Capitol riot was homegrown insurrection
Trump said he could not guarantee peaceful transfer of power if he lost; he meant it
A note was scribbled on a manila folder and left on top of a computer keyboard. It had a terse message: We will not back down.
It’s beyond shocking what happened Wednesday. But then again, President Donald Trump has said that if he lost the election, he could not guarantee a peaceful and honorable transfer of power.
Trump clearly meant it. And what we saw Wednesday is what happens when a delusional old man lies to millions of people for months about winning an election, when fellow lawmakers parrot those lies – and when millions of citizens buy those lies.
Your Turn Paul Brandus Guest columnist
Storming the Capitol
They marched 11⁄ miles and stormed the U.S.
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Capitol – the very heart of American democracy – forcing their way past security barriers, smashing windows and running amok on the Senate floor. One goon was photographed sitting in the plush leather chair where the presiding officer sits when the “word’s greatest deliberative body” is in session. I don’t know what happened to that person, but he’s lucky he wasn’t shot.
When you go into the Capitol, you must pass through a metal detector and have your belongings searched. Who knows how many weapons these goons, thugs, traitors to their country were carrying? They scurried inside like vermin, forcing lawmakers, staffers and assorted government employees to either evacuate or shelter in place.
It is not hyperbole to say that this assault was the most serious assault on the Capitol since the British marched on Washington on a sweltering August night in 1814 and attacked it before marching on to the White House and setting it ablaze.
But this time the invaders didn’t come from across the sea. They were Americans. That’s what makes it even more terrifying. This was a homegrown insurrection.
The approach of danger
In January 1838, Abraham Lincoln, weeks shy of his 29th birthday, warned that America’s greatest danger lay from within: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Twenty-three years later, that threat did spring up amongst us, and we know
what happened: the Civil War. Now, a new threat has sprung up amongst us. And the instigator is also among us: This time it is the president himself.
Even after Wednesday’s carnage, this horrible man had the temerity to keep on lying. In a brief video he said, again, that he won and won by a landslide. And as an afterthought, he urged
thugs on Capitol Hill to “go home. We love you ... but go home.” In his delusional world, they, too, must be “very fine people.”
It’s not enough to merely condemn what happened Wednesday. All Americans who cherish our all-too fragile democracy and our way of life must flush this corrosiveness away. Trump’s imminent departure helps. But the fires Lincoln warned of burned for years. The fires Trump has poured gasoline on, followed by a lit match, will as well.