Good in America will come back to the stage

The last time I was at the U.S. Capitol building was in April 2019, which now feels like six million years ago. The time before that was in 2015, when my then-husband and eldest child were allowed in the Crypt to film the gold replica of the Magna Carta for a documentary, somewhere below the magnificent dome, which on Wednesday was seen smoking from the fires of hatred. Watching the news that afternoon, I wanted to cry but couldn't. My heart hurt too much.

America has always been my favourite home away from home. A place where people with nothing more than a dream and a willingness to work hard could carve out a life worth writing about. There is a lot of good in America. Even today. Especially today. There has to be.

The descent into the madness we saw when angry white men dressed like Visigoths and carrying Confederate flags stormed the Capitol building to disrupt the electoral process, resulting in the death of four people, didn't start in November 2020. It began in 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., when a crowd of angry white men with tiki torches attempted to terrorize people who demanded the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. The men chanted “Jews will not replace us,” as though asking to remove monuments to slavery was straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That 2017 event also resulted in death as a woman was mowed down by an angry white man who deliberately drove his car into the crowd.

Folks from left to right will try to analyze what caused Wednesday's attempted coup d'état. They shouldn't bother. You can trace it back to Donald Trump calling those angry white men in Charlottesville “very fine” people. I can still feel the weight of my heart sinking

America was never supposed to be a white-only gated community.

when I heard him say those words. I knew angry white men would be emboldened by them.

The United States muddled through the last four years with its usual mixture of brashness, generosity, vulgarity and kindness. America is like an orchestra composed of two violins, 22 bassoons and one hyperactive drummer, cranking out hit after hit. It makes no sense but somehow it works.

America is meant to be loved exactly as it is. From the southerners who mocked my fear of alligators while feeding me grits, to the uptight Massachusetts puritans who tried to smother the rebellious teenager in me that memorable summer, to the infuriatingly upbeat Californians who brought my seven-year-old back with a smile after she'd wandered too far off the Santa Monica pier when I wasn't looking, to the dizzying thrill-seekers I met on the Chicago mercantile exchange floor trading pork bellies like the fate of the galaxy depended on it, to the New Yorkers who wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire, to the Oregonians enthusiastically poring over details of hundreds of propositions on the ballot, to that lady in a diner in rural Arizona who called me honey as she brought me ketchup when I asked for mayo with my fries — I have loved it all. Passionately.

I know why some people support Donald Trump. Because they are in the grip of a terrorizing fear that the country they thought was theirs is, well, not theirs exclusively. America was never supposed to be a white-only gated community. It's always been a melting pot. You don't have to like it, and you're free to advocate for something else. Just don't burn the place down when you lose a vote.

Part of me wants to empathize. To feel sorry for the pain angry white men must feel to behave the way they do. But I can't. I have no tears for them.

All I can do is wait for the good I know is at the heart of America to come back to the stage and blow into those bassoons until music comes out.