EDITORIAL: The Shining Mirage on a Hill
The views expressed herein represent the views of a majority of the members of the Caravel’s Editorial Board and are not reflective of the position of any individual member, the newsroom staff, or Georgetown University
A mob of thousands of rioters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol as elected officials debated Republican objections to Arizona’s electoral votes in a fraudulent and immoral attempt to overturn the election and undermine President-Elect Joe Biden. (Wikimedia Commons)
A Confederate flag waved in front of the Senate Chamber. A noose hung on the National Mall. Statues in the Rotunda were decorated with MAGA hats. These images are just some of the many that emerged after loyalists to President Donald Trump shoved their way into the Capitol Building on January 6 as Congress convened to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Rioters smashed windows, fought with police, and broke into offices while Congress members and staffers hid under their seats and were eventually ushered to secure locations.
A few hours before Congress convened to begin the largely-ceremonial process of certifying the results of the election, Trump held a rally. He stood in front of his loyal followers and promised that he would join them as they walked to the Capitol Building to disrupt Congress. He asked them to show their support, espoused lies about a stolen election, and riled nationalistic tempers by claiming that they needed to protect the country from its own politicians.
Not fifteen minutes after proceedings began, some Republican representatives and senators objected to the electoral votes from Arizona. The objection, raised by remaining Trump allies, marked the beginning of their plan to challenge the certification of the vote in several states and overturn the results of the election in the name of “election security.” The House and Senate adjourned to their respective chambers to debate—for no longer than two hours—the validity of the objection.
Around the same time, Trump wrapped up his rally. What followed was a violent mob so impassioned that the relatively small Capitol Police force that had been tasked to defend the building was overwhelmed, and rioters occupied the building for the next four hours. At 8 p.m., six hours after they were evacuated, the House and Senate reconvened to finish the certification of the votes, though representatives and senators continued to present challenges to individual states’ election results. The discussions continued until 3:41 a.m. on January 7, when Vice President Mike Pence declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
Senate staffers had to run back to the Senate floor to retrieve the electoral college votes and prevent the riotous mob from tampering with or destroying them. (Wikimedia Commons)
Most politicians have been quick to decry the violence in the days since, claiming, like President-Elect Joe Biden, that America is “so much better” than this. But the tools the mob wielded to inspire fear as they halted the democratic process were taken directly from American history. We must denounce the rioters and their attempts, directly inspired by Donald Trump, to overturn the results of the election, but we cannot pretend that the rioters are not part of the United States—they are the legacy of the history of white supremacy in the U.S., which they proudly demonstrated on January 6.
Trump and his political enablers are responsible for the violence and destruction in the Capitol, which has long been considered a symbol of democracy in the United States. But to detach the rioters from the country’s long history of oppression and violence is to disown all of the ways that this insurrection was not merely a flaw in the story of American exceptionalism—it was the mirror to the ugly underbelly of that myth. Trump and his political allies who incited the violence and spread falsehoods about the election are to blame, as are the institutions that allow white supremacy to continue to thrive; we can only gain justice when we hold both the individuals and the institutions responsible. This is also America. We have to be honest to have a chance at being better.
No, America Is Not Better than This
American exceptionalism—the idea that the United States is superior to other countries and that its people are providentially endowed with a spirit of community that transcends all -isms and identities—is not new. The appeal to the United States’ “better side” has long been a widely shared political tactic. The ideal United States seems to exist just beyond the horizon—an easily-implementable law away—or in hazy, nostalgia-tinged recollections of ever-elusive “simpler times.”
The real problem is that the United States has proven itself, time and time again, to be exactly what it thinks it is not. The noose that rioters erected on the National Mall was a stark reminder that white mobs similar to the one that attacked the Capitol lynched Black men and women regularly into the late twentieth century while drawing thousands of white picnickers excited to witness extrajudicial torture and murders. The premeditated murder of Ahmaud Arbery less than a year ago was accurately described as a modern-day lynching. His killers faced no consequences for months, and police arrested them only after a well-funded, high-profile, and nationwide campaign.
Rioters erected a noose on the National Mall, evoking the image of racist lynchings of Black men and women and fitting within their extremist rhetoric and threats against elected officials. (Wikimedia Commons)
Racism is a hallmark of U.S. politics. The right to vote in the United States was not universal until 1965, and, to this day, the U.S. voter registration and election processes remain exceedingly complex. Between convoluted procedures and voter apathy, only around 60 percent of U.S. citizens vote at all, marking one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the world. Nonwhite and urban communities face mass disenfranchisement through voter purges, polling place shortages (which lead to massive lines), and lack of access to mail-in ballots. Even the tradition of holding Election Day on a Tuesday deprives millions of workers the chance to vote in person or at all, given the fact that, in many areas, the state can make voting by mail extremely restrictive.
Even outside of the systemically racist electoral system, the U.S. government often overtly upholds white supremacy. In 1967, not three years after the landmark Civil Rights Act, the GOP began a decades-long campaign to disenfranchise left-leaning Black voters. President Richard Nixon’s “War on Drugs” blatantly attacked Black communities—as Nixon’s own advisors have admitted—and led to the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Black people on felony charges for nonviolent drug convictions.
Even slavery itself isn’t technically abolished in the U.S. The 13th Amendment allows slavery and indentured servitude as punishment for those who have been convicted of a crime. In a country where Black people are incarcerated at rates far greater than that of any other racial group, and where a felony conviction means disenfranchisement in most states, it doesn’t take much to connect the dots between white supremacy, incarceration, and mass disenfranchisement.
The U.S. government has similarly committed mass atrocities abroad. The U.S. funded, encouraged, or participated in foreign coup d’etats no fewer than 72 times throughout the Cold War, ushering in and supporting leaders like Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Hugo Banzer of Bolivia, Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala, and many others whose reigns were marked by reactionary politics, suppression, authoritarianism, and mass murder.
The Chilean coup d’etat included a brutal bombing of the presidential palace, La Moneda, to assassinate President Salvador Allende. (Wikimedia Commons)
In multiple cases, the CIA led coups that overthrew democratically-elected leaders, often solely for espousing leftist or socialist beliefs. More recently, the so-called War on Terror that followed the 9/11 attacks killed a quarter of a million Afghani, Iraqi, and Pakistani citizens and left the Middle East in tatters; dictators, warlords, and terrorist groups quickly filled power vacuums as U.S. presidents promised to “bring troops home” following their years spent hard at work destabilizing regimes.
Even the United States’ status as the long-lauded bastion of democracy is one built on myth. Freedom House’s democracy rankings for 2020 don’t even place the United States in the top 50; at 86/100, the U.S.’s score is below that of many countries that reached development milestones far later, including former Soviet satellites Estonia, Slovenia, and Czechia.
200 years after establishing the world’s first democratic regime—if you only count white men as people, that is—the United States now lacks numerous benchmarks of modern democracy, including protections for marginalized groups, a cohesive electoral process, and the ability to prevent foreign political interference.
All this to say: this is America, and it is the America that anyone who is not a white heterosexual cisgender man has experienced in some form. Ignoring the United States’ deeply ingrained racism, sexism, homophobia, and inherent flaws ignores centuries of white supremacist history and politics that have upheld the myth of American exceptionalism.
U.S. history is defined by white supremacy, and refusing to address that until mobs deface a federal building is akin to putting a travel-sized Band-Aid over a festering wound hours after the injury: useless, obvious, and perpetually ineffective.
Blood On Their Hands
Insurrections, riots, and sedition do not occur out of nowhere. No, in this case, they were very clearly instigated, incited, and exacerbated by the actions of self-serving politicians looking out for nothing more than their own interests, the Republic be damned. These individuals, set for historical infamy, include Trump, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO). This trio, profiles in cowardice and reckless selfishness, betrayed their oaths of office in the process.
The Orange Menace
Trump actively encouraged violence and incited rioting at the “Stop The Steal” Rally preceding the Capitol attack on January 6. He called Biden “illegitimate” and told his supporters to “never give up” and “never concede,” because “you don’t concede when there’s theft involved.” He encouraged them to march to the Capitol and cheer for some elected officials but not others, implicitly threatening those not supporting his treasonous efforts to overturn the election results and prolong his rapidly deteriorating hold on power. He told them to go to the Capitol, that they “have to show strength” because they would “never take back our country with weakness.” He later implicitly threatened Pence, saying he lacked the courage to overturn the election results. This led the rabid mob to roam the halls chanting, “Where’s Mike Pence.”
Trump addresses his supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally, lying repeatedly about the 2020 election results and inciting the crowd to riot and insurrection. (Wikimedia Commons)
Trump’s inflammatory excuse of a de-escalatory video late Wednesday afternoon told white supremacists and neo-Nazis that “We love you” and that “You’re very special,” while again lying about the election results. He later excused the insurrection by tweeting, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.”
Trump’s actions and behavior are a danger to the country and the world. His character is fundamentally flawed and his personality deeply unstable. Every moment he remains in office presents the country with the unacceptable risk of continued violence, insurrection, and destruction at his petty hands.
At a minimum, Trump should immediately be removed from office to minimize the danger he poses to the state. Additionally, Trump should be impeached, convicted, and forever barred from ever holding any public office in the United States. He should go down in history in deep shame as the only president ever impeached twice, and the only president convicted and expelled from office.
Republican senators and representatives opposed to this would do well to remember that Trump put their lives in direct and mortal danger and would not hesitate to do so again if it even slightly benefited him. It was the combination of luck, small miracles, and the one area of duty at which the Capitol Police did not prove stunningly incompetent or willfully negligent that all members of Congress escaped unharmed.
Deadly, Uncontrolled Ambition
Of course, Trump did not act alone. A few Republican senators enthusiastically signed up to aid Wednesday’s insurrection. Cruz and Hawley, whose infamously recognized ambition has probably subsumed any democratic values they may have once held, stand at the forefront of this pack.
Cruz organized a group of Republican senators prior to the joint session to count the electoral votes to object to as many as six states’ votes and force a long series of debates on lies and baseless accusations of fraud. (Wikimedia Commons)
In a desperate attempt to demonstrate their total fealty to Trump and claim leadership of that faction of the GOP before the 2024 presidential election, both senators took the drastic step of objecting to legitimate electoral votes based on lies, fraudulent claims, and malicious allegations. They objected to electoral college votes knowing full well that their objections would not produce the results they wanted, that it was nothing more than political theater, and that it would animate and further incite dangerous far-right and conspiratorial elements that are increasingly dominating the Republican Party. Hawley objected to the Pennsylvania electoral college votes after the insurrection threatened him, his colleagues, and the very edifice in which he shamelessly denied the validity of the votes based on fraudulent lies. Hawley fist-pumped the mobs in solidarity that morning. He knew what he was doing.
If Trump set the spark, Hawley and Cruz poured generous portions of gasoline and fuel to the flames. Their actions, while despicable in their own right as self-serving acts of political gain, helped supercharge the riots and ended the United States’s 240-year track record of peaceful transitions of power.
The Kansas City Star’s Editorial Board rightfully refused to mince words. Hawley (and Cruz) have blood on their hands. Along with Trump, they are responsible for undermining the Constitution and democracy. The deaths and destruction brought about by the insurrection they helped fuel and whose members they have and are actively courting ahead of their inevitable runs for the presidency should rest on their conscience. Voters should deny these unfit men the presidency at all opportunities.
Hawley provided the effort to overturn the election by objecting to Biden’s electoral votes a substantial boost when he became the first senator to announce he would object to the votes of various states. (Wikimedia Commons)
They are dangerous to the country, interested only in their political gain and power. As such, they should resign in disgrace or be expelled from the Senate for their role in inspiring an insurrection. They should be ashamed of themselves.
But they won’t be. Despite the backlash, they are almost certainly rather pleased with themselves. U.S. democracy isn’t objectionable to them as long as they control it.
The Treasonously Complicit
We cannot forget the rank-and-file conservatives that have for four years parroted Trump’s incendiary rhetoric or raced tirelessly among each other to outdo each others’ extremism. The 147 Republicans that voted to overturn election results are complicit in this sedition and insurrection. Keep in mind that they chose to vote in this despicable manner after a white supremacist mob threatened their very lives and rampaged through the halls of Congress.
GOP elected officials violated their oaths. They echoed Trump’s language. They lied to their constituents and supporters about the election results and the potential for overturning them. They took unprecedented steps to undermine U.S. democracy and ignore the will of the voters in order to forcibly install their preferred authoritarian candidate through a legislative coup.
They have violated basic principles of morality, decency, and democracy. They have empowered a petty, pathetic president and his dangerous rhetoric for personal gain. They have abdicated their right to elected office and should resign immediately. Barring that, they should be expelled from their chambers in disgrace and replaced by officials with actual moral character and the ability to do what is right.
Desperate Reputation Laundering
With the writing on the wall, the Trump Administration has begun experiencing a steady trickle of resignations from office-holders shocked, shocked they say!, at Trump’s behavior. These Trump alumni include Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, former White House Chief of Staff and Special Envoy to Northern Ireland Mick Mulvaney, and a smattering of other mid-level or minor White House officials. Many have decried Trump’s role in inciting the riots, presenting it as some sort of breaking point and offering revisionist histories about how previous efforts to contain him or minimize his excesses worked while this one did not. They swear they are resigning for principled reasons.
Poppycock.
DeVos and Chao have the unique honor of being among the few original Cabinet secretaries Trump appointed four years ago. They have stood by him and his atrocities since the start of his administration. Chao quite literally stood by Trump while he described neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching and spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric as ‘good people’ after the brutal, cold-blooded murder of a counterprotester by a neo-Nazi rally participant.
DeVos and Chao, along with a handful of other administration staff, conveniently resigned in protest mere days before their terms of office would naturally end in a shameless attempt at reputation laundering. (Wikimedia Commons)
These resignations are pathetic last-minute attempts to launder reputations barely two weeks before their terms in office ended. They are not courageous breaks with Trump, but cowardly self-preservation tactics. These individuals that have stood by Trump for years, defended his actions, and enabled his narcissism and lies do not deserve to have their reputations salvaged because, at the very last minute when the repercussions they faced were practically non-existent, they decided resigning now better served their interests than sticking with Trump for a few more days. Their reputations should be tarnished for their enabling of Trump and their complicity in undermining the government. Their resignation letters are nothing more than empty, meaningless words designed to reflect them in the best possible light.
These individuals, from Trump to his Senate accomplices to his administration enablers and Congressional GOP fanatics, are all tarnished and responsible (directly or indirectly) for the horror perpetrated on January 6. We must never forget the betrayal of their oaths for political gain. We must never forget their willingness and readiness to forsake democracy itself if it benefited their party and their power.
American Ethnocracy
We should, however, forget how the insurrection’s instigators, after shamelessly inciting white supremacist political violence, cooly condemned all instances of political violence not hours after the Capitol was cleared of their supporters.
Don’t buy it. Those who incite violence don’t get to distance themselves from it. Their condemnations are meaningless.
Violence against other human beings is bad, full stop. But vaguely condemning all political violence only obscures the conditions that create it.
In this case, when Trump’s enablers unconditionally condemned the violence on Capitol Hill, they did nothing to address the white supremacy and identity politics—their politics—that motivated that violence. They whitewashed their followers into a leaderless mob that just happened to storm the Capitol for no obvious reason at all.
Rioters and members of the mob crowd the U.S. Capitol steps carrying U.S. flags, Trump 2020 flags, and other flags and symbols with racist and white supremacist associations. (Wikimedia Commons)
Yet these same ethnocrats spared no words criticizing racial justice movements, along with the (extremely rare) instances of violence those movements motivated.
We must understand and analyze the causes of violence in order to appropriately condemn it. Violence in the name of racial justice results from more than four hundred years wherein people with darker skin have been denied life, liberty, and property by a white government. On the other hand, violence in the name of a lost election leads to insurrectionists, misled white supremacists, deciding to abandon democracy because they didn’t get the election outcome they wanted.
Condemning the isolated concept of violence will not change anything. It simply returns the United States to its default state, where white ethnocrats quietly create and perpetuate systems of everyday violence against nonwhite populations as they have done for four hundred years.
We cannot condemn this latest iteration of white violence without condemning what causes it: white supremacy, racism and xenophobia, disrespect for the democratic process, Trumpism, Trump himself, and every single one of his political enablers.
Hold every last one of them accountable.
One for the History Books
Those who insist on “turning the page” without a shred of critical evaluation as to what those words mean are accomplices to this country’s history of white supremacy.
These page-turner pushovers, more concerned with personal comfort than with a more perfect union, have helped white ethnocrats cling to power too many times in our country’s history. We cannot afford to let them do it again.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t attempt understanding and reconciliation. The country could use transitional justice mechanisms and truth commissions. But nobody said achieving peace was going to look pretty.
We the people—every single one of us—need to recognize the uncomfortable truths in our nation’s history and our complicity in them. We need to admit white supremacy, the country’s forgotten founding father, into our political pantheon. It’s not just a “conservative” problem: No matter whom you supported for president, you probably live on stolen indigenous land, and your prosperity today may derive in some way from the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow.
The rioting mob included white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of far-right militant groups like the Proud Boys. (Wikimedia Commons)
Those who benefit from the systems of white supremacy (certainly all the authors of this piece, and perhaps most of our readers) need to better understand what the victims of white supremacy already know too well: if the allegedly immortal ideals of the United States of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are to mean anything at all, then we cannot simply turn the page and willfully forget how our leaders toy and have always toyed with nonwhite lives and liberties.
Our national experiment in ethnocracy has masqueraded as a successful democracy for far too long. It’s no sin to believe in the Founders’ visions of liberty and self-government. But to hold such lofty ideals without considering the truth of our history—and present—guarantees nothing but more broken promises: all hope and no change.
The United States is not “better than this” until we collectively own up to our role in “this.”
The process of finally wringing real democracy out of our fraying ethnocracy begins when we collectively take responsibility for participating in systems of oppression and organize to dismantle them. It relies on holding the defenders of those systems accountable and preventing them from taking power. And, if you hadn’t already guessed, the process never ends. It never should.
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