americans whose votes they tried to overturn. And, they must remove Trump from office and hold him to account.
There’s been a lot of right-wing moaning over Twitter and social media platforms kicking Trump and others who are inciting violence off their platforms. It’s amusing to see all these men and women, who think they have some inherent right to incite violence on privately-owned platforms, attack the private sector. I find it somewhat fitting that, for this moment at least, it is private enterprise that is stepping up to help save our country from the mob. The major business groups—the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Business Roundtable all called for the recognition of Biden’s victory. Individual companies have since announced they will not contribute to the campaigns of any member of Congress who voted to object to the Electoral College. Some titans of capitalism are calling the Republicans into account. They know what we should all know: neither the business community nor individual citizens can flourish without a stable legal system in which the rule of law applies to all of us equally.
This is the question before us: Are we going to embrace our diversity and work to create more opportunity for all Americans or are we going to be part of a cabal that has been fired up by propaganda and conspiracy theories? We are in a very perilous situation and it is up to each of us to decide the kind of country we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.