Clifford Thompson writes in the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal that that ostensible reason for the Insurrection on January 6 was anger that Biden “stole” the election from Trump; the mob “knew” because Trump said it was so. Of course, it was a lie. Trump decisively lost both the popular vote and the electoral college. He thought he could inspire the mob to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote and intimidate them into overturning the results and installing him for a second term. The strategy was as stupid as the man who incited the mob. Congress was not going to overturn the election. Period.
Thompson says that the true basis of the Insurrection was the fear that white supremacy was losing its dominance. This is our country, our culture, our heritage, and “they” (non-whites) are “taking it away.” So they thought.
Not long ago, I wrote an article for Commonweal about the benefits and dangers of what I call rootedness. I define the word as a sense of belonging in the world based on an identification with a particular thing, whether that is a religious faith, a geographical community, a shared activity, or a philosophy. The benefit of being rooted is that we feel less alone. The danger is that when made to choose between our rootedness—which provides our sense of who we are—and the truth sitting right in front of us, many of us, perhaps most, find a way to ignore the truth.
The negative extremes of rootedness were on full and frightening display on January 6 during the storming of the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead. What the rioters demonstrated nearly as well as the fact of their rootedness was its particular variety. I say “nearly” because while the idea that the rioters are actually rooted in, that is, white supremacy, was on full display too (witness the Confederate flag being paraded through the Capitol), it was not the ostensible reason for their collective criminal action. No, for that they took their cue from President Trump, who filled their heads with lies about the 2020 presidential election being “stolen” from them—lies that a clear-eyed look at the facts would refute—and then sent them, with all the justification they felt they needed, to wreak havoc on the world’s most important site of the business of democracy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There’s a whole slew of articles insisting that no one in power should be held accountable for what happened on January 6th.
So President Trump never gets held accountable, all those House members who promoted this lie get a complete pass, along with the two senators.
Is this how we are now, as a country? The only people who ever suffer consequences are the absolute lowest level?
All the phony “leaders” of the people who stormed that building will continue on with their prestigious careers, while the ordinary Trump supporters who were told to storm the building get prosecuted. How is this justice?
The Teflon Don 2.0
It’s just remarkable to me. Ordinary people who stormed the building will be going to prison while Republicans in Congress can just pretend they didn’t spread this lie for 2 1/2 months?
This is how they treat their own voters. Imagine how they treat people who don’t vote for them.
Exactly, Chiara!
The members of Congress who voted to overturn the election showed up at the Inauguration! (a couple of exceptions). Cruz and Hawley were there.
And now for something completely different. Octopuses are much smarter than the Orange Slug is:
Hey, buddy. No need to bring innocent orange slugs into this. I checked with a few of them and they are offended by use of this example and its insinuations. They first suggested monkfish, but I reminded them, despite fish’s looks, it has tasty flesh. They have their problems with beetles, birds and frogs, so any of them are fair game. I’ll report back to the orange slug press office.
Right. So with you, Greg.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/art/leila-and-loofi/
Chiara, “Is this how we are now, as a country? The only people who ever suffer consequences are the absolute lowest level?”
Some might say it has ever been thus. Now this is just me and there’s lots out there I don’t know, but the only prominent wealthy white male out there I can think of who’s actually been incarcerated for life without pardon for his outrages against the public is Bernie Madoff—and many might argue he is ‘the absolute lowest level.’
The lie about Trump winning the election was told by Republican political actors all the way down the county level.
They have a much bigger problem than Donald Trump. The Party lies to their own voters constantly. It’s systemic.
If none of them are held accountable they’ll do the same thing in every election they lose. Donald Trump started the lie but it never would have caught on without thousands of state and local GOP officials repeating it. They are all still in power and they suffered no consequences at all.
Chiara Just now, OAN is saying that Biden is “softening” U.S. policy for China and so spoiling Trumps sterling achievements on the international level. A few days ago, they were still hawking the “stole the election” idea (I haven’t see it today).
My point is the problem won’t go away until something can be done about these big so-called news outlets that continue to spread such lies while still protecting free speech rights and other press protections. CBK
There is a lack of critical thinking in this country. Opinions are NOT News. People need to learn the difference and start thinking for themselves….even if it doesn’t jive with their “tribe”.
Is OAN a “big news outlet”? Just 7 yrs old, founded & owned by a moneyed crank, to which the fringest Fox-watchers are flowing, disappointed that their former fave (by virtue of actually being a big news outlet) is wimping out on supporting the more outré conspiracy theories. Frankly I’ve only heard of it here. So far it’s never made my Google News feed…
FOX is going farther right chase customers lost to OAN and other sites
bethree5 My point is it’s “out there” and it calls itself “news.” CBK
“Former President Donald Trump’s supporters are mobilizing to exact revenge on the 10 House Republicans who supported impeachment last week, thrusting the GOP into a civil war just as party leaders are trying to move on from the Trump era.”
I mean, you tell me. How does it get better? The plan is to purge all the members who didn’t go along with the lie?
It just gets worse from here. They’ll purge the few dissenters in the next election. By 2024 Congressional Republicans themselves will be rioting to overturn elections.
Police unions are refusing to support any off-duty or retired members that took part in the January 6th insurrection. When a police officer violates the public trust, the officer should be held accountable. https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/956896923/police-officers-across-nation-face-federal-charges-for-involvement-in-capitol-ri
Diane the idea of rootedness as what we identify with, even from early childhood, is also the source of all sorts of what is generally referred to as provincialism.
But concretely, if we are white male and, from the beginning, have been habitualized towards an assumption of privilege, and we never thought about it but just accepted it as “the way things are,” . . . anything that conflicts with that rootedness we will experience as painful and disturbing or, in technical language, as some sort of “cognitive dissonance.” Without thinking and talking about it, reaction and/or suppression are our only options.
In an earlier exchange, an “anti-feminist” writer here seemed to experience a sense of unfairness and bias against white males. In the case of white-male-rootedness, what he feels as bias and unfairness may in fact be a real sense of losing his centuries-long and habitual sense of white-male hegemony where, without thinking about it, white males experience both other-color and female people as threatening.
Education is not an end-all, but in such cases, . . . . CBK
I too was interested in this concept of rootedness the author was explaining. I wanted to ask him a question: can humanity escape the rootedness phenomenon? I maintain that we all flee to our social fortress when we feel threatened. We can no more avoid this than we can avoid breathing. Montesquieu had it right: we fear loss of sustainence, so we band together to feel safety. Feeling that safety, we lash out at other groups.
Roy Good question: “Can humanity escape the rootedness phenomenon?”
I offer that we need a good development of several kinds of rootedness to mature well as human beings . . . family identity is the beginning of it; and then optimally in our development we gradually grow so that our identity-rootedness CAN provide a good ground to stand on for further development. But of course either lack of further development and derailments of if are the issue . . . we can choose to hide in our early-set frameworks and horizon and use them for judging everything in our experience instead of thinking beyond our own early- and wholly-accepted roots.
As an example, and as you probably know, some universities require for graduation a long stint living and taking classes in another country. The point is to broaden students’ national and political, moral, social, etc., horizons so that, hopefully, they come home able to understand, accept, and perhaps critique their own identities from having understood something of the “others’,” and even those others’ own problems with the same rootedness that we experience.
In brief, we can neither remain healthy nor grow without several aspects of healthy rootedness in our background. In our time tribalism is a result of both a lack of such gradual and sustained development and a derailment of it. CBK
I think in part the lack of rootedness relates to our current hyper-capitalist society. As a society we have lost faith in the institutions that help corporations more than people. We have been fed a steady diet of the value of ‘small government.’ States and communities have suffered from under funded resources to serve citizens. Durkheim identified the sense of insecurity people feel in a rapidly changing society over which they feel helpless; this feeling is identified as “anomie.”
Thanks for these comments. One of the things I was not able to experience due to farming my way through college was the travel part of it. My niece got to study French in Nantes for a semester as a part of her French major. Other travel spiced my wife’s education. I have always envied that experience. I think it is very valuable to throw yourself into a place where you feel socially vulnerable and alone.
Roy There are other ways, but that’s a good one. When we travel or when students actually live and study in a different country, it’s just what is like to happen to them . . . no one has to tell them nor need it be on the syllabus. My guess is your wife will remember such experiences even though she may not have spoken about or recorded them. CBK
I should disagree that the rioters were entirely motivated by white supremacy and nothing else. True, a particularly violent fringe of the republican opposition is certainly characterized by white supremacy as a motivating philosophy, but a much larger contingent of trumpists are not thinking in concert with the radical white supremacists but are hesitant to call out this fringe for fear of losing their solid support. This group is the heir to the followers of the old house committee on unamerican activities, HUAC, heir to Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, and heir to other appeals to fear that anyone who sees a role for the federal government beyond the military is a socialist.
The overriding acceptance of the mob is due to the fanning of the fear that has characterized American politics since the violent summer of 1877 first inspired both democrats and republicans to come together to fear an emerging underclass. This is still the overriding motivation for those who gain political power through fear appeals today. Trump’s anti-immigration stance was just one part of a general fear-mongering that takes away from the factual debate necessary to address problems.
Roy, I will agree with you that not all Trump supporters are white supremacists, that most were duped by his lies. But the mob sure acted and looked like white supremacists. Why so many Confederate battle flags? Why so many Proud Boys and others from white supremacist groups?
I have no doubt that the majority of the mob was at least very friendly to white supremacy. What I was trying to speak to is the alliance between that part of the right wing and it’s much larger anti-communist group. That these two philosophies should be sets sharing elements should not surprise us, but the latter group is much more pervasive in American society.
Both of these groups are susceptible to the myths that uphold both ideologies. False beliefs underpin each.
Roy . . . and so the people who pervade such groups make excellent “marks” and targets for the fascists among us and abroad.
The odd thing is that so many call themselves “nationalists” when they are anything but. CBK
I must sadly disagree with both of you on this one, Roy and Diane. Every single one of the people who were in the mob were fascists, white supremacists, or whatever euphemism you want to use. Every single one. Anyone who was “duped” was, at the very minimum, a fellow traveler. They are the people I grew up with, the ones who claim they’re decent, god-fearing, and love the flag–although they have no idea what any of those terms actually mean or represent.
When you claim your neighbors who were “duped” are basically frustrated people, but decent at their core, I would argue you are trying to find comfort in convenient fictions. Every single member of Congress and senator who supported them were not “duped.” They were willing participants in a fascist, racist reaction to reality and common decency.
This parsing is basically a nice way to say, they were bad, but the people who I know who fell for it are really not that bad. You know what? They really are that bad. They really are that willfully ignorant. They really don’t understand what it means to be American because they have never taken the time or effort to read, understand and internalize what it means to be an American who values democratic republican governing.
I have spilled gallons of virtual ink here trying to convey why the resistors to the Third Reich, resisters who were prominent and tried to overthrow the regime and resisters who acted with common decency toward others through small acts of opposition (see the novel Every Man Dies Alone for the best portrayal of this) were the best that humanity has ever had to offer. But their acts do not absolve the actions of the fellow travelers and those who went along and got along.
Anyone who supported the Idiot and what he stood for were not “duped.” He stood for everything they didn’t have the guts to say out loud. Being “susceptible to a myth” is not an excuse or justification. Ever.
…was not “duped”…
We can’t equivocate because we might offend the perpetrators. In South Africa they had truth commissions. That’s what we need here. No forgiveness until the perpetrators admit their complicity, repent and engage in acts of contrition. Otherwise, f*#k ’em.
I agree Roy that there is not much shared belief there. It was just a flash mob of nut jobs there based on their own personal beliefs. Some didn’t like the election, some just don’t like the government at all. At Charlottesville, the chanting seemed to be about anti semitism. So as far as the capitol mob goes, they start with the democrats, turn on Pence and some Republicans, and then how long before the nut jobs go after Kushner, Stephen Miller, or Mnuchin? Fireman, military and cops attacking other cops.
There was no end game, just a stupid self imploding contradiction of idiots.
Mirroring the Trump presidency, and a fitting end.
Ted, it was not a flash mob. It was a mob that included people who came prepared for trouble–with weapons, zip cuffs, bulletproof vests, and other military paraphenalia–and people who were carried along by Trump’s rhetoric and followed the crowd. Several videos show a group of people in tactical gear walking in a line, with one hand on the shoulder of the person in front.
A pertinent example of one who claims to have been “duped” when he was acting out his deepest beliefs all along. No excuses allowed when it comes to treason. The Constitution articulates this very clearly.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/shirtless-horned-qanon-supporter-says-184603025.html
diane There was a news program (I think it was MSNBC/sorry I cannot remember but also Google “confederate flag meaning”) where the person interviewed said that THAT flag that was carried in the Capitol on January 6, though it looked like a Confederate flag, was actually ALSO like ones that the present-/neo-Nazis are using in Germany.
It probably means different things to different people . . . . CBK
The flag that was carried was the Confederate battle flag. In Germany, the skinheads carry that flag because the law bans the Swastika flag.
It doesn’t mean different things to different people.
It means white supremacy.
We need more articles like the one below that name names. At least 21 elected officials took part in the terror:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republican-lawmakers-at-the-capitol-riot_n_6009e17cc5b6df63a91e5cf4
While I was reading this article, I began to see he contrast between the BLM protests this summer and the Capitol debacle. While the demonstrations this summer were largely protesting a specific set of policies regarding the way police do their job, the Capitol protest was specific in its intent to disrupt a legislative process.
Is there, in the history of our two hundred plus years, another example of a mob attempt to disrupt a function of the national government? I can think of marches to support or oppose specific legislation or Supreme Court cases. I can think of incidents like the Bonus Army encampment wherein a large group demanded an action. But I cannot think of another historical occurrence aimed at the disruption of a perfunctory legislative act.
Other than the War of 1812, I can’t think of any prior event where a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Are you referring to the British attack on DC?
yes.
Even the so-called confederacy didn’t get there. Until Jan 6, that is.
Exactly. The Confederate battle flag never reached the U.S. Capitol during the Civil War. But it was paraded through the Capitol on January 6.
Greg, in reading this article, I found it interesting that almost all of those named claimed 1) I didn’t actually enter the Capitol; 2) the whole thing was Antifa.
Funny that the FBI has not yet found anyone from Antifa who was present among the many that have been identified and arrested.
Catherine King, Roy and others.
Regarding rootedness and provincialism. The mental imagery here is too closely aligned with a singe tree, various branches, and the root system of that tree.
Perhaps a better metaphor, especially for workers in education, is a different and more complex kind of rootedness not unlike that of Rhizomes. I will not develop this metaphor/analogy further because a colleague in art education, Dr. Brent Guy Wilson has done so. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00393541.2003.11651740
On the fate of provincial versus cosmopolitan outlooks/orientations in the emerging media-saturated environment, also recall the amazing contributions of Marshall Herbert McLuhan, [Google Scholar].
Laura Your point is well-taken. And of course, the best metaphor . . . is the one that helps someone understand. The term Identity is also helpful and is also used in many scientific treatises; though in common rather than scientific usage, of course, meanings have a tendency to morph in strange ways. At least specific scientific fields commonly try to “nail” their meanings of terms to the wall of precision.
Also, I referenced in my note many kinds of rootedness, only beginning with family.
My own point to Roy, however was “rooted” in his own question: “Can humanity escape the rootedness phenomenon?”
The more adequate answer to that question, as I tried to explain to Roy, is: Yes but also No. CBK
Trump has always been a racist, and his whole appeal to his mob was based in racism. That’s how he ended up President, and that’s what he rode upon throughout the most despicable presidential term in US history. The whole thing started when Bannon, Sessions, and Stephen “Goebbels” Miller looked around for a candidate to carry their white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda forward and settled on The Idiot, Donnie Trump, because of his ambition, stupidity, and racism–his high-profile call for the execution of the innocent Central Park 5 and his ridiculous Birtherism propagandizing. They figured that the Idiot would be easily malleable, and they coached him into becoming the horrendous spectacle that he was for four nightmarish years. See the Frontline documentary Zero Tolerance, which outlines the whole ugly conspiracy to install a neo-Nazi in the to-be Whiter House.
https://www.pbs.org/video/zero-tolerance-en2plm/
I just read a brilliant article by Gary Kasparov in the Wall Street Journal about why the GOP needs to detach itself from the conspiracy theorists on the far-right fringe. I don’t have a subscription so invite anyone who does to post it here as a comment.
They could start, Diane, by expelling Cruz and Hawley from the Senate and convicting Donald Trump. If they don’t do these things, then they are complicit and will live with Trump as kingmaker long into the future. The Republicans are at a crossroads. Do they break it off or sign irrevocably their deed with the Devil?
That’s a rhetorical question.
See also, for an excellent outline, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
It’s common to say that Donald Trump is a man (using the term loosely) without principles. And that’s almost completely true. But there are a few bedrock antivalues to which he has clung throughout his adult life:
a) zero-sum self-adulation at the expense of others and the attempt to create around himself a cult of personality to assuage the profound need created by his Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder,
b) racism (this is the guy who had to settle with the state of New York for excluding blacks from his apartments at the very beginning of his career),
c) his oft-repeated “race horse” theory of good genes producing “winners” (eugenics).
d) Add to this his adoption of extreme nativism and nationalism (the former truly ironic, for he despises poor people); the coaching by Bannon, Sessions, and Miller; luck; a lifelong huckster’s gift for conning yokels; and the boost from his handlers in Moscow, and you have (ecce homo);
the first Fascist American President.
I wonder if expulsion of some of the radical elements of the republicans would restore the party to its place as a rational influence on American politics (albeit one that I have often opposed on logical grounds). Some republicans might be willing to expel Cruz and Hawley, but others might be so fearful of the democrats that they would be willing to support these radical elements of the party as the only alternative.
Want to understand the almost complete capitulation of the Republican Party to Trump at his most extreme–the pandemic nonresponse, the calls to get out of NATO–and stupid–hey, let’s buy Greenland? Well, Trump was the Republicans’ Useful Idiot. They could get him to sign ANYTHING their donors wanted. Regulations cost corporations a lot of money. They love their negative externalities–the costs they shove off onto citizens (especially POC) and the environment. The Idiot would sign literally anything because he knew/knows nothing. Want to use asbestos in construction again? Trump will sign off on it. Want to operate that dirty coal plant in a marsh. Trump will do away with the environmental impact statements and the federal clean air and water regs. BILLIONS and BILLIONS of savings to corporations, at the expense of American citizens. And lots and lots of fat donations to the Repugnicans who could make these things happen. Have a look at the list of midnight regulation changes that the Trump maladministration passed in the last few weeks.
Trump was the rapacious Repugnicans’ golden goose.
A compilation of midnight regulatory changes in the last few weeks of the Trump maladministration, prepared by an organization of states’ attorneys general:
https://www.law.nyu.edu/centers/state-impact/midnight-watch/regulatory-processes
It’s always about the money. Except for REALLY stupid people like Trump, for whom it is about the racism and adulation.
and the money
Liz Cheney is being attacked by Republicans for supporting the impeachment of Trump. The old GOP is dying and and now that Trump will be on trial, all that any Republicans want to do is defeat any member of the old GOP who has a clear understanding of the near death of democracy.
Too many in the Senate and House Republicans are playing the “poor me” card when faced with justified criticisms of their support of Trump.
https://www.businessinsider.com/liz-cheney-faces-possible-mutiny-over-impeachment-in-congress-wyoming-2021-1
Why the surge in racism in the public sphere? Well, ofc, the racist in chief gave license to this creepy crawlies to come scurrying out of the woodwork and backwoods. But there is another reason that gives me great joy:
During the Trump era (error?), we’ve gotten used to equating the GOP with profoundly ignorant sorts like, say, Lauren Opal Boebert and the Q-Anonsense Shaman. However, the more reflective folks still in the GOP—the ones who aren’t actually true believers but are in it for the grift—can read the handwriting on the wall:
Consider these stats from Pew Research:
Percent of 6- 21-year-olds who are nonwhite
Early Boomers (1968): 18
Gen Xers (1986): 30
Millennials (2002): 39
Post-Millennials (2018): 48
So, the demographics of the country are changing. And we re already seeing the results at the polls. In the recent election, the black vote in swing states like Michigan and Georgia, was decisive. Because of this shift, states like Texas and Florida have already turned purple, for POC largely vote Democratic.
So, the white supremacists’ worst fears ARE going to be realized. They are going to be pushed aside by MAJORITIES not like them.
Oh my Lord. Now THAT is a beautiful thing!
The racist white-identity politics of the GOP, typified in our time by folks like Jeff Sessions and Stephen “Goebbels” Miller, is self-defeating. Every time we have a big national transition like the Inauguration, I listen for the bands to strike up the melody of the delightful Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” The lyrics were written by a Shaker elder and put to an existing English tune: “The Lord of the Dance.” The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, better known as the Shakers, famously outlawed marriage and practiced strict celibacy in their communities. If you are of a mind to start your own cult, a bit of advice: don’t do this, for it will ensure that your numbers will dwindle, in time, to nothing. The Shakers, of course, weren’t that stupid. They didn’t see a need for their movement to continue into the future because they thought that the end of time was imminent. The Republicans, however, have been that stupid. They have ramped up the white supremacism in their party to a fever pitch at the very time when whites, as a percentage of the population, are declining. And ironically, it is the fear of people of color, of folks not like themselves, that has led some of them to do this. (Others have done this simply because attacks on a minority enemy within have always been the major recourse of totalitarians).
So, Repugnicanism in its Trumpian incarnation as Nativist, Know-Nothing Revenant, carries the seeds of its own destruction. The Party can remake itself (not likely) or become margianlized.
Or, and this is the worst-case scenario, it can stage a coup and use force to maintain a white supremacist social and political order.
Comparing the Shakers to the Republicans! Only Bob Sheperd could carry this off.
Incidentally, they were not the only pre-millennial thinkers shooting off Protestantism on the American frontier, as everyone probably knows. While it is extreme even for 1840 to believe visions of dancing with George Washington and Tecumseh during worship, it was not that weird in their day. This and similar beliefs support my own growing understanding that the history of Europe discovering the world was not, as it is often presented, a history of civilization (Europe) bringing a superstitious world along with it. History is way more complex than that.
Tangential to the conversation, a visit to Shaker Town outside Harrodsburg, KY is worth a drive. Fascinating to anyone.
There are many parallels in doctrine and ritual practice between the Shaking Quakers, or Shaker; the Hassidim; and the Sufis, though not, of course, in this matter of celibacy. Btw, I HIGHLY recommend celibacy to Trump supporters and to Repugnicans generally.
The 19th century was an astonishingly prolific time for the emergence of new religious groups (sometimes referred to as cults) in the United States. You name it, there were groups practicing it–free love, communal childrearing, communal ownership, polygamy, apocalyptic millennialism, celibacy, group marriage, vegetarian diets and mineral baths (see Graham crackers and Kellogg’s cereals). These all have fascinating stories, and I’ve long been an avid consumer of them.
Off thread, but thought it was too late to comment on the older post (wouldn’t be seen).
Thanks, Laura Chapman, for the Jimmy Kimmel “Na,Na,Na,Na…Goodbye” video.
One of my favorite tunes paired with ingenious & truly amazing images
Also, Bob, liked your photoshop, “Scuba Diving w/Bernie!”.