Americans fear what violent riot portends.
Outrage simmers, either over injustice done to Trump or to country
LAWRENCE, Kan. — Clinton Lynn, a retired fire captain, firmly believes the widespread conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump, and he says that those who share his views are finding an ever-narrowing path to express their outrage, losing at the ballot box, the jury box and now the soapbox. If you take away those things, he says, what is left?
“I’m so mad, I see red about the [expletive] steal,” said Lynn, 64, sitting in his Kansas farmhouse over the weekend. “I believe with all my heart that the Democratic Party stole the election, and I will never believe otherwise as long as I draw breath. Liberals, you’re driving us to civil war.”
As authorities raise alarms about the potential for more extremist violence in the wake of the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Americans across the political spectrum are also bracing for more and grappling with the realization that Jan. 20 — Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day — may not be the end of the Trump era, but the beginning of a new dark chapter in American history.
In a HuffPost poll Friday, about a third of Trump voters said they sympathized with the Capitol mob, and a majority of respondents said they did not believe Wednesday’s riot was an isolated incident. Lynn, for example, said he is seeing calls for violent retribution continue to spread on conservative websites like Newsmax and on extremist social media apps like Gab and Parler. The latter was suspended by Amazon’s web-hosting service over the weekend after its users glorified the Capitol riot that resulted in five deaths, including one police officer, and left the country’s cathedral of democracy in tatters.
“I don’t know how this will manifest itself in our country because they are pushing us to the edge,” Lynn said. “I’m not advocating we pick up arms — right now.”
In the Philadelphia suburbs, Nora Schreiber McDonough, who is in her 60s, was so upset by watching the violence at the Capitol she had to take Thursday off from her job as an administrative assistant at a Catholic church.
The second day was just as emotionally distressing as the first, as more footage emerged, and she began to hear the heartbreaking stories of lawmakers who feared for their lives and terrifying details of security breakdowns. The mob showed her that an alarming number of people have been radicalized, a phenomenon that she has watched play out in her own Facebook feed over the past four years.
“This is a history that I never wanted to live through,” she said. “This is a history that blows my mind. It blows my mind that this great country could have reached this point because of one man’s idolatry, ideology, sense of self.”
McDonough was long a Republican but couldn’t bring herself to vote for Trump in 2016. She wrote in the name of Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich and soon regretted not voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton. In 2020, she campaigned for Biden and voted for him.
Over the past four years, she has made it her mission to flood her Facebook feed with reputable, accurate information and confront those she knows who post inaccurate information. She tries to be kind, usually starting by asking them to share their source for the information, and looks for opportunities to have conversations with people about why they believe these things. But since the Capitol riots, she said “it’s been kind of hard to not go on the attack” because some of the claims are so outlandish, and the violence in Washington was so disgusting.
McDonough worries that the coming days will bring more violence, especially on Jan. 17 and 20. She worries that someone will try to assassinate Biden or Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. She doesn’t understand why some Republican lawmakers continue to repeat baseless claims that the election was fraudulent, further angering the masses.
Biden and Harris were already inheriting a mess from Trump, she said, but their challenge is even greater as they take command of a country that is so divided and where perhaps millions do not believe Biden was legitimately elected.
“They’re stepping into this hornet’s nest, and now it’s a hornet’s nest on fire,” she said. “If he had 10 plates spinning on sticks before, now he’s got 20. That poor guy hasn’t even begun yet. … I’m sure they’re in a panic. Or maybe not. Maybe his faith is stronger than mine, but I’m very worried for the inauguration.”