Images from Washington: Trump supporters storming the Capital Building. Chanting the outgoing president’s name. // I watch on video. From The Washington Post. The “group of primarily White men pushed, then toppled the barricades.” They “scaled and kicked (them) aside.” // The Capital is on lockdown. The Vice President has been ferried out. The president declares he’ll continue to fight. // “We will never give up.,” he proclaimed (https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/electoral-vote/pence-evacuated-from-senate-chamber-as-protesters-breach-capitol-barricades-during-certification-process) during a D.C. rally meant as a show of force. A challenge to Congressional approval of Joe Biden’s election. “We will never concede. It doesn’t happen,” Trump shouted. // “Our country has had enough,” Trump said (https://apnews.com/article/7af85d3c702e070464d7713c42cf254a). “We won’t take it anymore.” // If this was elsewhere, we’d call it a coup. A putsch. Undemocratic. We’d demand that plotters be arrested. The participants jailed. // Fist fights in the Capital Building. Protesters swarm the halls.// Congressional Republicans continue to challenge the vote. Call for investigation. Forge ahead with Trump’s lies. // This is where we’ve been heading since Trump descended down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015. Since he called Mexicans rapists. Since that first debate with Hillary Clinton when he wouldn’t commit to accepting the will of the voters. Since he made truth conditional. // This is where we’ve been heading since George W. Bush and the Brooks Brothers riot. Since Karl Rove said the United States makes its own reality. // On the BBC, a reporter says she never expected to see this. Not in the United States. Still, it is happening. Trump refuses to concede. Refuses to hand the reins of power to Joe Biden. Refuses to accept the will of voters. // And millions continue to back him. Still, they make excuses. For him. For themselves. For normalizing his worst instincts. They fall at his feet. This is not just politics in America. This is cultish. Undemocratic. // It will be over soon. Power will be transferred. But the damage is done.
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“America, we are better than this.” That’s the line we keep hearing as the scenes inside the Capitol Building unfold. This is not us. We are better than the “anarchists” storming the seat of government. The broadcasters repeat it. The politicians. // We flatter ourselves. This is who we are. Who we’ve always been. Who we continue to be. Almost 74 million voted for Donald J. Trump. Despite four years of lies. Of threats and violence. Of myth-making and racism. Of overt corruption at the apex of power. Almost 74 million. More than for any other presidential candidate in our history, aside from Joe Biden. // Trump lost. But Trumpism continues to fester. And no longer at the margins. It is mainstream. // Oh, America. I am addressing this to you. We pretend toward civility. Toward compromise. But mostly we wish to be left to ourselves. To our beliefs. To our privileges. // But this is us. The violence is us. It is endemic. Part of our DNA. Our mythology. The good man with a gun is not just the province of the gun-rights groups. He is the hero of our stories. Our films and television. // I know this sounds pessimistic. But the last four years have left me raw. The last four decades have left me skeptical of our exceptionalism. History leaves me a pessimist. // We cage children at the border. Kill who we choose to with drones without regret. Without pause. Damn millions to poverty and blame them for their fate. We grant police almost unlimited authority to manage the fallout. // We’ve enslaved millions. Replaced slavery with Jim Crow. Redlining. Police murder. // We imprisoned Japanese Americans. Citizens. Assumed an entire ethnic group was disloyal. Called it “internment,” a euphemism. // We speak of a melting pot, but demand purity. Close the borders to preserve it. Set up quotas. How many have died because of this? How many continue to die because of this? // Yet, we think we are better than the images we watched on television yesterday. That what happened in Washington was out of character. That America is the shining city on a hill. The indispensable nation. // America, the mask has been torn off. Do you recognize what you see?
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Both were posted to Instagram.