America disgraced by violence
Protesters who attacked Capitol were fueled by President Trump’s rhetoric
We, like most Americans, are heartbroken by what unfolded Wednesday in Washington. A day that should have concluded a bitterly contested, but fairly decided, presidential election with certification by Congress instead saw violent protesters storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters.
Law enforcement repelled them from entering the House chamber, but they briefly occupied the well of the Senate. Shots were fired, tear gas deployed, explosive devices were found and neutralized, offices were looted and buildings had to be evacuated for the safety of lawmakers and staff. Four people are dead.
At the center of it all was President Donald Trump, who first encouraged the protesters to march to Congress and who later released a video from the White House telling those occupying the Capitol building that he loved them.
On display for the world, everything America claims not to be, but what it evidently has become.
The fact that it came to this — violent extremists disrupting a joint session of Congress certifying a presidential election — is both heartbreaking and infuriating. But it wasn’t surprising.
The president has claimed repeatedly for months that the election was stolen, that he was being swindled and that he won in a landslide — none of it true. Legal challenges filed on his behalf were uniformly rejected by the courts, including by several judges he appointed, and the Supreme Court declined to take up any on appeal.
Yet, despite the legal and verified outcome, the president persisted in sowing doubt in our elections, our system of government, our national institutions. Little wonder that his supporters would act so violently, so brazenly, to attack those same institutions at Trump’s behest.
Some have excused Wednesday’s violence by pointing to the summer’s Black Lives Matters protests, though the movement for racial justice was never an attempt to undermine democracy. And there is a clear divide between those criminals who stormed the capitol and Trump supporters outraged by what this president enabled.
It’s true, of course, that not all Republicans supported this escalation or condoned the president’s rhetoric.
But too many were silent for too long. Too few possessed the courage to stand up and say, “Enough.” That includes too many in Virginia, who fanned the flames of discord rather than working to stamp them out.
This is their moment to do so, to without reservation condemn this. They will not stand alone because this is our moment, an American moment, where this nation finds itself at a crossroad.
Down one path lies more of this. More hatred, more division, more violence and, likely, more death. That road leads to a broken and dysfunctional country, a people so divided that the name “United States” becomes an oxymoron.
Down another lies the opportunity to heal, to learn and to grow. To try talking instead of shouting. To try listening instead of talking. To believe in the best of one another rather than expecting the worst. To find common ground and workable solutions to the problems we face as a nation rather than seeking to perpetuate, and profit from, our division.
President-elect Joe Biden, speaking to the nation Wednesday, invoked Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 message to Congress: “We shall nobly save or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. … The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”
To call America a shining city on a hill or a beacon of hope rings hollow today. Once boastful about our peaceful transition of power every four years, our national reputation is tarnished and our confidence in government shattered like so many windows in the Congress.
Despite our heartbreak, we have a choice to make. Each of us, and together, must decide if this “last best hope of earth” will endure peacefully or perish in the violence of insurrection.