Dark Digital Fantasy v. Reality
Farhad Manjoo observes in his Opinion piece in this morning’s New York Times, “It was a showdown between reality and dark digital fantasy. Fantasy didn’t lose.” But fantasy didn’t win either.
Last night’s email from MoveOn.org shook me to my core. Elected federal officials, they alleged, the day before the riot, took the leaders of the insurrection on a tour of The Capitol explaining and highlighting where Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi were most likely to be the next day. I actually lost my breath for a moment.
Mr. Manjoo notes, “These were not just the Trump loyalists of lore, that economically marginalized, over-elegized white working class of the heartland. No, the crowd that stormed the Capitol was a big tent of whiteness, a cross-section of American society bridging divisions of class, geography and demography. They were doctors and lawyers, florists and real estate agents, business executives, police officers, military veterans, at least one elected official and an Olympic gold medalist. They’d all come to coup for America.”
A new verb. To coup.
“I’ve spent the past few days watching as many videos from the siege as my eyeballs could handle, and what terrifies me again and again is the sense of surprise and entitlement—the authentic shock so many of the rioters expressed when confronted with a reality that did not match the cosplay revolution they’d dreamed about on Discord. …
“Consider how careless and casual they were about committing federal crimes. They’d flown in to undo an election as if it were no bigger deal than a weekend getaway. They expected to march on the Capitol, restore Trump to the throne, memorialize the moment for Instagram and then travel home unscathed, as if what happens in Washington in broad daylight with the world’s news media watching stays in Washington.”
Is that what they expected? I’ve been asking myself that question again and again. What did the mob think it was going to accomplish? No, really. How did they think this would play out?
“Many were shocked that the police put up any resistance at all. ‘We backed you guys this summer!’ a man can be heard shouting at the police, probably in reference to Black Lives Matter protests. ‘When the whole country hated you, we had your back!’”
“‘This is not America,’ Andrew McCormick of The Nation overheard a woman saying. ‘They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot B.L.M., but they’re shooting the patriots.’”
Mr. Manjoo concludes, “Their mental model of America could not be undone even by the events playing out before their pepper-sprayed eyes—a depth of indoctrination that really does not bode well for our future.”
Another writer describes the shock on the face of the man who so blithely put his boots on Nancy Pelosi’s desk as his mug shot was taken.
Charles M. Blow asks, “What Unity?” in his Opinion piece this morning. “At times a sense of national unity and community exists when America is attacked—like on 9/11—when there is a national disaster—like Hurricane Katrina—or when there is a national tragedy—like the shooting at Sandy Hook.
“But once the politicians become involved—or don’t—the divisions that exist become more evident. After 9/11, politicians lied us into America’s longest war. After Katrina, the federal response was too slow and anemic, and people died as a result. After Sandy Hook there was much talk about new gun control measures, but few materialized.”
It seems as though federal elected officials, sitting members of both houses of Congress, were not and are not expecting there to be any consequences to their actions. Neither is Representative Laura Boebert of Colorado who doxed Nancy Pelosi during the riot, and who, now, will not submit to new security procedures in The Capitol. Neither do Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley. Neither do the law enforcement officers from across the country who, we now find, participated in the mob. Nor, of course, despite an unprecedented second impeachment, did or does Donald Trump.
What universe are they living in? If I jump off my garage, the law of gravity applies. If you jump off my garage, the same. If any of those named in the paragraph above, the same, but wait, no, they don’t think so? So it isn’t so?
In an article alleging that public service has become the new performance art, Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH) says about lawmakers who bypassed security measures in The Capitol, “‘I don’t know what the consequences are going to be for people who hold power and don’t ever want to be held accountable.’ He added that defiance by lawmakers was ‘a sign of how obnoxious things have become for some of these folks who were supporting Donald Trump. The rules don’t apply to them.’”
And isn’t that all of it right there? The rules don’t apply to whomever. Why? They apply to me. They apply to you.
I only made it 48 seconds into the his-aides-insisted-upon-it Trump video condemning the violence—his tongue was so far into his cheek that he was licking his own ear. Honestly, it was gross.
Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian of authoritarianism, was quoted, “The historical moment when we were a model is basically over. We now have to earn our credibility again, which might not be such a bad thing.” A master of understatement, no?
The Editorial Board asserts that “The First Step Toward Unity Is Honesty.” They say, “More Republicans need to be honest that the election wasn’t stolen. Law enforcement needs to be transparent about the threats facing the nation.”
“To prevent more bloodshed in the days and months ahead and to ensure that those responsible for the attack on the Capitol are held to account, the nation needs to hear from two key groups of people: the people who encouraged the violence and those charged with preventing it.”
Perhaps, but I’m much more where Mr. Blow is than the Editorial Board. I’m asking, What unity? Mr. Blow says, “Some argue that impeachment is divisive. That’s fine with me.” Yeah, me too.
“As the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to impeach Donald Trump for a second time, some Republicans argued that such a move—a constitutional obligation, really—was unnecessarily divisive at a time when the nation should be healing and proposing unity.
“The irony is that this plea is being made by many of the same legislators who just last week were supportive of Trump’s scheme to fraudulently overturn the results of a free and fair election, thereby disenfranchising millions of voters who formed the majority of the electorate.
“But, beyond that, whenever I hear politicians appealing for unity, I am befuddled. What do they mean by ‘unity?’ What does ‘unity’ mean to America?”
Um, yeah, because the pictures that came out of and continue to come out of last Wednesday are nothing at all about unity. They’re about division. And division that demands that it bear no consequences.
Division has consequences, Beloved, and so does unity.
Mr. Blow again. “It seems to me, the ‘unity’ of America is often conflated with the silence of the oppressed and the pacification of the oppressors. As long as you can put your foot on my neck without the protestations of your neighbors or the wails of my pain, America is happy. That, to America, is unity: quiet capitulation.”
His words strike a thunk deep in my belly. Quiet capitulation. And perhaps he’s right about what unity has been, but is that what unity needs to be in the future? Not if we deal honorably with the events of the past two weeks.
The great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer was born on this day in 1875. Anu Garg quotes him in his THOUGHT FOR TODAY. “Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”
Division makes an us and a them. We’ve already seen how us/them division plays out in our country and in our world. Compassion … the ability to feel with an other, any other, is its surest and swiftest antidote. The question before We the People is a simple one, Beloved.
Are We the People truly, madly, deeply, genuinely a We? If we are, then We encompasses all of us. No exceptions. If this divisiveness is the fastest way to that inclusivity, and I suspect it is, I’m all for it.
We all know that the arts in this country and all over the world are in crisis. A recent article asked, “What is art’s function? What does art do for a person, a country?
“The function of art, Aristotle told us, is catharsis. You go to the theater, you listen to a symphony, you look at a painting, you watch a ballet. You laugh, you cry. You feel pity, fear. You see in others’ lives a reflection of your own. And the catharsis comes: a cleansing, a clarity, a feeling of relief and understanding that you carry with you out of the theater or the concert hall. Art, music, drama—here is a point worth recalling in a pandemic—are instruments of psychic and social health.”
Whether we know it or not, we are all missing the arts.
“Without actors and dancers and musicians and artists, a society will indeed have lost something necessary—for these citizens, these workers, are the technicians of a social catharsis that cannot come soon enough. A respiratory virus and an insurrection have, in their own ways, taken the country’s breath away. Artists, if they are still with us in the years ahead, can teach us to exhale.”
Breathe, Beloved, healing’s coming.
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