This is a Mirror, and It is Not A Fun House Mirror
Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles, Paris, France
A metaphysical lens is the framework through which I both view and interpret the world. One of its basic principles is that everything we see, note, observe, experience is a mirror. Everything. No. Exceptions. Ever.
What is happening in the United States is a mirror. Often, it feels like a distorted, fun house mirror, but it’s not, not really. It’s a genuine mirror. What is this real mirror showing us? The short answer is: what we have been doing our damnedest not to see, but is now demanding a reckoning.
The Capitol Police, despite multiple forms of outreach prior to the riot, refused the help that was offered. They were woefully underprepared for what happened in the Capitol last week. “Above all, the fiasco demonstrated that government agencies were not prepared for a threat that, until recently, seemed unimaginable: when the person inciting the violence is the president of the United States.”
Digging a little further into what actually happened, I discovered that there was no plan at all, not even a sketchy one. I also learned that military officials behind the scenes hemmed and hawed about supplying the teams that would help the Capitol police force for four hours.
No one wanted to make the decision. Because of the protests last summer. Why? Their press had been bad. To be clear, the response of law enforcement looked bad to the Twittersphere and cable news networks last summer. I’m still dizzy from this realization.
How it looked was more important than what it was. This is simply the logical extension of the keeping up with the Jones’ that grew out of post-World War II American Dream rhetoric. It’s a telling aspect of co-dependency writ billboard-with-chaser-lights large.
How it looked?!?!?!?!?!? The optics? What social media would do with it? What various persons who make up what are known as political bases will say/think/do? Oh, you mean the unthinkable. Yeah, that.
“Other than a video message he posted on Thursday night, Mr. Trump has said nothing about the attack since its conclusion and taken no responsibility for it, nor has he said anything publicly about the U.S. Capitol Police officer killed by the mob. Only after much criticism did he order flags lowered to half-staff at the White House and other federal facilities on Sunday in honor of the officer and another who Capitol Police said had died off-duty days after responding to the riot at the Capitol.”
“‘The more time, images, and stories removed from Wednesday the worse it gets,’ Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, wrote on Twitter. ‘If you’re not in a white-hot rage over what happened by now, you’re not paying attention.’” Um, no, we haven’t been, not really.
The word accountability is quickly becoming a battle cry in Washington. “The word we heard over and over in interviews with more than 50 Democratic officials and activists was ‘accountability.’ They said that letting Trump leave office without answering for the litany of illegal behavior he engaged in or oversaw would be an invitation for future presidents to act as far outside the law as they wish.”
Where has the accountability caucus been for the past four years, I ask you? Why have we repeatedly turned a blind eye to the Beltway behaviors that presaged and factually invited this last heinous one?
Congress has decided to attempt to force the hand of Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment. Either that or face a twice-impeached president—something that has never happened in the history of our country. “Far from capitulating, Mr. Trump made plans to proceed as if the last five earth-shattering days had simply not happened at all. But momentum in Washington was shifting decisively against him.” They did happen, Beloved. We must never forget.
The always-delicious Maggie Haberman asks how Trump will manage without Twitter. “But as his campaign played out and his presidency began, Donald J. Trump, the master of the small screen [she means television], evolved gradually into a different character, @realdonaldtrump, whose itchy Twitter finger became many things at once: an agenda-setter for the day’s coverage, a weapon against his rivals, a way of firing aides and cabinet secretaries, a grenade he could throw at Republican lawmakers who had crossed him and reporters whose coverage he hated, a window into his psyche, and most of all, an unfiltered pipeline to his supporters.”
Let’s examine her most telling words: Itchy Twitter finger—there were those and more in the mob last week. Twitter fingers and trigger fingers. Mirrors, Beloved.
Here’s more Maggie, “The television in his alcove dining room off the Oval Office was usually on in the background, catnip for his short attention span. He consumed much of his information through it and watched the coverage of his tweets.”
Short attention span—again mirrored in the mob. The only valid politics is our politic. Mirrors, Beloved.
“Mr. Trump’s White House aides said he loved tweeting and then watching the chyrons on cable news channels quickly change in response. For a septuagenarian whose closest allies and aides say often exhibits the emotional development of a preteen, and for whom attention has been a narcotic, the instant gratification of his tweets was hard to match.”
Emotional development of a preteen—plenty of this too in the mob. Screaming, rioting, pushing, shoving, all due to a political disappointment? And sulking in the face of it? Or looting? Mirrors all, Beloved. I know we don’t like this, but they are.
Instant gratification—exactly what the mob seemed to want. Why? How is it that this many of us have not learned to participate in social discourse? Mirrors, ooh, ow, mirrors.
“Now, his Twitter account yanked away from him permanently, President Trump faces the challenge, for both his remaining days in the White House and in a post-presidency, of how to thrust himself into the conversation on his own terms.”
Thrust himself into the conversation—as the mob did, a mob made up of citizens from across this great country of ours. They have to be showing us something. Mirrors. That’s what mirrors do. They show us to ourselves.
A headline in The Huffington Post this morning screamed: LAWYERS CALL FOR HAWLEY, CRUZ TO BE DISBARRED. “Thousands of lawyers and law school alumni on Sunday signed an open letter calling for Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to be disbarred over their leading roles in the effort to undermine Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote declaring President-elect Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 race.” Senator Joe Manchin said, “Josh Hawley started the whole thing, and all who assisted him, they’ve got to be held accountable.” Mimi Swartz exhorts us, “Never Forget What Ted Cruz Did: The senator has been able to use his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel. After last week, his credentials should condemn him.”
Accountable—there it is again. Both senators are Ivy Leaguers [of whom I number myself, full disclosure] claiming to hold the trust of the populists. They don’t. Because they aren’t those people. Still, they showed us something about who we are. Mirrors have a way of doing that.
Bret Stephens in his weekly conversation with Gail Collins speaks eloquently of what he sees in the mirror. “I hope we never forget Jan. 6, 2021, as one of the darkest days in American history. Even though the loss of life was much less, it was, in a moral sense, worse than Dec. 7, 1941, or Sept. 11, 2001, when we were attacked by foreign enemies. On 1/6, we were attacked by domestic enemies, led by the president of the United States. He violated his oath of office. He slandered his vice president. He directed an attack on the Congress. He incited the sacking of the Capitol. He did nothing helpful while the barbarians were inside the gate, and even blew them a kiss on Twitter. He attempted to stop an election for the purposes of stealing it. He kept faith with the most despicable Americans among us: neo-Nazis, Neo-Confederates, the QAnon conspiracy lunatics and the morons in Viking suits. His followers killed a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick. Had Trump gotten his way, it would have started a massive counterprotest movement. It could have sparked a civil war. It would have sent democracy into a death spiral, as Mitch McConnell rightly put it, and hastened the end of Constitutional government.”
The outrageously-talented Cicely Tyson’s new memoir is coming out. It’s called Just as I Am and will be published on Jan. 26. Tyson, who is 96, has moved from telling her characters’ stories to telling her own.
The interviewer asks her, “You’re 96 years old. You’ve had a full life. What advice do you have about how to do that?” She gives a coy reply. “Oh, I don’t know that I can say it now. Maybe at the end of the interview.” Interviewer: “A cliffhanger!” Tyson: “That’s right. It makes sure you stay with me.”
The mirrors of the events in The Capitol last week remain a cliffhanger, Beloved. Just like Ms. Cicely’s answer. It’s up to us how we respond to what we see. Always. Be forewarned please. Everywhere we look we are all seeing reactions to this sorrowful reflection of our populace. Reactions are natural, human, necessary, and must be allowed in order to get to responses.
Reaction and reactivity are how we have been living for decades as our own addictions to instant gratification, wanting what we want when we want it, and careless disregard for social discourse not to mention the common good, and caring how things look, have played out.
Now, we’re hanging from the cliff, not between a rock and a hard spot, but between a cliff and a hard spot, and we must, each one of us, determine how we will go forward in the face of what we’ve been telling ourselves are the fun house reflections we seem to be seeing all around us. ,They’re not, Beloved, not at all. We have met the enemy and he is us, thank you, Pogo.
“Can we go back to the cliffhanger?” asks Miss Cicely’s interlocutor. “I can tell you now,” she answers. “To thine own self be true.”
“That’s what you left me hanging for? I mean, it’s good advice but—” “Yes, that’s what it is. Do that, and you’ll have no regrets.” She’s right, all 96 years of her is right.
Regret looms large over the events of last week. Can you, are you willing, to do the work of figuring out what the mirrors we are seeing show you? I am, if slightly sadly and reluctantly. Cicely Tyson gives me hope, “I’m always searching for myself,” she says. “There’s so many facets to a human being. I surprise myself all the time.” Do the work, Beloved. Figure out what the mirror shows you about you. Perhaps you will surprise yourself. No matter what you learn, you will be the better for it, and so will all the rest of us.
Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection between spirituality and culture. Find out more at www.susancorso.com