Trump's Capitol putsch was years in the making
If government is perceived as the enemy, it’s only a matter of time before people try to overthrow it
Yahoos inspired by President Trump occupy the U.S. Capitol Wednesday in Washington, D.C. (Facebook)
By Ameya Pawar and Ted Cox
Wednesday’s assault on the U.S. Capitol — and on democracy in general — was indeed unprecedented, as many media commentators said, but it didn’t just spring fully formed from the mouth of Donald Trump at the rally outside the White House that prompted it.
Trump might have incited the attack on the seat of government, but the kindling had been laid for years by self-interested, mercenary politicians whose divide-and-conquer strategy pits people against the government and against one another. The entire array of their tactics is corrosive to society and corrosive to democracy — and deliberately so.
We’ll freely grant that there are genuine conservatives who advocate small government and free-market economic policies. But then there are others who prey on people’s problems and their anger to promote their own political agenda.
It’s not always easy to tell them apart, but much of the problem stems from Ronald Reagan’s infamous statement that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
When you promote the idea that government is the enemy, that it can never do anything right but law enforcement and the military, it generates a feeling in people that they’re going to act on eventually.
And it’s prevalent in our divided and divisive political system. What we all saw Wednesday in Washington, D.C., was not just about Trump and his refusal to accept defeat. This was the end of a long line of events, actions, and statements that have fomented resistance to government for years.
In Illinois, we’ve seen it in Bruce Rauner’s persistent attempts to cast downstate against Chicago, which persists today with proposals to separate Chicago from the rest of the state. It was the primary argument used against the Fair Tax Amendment — that you can’t trust government, that it will only squander whatever money’s been handed to it.
It’s present in COVID deniers who reject government attempts to contain a pandemic. And it’s the root of the resistance to accepting the election results, because you can’t trust government to run an honest election, no matter what safeguards are in place to assure the sanctity of each and every vote.
But it’s not just pitting people against government; it’s also pitting them against each other.
This is all part of what leads to an assault on democracy, an assault on government, so the outright and open insurrection on display at the Capitol was no isolated incident. People have somehow divorced government from country, from patriotism. They’ve basically divorced themselves from reason, to the point where people can’t even see how irrational this all is.
You claim to be pro-America, but against the American government? You need the freedom to go without a mask in an ongoing airborne pandemic that has already killed 360,000 Americans (a one-day record of 3,964 Wednesday, while the Capitol was under siege) and almost 2 million worldwide?
It’s like claims in the antebellum South that they had the freedom to hold slaves, which perhaps explains the Confederate flags.
The natural result of an anti-government, anti-tax, anti-everything political narrative is eventually trying to overthrow your government. It’s an almost inevitable consequence of an anti-taxer like Grover Norquist insisting that the government isn’t here to help us, it’s the problem. Better just to let the free markets work their mystical magic.
Look, many people are angry, and we recognize that. But your factory job got moved overseas, or eliminated entirely through automation, and you’re getting paid $8 an hour at Walmart — and you’re angry at the government?
Maybe that’s because it’s all you’re left with in your political beliefs.
Because there are people who are encouraged to seek government help, and others who are not, and that’s where race only worsens the political dynamic. That’s one of the most insidious aspects of Reagan’s “welfare queen” myth, that it sustained the belief that minorities were just looking for a handout that government was more than willing to provide. White communities, by contrast, were fed a classic narrative of stoic self-reliance, and politicians preyed on the resulting anger and resentment.
No wonder communities across downstate — which is where Illinois is really bleeding population — resisted a graduated income tax that might have helped provide them with education, training, jobs programs, broadband, and other forms of economic investment.
It’s no accident that Adolf Hitler comes up frequently at anti-government rallies — and again Wednesday with the remarks praising him, ahead of the Capitol insurrection, uttered by newly seated U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of Oakland, an eastern Illinois town located between Decatur and Terre Haute, Ind., that is exactly the sort of area we’re referring to.
If you discourage people from seeking government help, not only do you not have to provide them the funding that might lift them up and better their lives, but all you have to do is keep them angry at the others perceived to be drawing on that assistance.
Returning to Trump, it’s no surprise that a World Wrestling Entertainment wannabe acts the way he does, all bluster and encouraging others to fight his fights. What’s repulsive is the way others who know better, like U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri — Ivy Leaguers both — mimic his tactics and embrace his divisive politics. They led Senate efforts to derail certification of the Electoral College that acted as a catalyst for the Capitol assault, joined in the House Illinois delegation by Miller and Mike Bost of Murphysboro. Trump is just the uglier, stupider, more transparent version of these politicians and others like them, such as Rauner and his Wisconsin prototype Scott Walker, while billionaires and millionaires like Ken Griffin and Dick Uihlein remain above the fray, financing the ugliness and stupidity, all in an effort to undermine and discredit government and keep it weak.
The irony of the Trump presidency is that if he had tackled COVID-19, invoked the Defense Production Act, issued a stay-at-home order, mandated masks, and generally seized control of the government to clamp down in the interest of the public good, he might have won reelection, given how close it turned out in any case, and as such achieved the fascist authoritarian state he appeared to desire, with fealty to him and him alone.
He didn’t, instead insisting, “I don’t take any responsibility at all,” and if anything cost him the election it was that.
So it’s left to a career government bureaucrat like President-elect Joe Biden to humbly insist it’s about decency and taking care of one another and conquering the pandemic first in order to move forward as a nation. Who knows, if he manages to pull that off, it might give the U.S. people the renewed faith in the system to embrace a Green New Deal, Medicare for all, and the notion that government can actually serve the people it represents.
Otherwise, there seems no end to our internal conflicts, and at some point the insurrectionists will be back, this time to finish the job.