“We’re Better Than That.” Are We Really? Not Yet.

“Violence is in our national DNA.” 

“No, Joe, [y]our platitude’s been a fantasy as absurd as QAnon that repeating, this is not who we are, will somehow make it true.” 

“This is where centuries of white, male entitlement leads.” 

“But we can only realize our strength if we stop white-washing our sins.” 

“We are a nation forged in racist violence, a society that values wealth over wisdom, a country where personal ambitions mean more than morality, masked with false piety, where citizens wreak havoc on the institutions that enable them”—jump cut to t-shirts proclaiming January 6, 2020 MAGA CIVIL WAR. 

The New York Times has produced an exemplary video about what happened on Wednesday. View it here, but be forewarned, it’s disturbing. 

The Editorial Board’s offering this morning is called “Awe & Shock.” They say, “When it [America] was criticized and even reviled—whether over the Vietnam War, the arms race of the Cold War or the Watergate scandal—it was over its failure to live up to its own standards, and Americans were always quick to reassure its allies that ‘we’re better than that,’ a cry heard often among Mr. Trump’s detractors today.” 

It’s true. We default to we’re better than that. It’s become a litany, a meaningless chant, rote, knee-jerk. I have a question: Who’s we? Or what we is that? 

“But the depth and anguish of the world’s reaction indicate that something very basic in America’s relationship with the world has been broken. It will take more than Mr. Biden’s insisting that ‘we’re better than that’ to convince democratic friends or dictatorial adversaries that the assault on the heart of American democracy by Mr. Trump’s zealous followers was just a temporary malfunction.” 

It will indeed. Mostly, I think, because we’re actually not better than that. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be happening. In fact, I think a far more accurate statement might be, “We want to be better than that.” This is also true. We do want to be better than that. Public events are a mirror, Beloved. We cannot escape that fact. 

I have grown suspicious of the language we have accustomed ourselves to hearing. Listen to or read the rhetoric. It claims, “People won’t put up with that.” What people? Trump the Inciter has switched almost purely to the royal “we” in his speech. What royal what? At the same time as there was a colossal ego driving the mob on Wednesday, there is an appearance of an “us,” a “we,” that doesn’t claim the agency or the responsibility inherent in I statements. 

We. Us. Them. People. Over and over again, I hear the claim made for more than the one voice which is speaking half-truths, outright lies, and what amount to misdemeanors if not felonies. What’s implicit is that there are a whole lot of people who agree that what’s actually real isn’t real. Possibly 71 million to one degree or another. 

Of course, there are threats of impeachment afloat. “Behind closed doors, [Trump] made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before. 

“Among enraged Democrats, an expedited impeachment appeared to be the most attractive option to remove Mr. Trump and register their outrage at his role in encouraging what became an insurrection. Roughly 170 of them in the House had signed onto a single article that Representatives David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and others intended to introduce on Monday, charging the president with ‘willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States.’” 

“He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution—he acted against that,” Senator Ben Sasse said on CBS. “What he did was wicked.” 

What he has done is wicked, and not just because he incited an invasion of The Capitol Building. That might even be the least of his wickedness. He debased the Office of the President every time he broke a norm, a rule, a statute, and got away with no consequences. 

“No president has ever been impeached twice or in his waning days in office, and none has ever been convicted. Given the brevity of his time left in the White House and the gravity of his conduct, lawmakers are also looking at a provision in the Constitution’s impeachment clauses that could allow them to bar Mr. Trump from ever holding federal office again.” 

Happily, I learned today that “Trump can still be impeached as an ex-president.” Oh, good, the pressure’s off. Congress can do what it ought to do, but will it?  

Wet-behind-the-ears, newly-minted senator Josh Hawley is experiencing some blowback in The Capitol. “His fellow Republicans in the Senate lined up to blame Mr. Hawley for the riot. The editorial boards of major newspapers in Missouri accused him of having ‘blood on his hands’ and called on him to resign. His publisher canceled his book deal and his erstwhile mentor called his efforts to get Mr. Hawley elected to the Senate ‘the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.’” 

He’s sticking to his misguided guns for whatever his own twisted reasons. 

Some members of the GOP, not necessarily those who have adopted social distancing, are belatedly taking up political-distancing. “[W]ith less than 275 hours left in the Trump presidency, it’s hard not to see the political posturing embedded in their now-public condemnations. Some Republicans may be trying to jump off the Trump train at the final station. But they’ve already spent years helping fuel the engine.” And, as we well know, an object already in motion tends to stay in motion. One of those immutable laws of [gasp] science. 

In a move more cynical, more horrifying, more cancerous than not, the “Pro-Trump Mob Livestreamed Its Rampage, and Made Money Doing It. A site called Dlive, where rioters broadcast from the Capitol, is benefiting from the growing exodus of right-wing users from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.” Yes. For real. 

“White nationalist Tim “Gionet operates one of at least nine channels that used Dlive to share real-time footage from the front lines of Wednesday’s rampage. Livestreaming is also benefiting—especially as a way to communicate live with followers and to earn money by spreading hate.” Ouch. 

Trip Gabriel “highlighted one of the most dangerous parts of Mr. Trump’s legacy: the disbelief in democracy that has metastasized among many of his supporters.” 

It’s the vitriolic hatred that’s causing the metastases, Beloved. Hatred that hides behind websites and tech platforms that profit from it. Hatred that allows individuals to speak for others. Hatred that poisons the well of democracy. Hatred so strong that many of us don’t know what’s true any more. 

Charles M. Blow writing in yesterday’s Times spoke directly to my heart and the heart of the “we want to be better than that” problem in America the [Not-So]-Beautiful of today. 

He writes, “I am not an activist. I am a newspaperman. I interpret. I bear witness. The moment that I realized that I could be more than an observer came in 2013. I was at the Ford Foundation for a series of lectures on civil rights when Harry Belafonte addressed the room. He spoke in a low-but-sure raspy voice, diminished by age, but deepened in solemnity. He was erudite and searing, and I was mesmerized. He posed a question: ‘Where are the radical thinkers?’” 

It’s one I’ve been asking as well. Where are the thinking minds of Americans during all this unrest? Have our school systems so failed us that we no longer know how to think through a problem to its solution?  

Mr. Blow again, “That question kept replaying in my head, and it occurred to me that I had been thinking too small, all my life, about my approach to being in the world. I realized that a big idea could change the course of history.” 

The idea that overtook him was for Blacks to reverse the Great Migration and return to the south where, because they would have a political majority, they could affect long overdue change. 

He grappled with “Questions like: Isn’t the proposal racist on its face? No,” came the answer. “The point here is not to impose a new racial hierarchy, but to remove an existing one. Race, as we have come to understand it, is a fiction; but, racism, as we have come to live it, is a fact. After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy, it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.” 

Are you surprised? I cannot say I am. But I also know that white allies could, if we so choose, be a part of the much-needed change if we’re willing to listen, to be educated, to follow the lead of those who have suffered way past long enough.  

Illustrator Mary Engelbreit wrote this on Instagram yesterday. “@maryengelbreit The fact is this country was built on racism, and is still swimming in it today. 

“The fact is there are millions of incredibly stupid people who believe ridiculous conspiracy theories, spurred on by a horrifying number of self-serving, greedy public figures, hoping to profit off this stupidity. 

“The fact is it took about 2 hours to bring this country to its knees, while some cops held the doors open for the rioters and took selfies with them. 

“The fact is if you don’t participate in your government, if you ignore your nation’s problems because you’re living a comfortable life, if you sit around watching schlock TV, believing every crazy thing you hear without doing any research to educate yourself, our country will grow weaker and weaker.

“The fact is, it’s time to wake up and do the hard work of rebuilding this country, and this time build it on a solid base of fairness, education, truth, and inclusion, so it won’t collapse when a bunch of racist yahoos show up at the door.” Or hatred. Or violence. Or vitriol.  

We do want to be better than that, Beloved. Or, a lot of us do. And it is that pure desire that will help us weather this latest American monsoon. I’m with the video at the beginning of this piece. We must stop white-washing our sins.  

Sin is forgivable if we’re willing to do the work required. The first step is to tell the truth about our racist past. Boldly, baldly, honestly. Only then can the genuine work of reconciliation and healing begin. It is up to each one of us to raise our own voice to support the rebuilding of this country, as Our Lady of Whimsy says, “on a solid base of fairness, education, truth, and inclusion.” Not to do so is to condemn the great American experiment to its own destruction. 

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