The Consequences Of The Capitol Assault
What happened yesterday didn t depress me the way it seemed to depress other people. Maybe that s because I don t view the institution of the Capitol as sacred the way others do. As a former staffer, I ve known too many stories about the nooks and crannies where Ted Kennedy did stuff to get too verklempt about it. And the invaders stayed inside the velvet ropes in Statuary Hall, which I actually care about. But it s disturbing for a lot of reasons, two in particular that stick out.
The first is a comment from an apolitical friend who wandered into the room where the roiling crowd was on the screen in the early afternoon yesterday: Is that Black Lives Matter? No, it s not but also, it is. An apolitical viewer of the summer of 2020 would learn one distinct lesson: If you want to be heard, if you want to be listened to, you need to go into the streets, make a ruckus, set things on fire, and tear down icons of America. This disrespect will be welcomed, hailed, and supported if your cause is just and your motives are righteous.
Just about everyone who showed up on Capitol Hill yesterday believed that about why they were there. The only difference between the horned man standing in the Senate chair or the smiling man hauling the speaker s podium out the door and the fellow who attempted to tear down Andrew Jackson s statue or the criminal who set fire to St. John s Church is a matter of jersey color.
The second is that blaming this on Donald Trump isn t just too simplistic, it s whistling past the graveyard of our norms. Of course, he egged on his crowd to go up to the Capitol and be loud and irritating. But he didn t tell them to break down doors and crash the gates, and he didn t need to. Blaming this on Trump assumes this type of attitude will go away when Trump himself does. That s way too easy it s wishful thinking. The iconoclasm of the right is a real development, and it is here to stay. You ll wish for the old man in the tricorn hat waving a Cato Constitution when you see the new right blasting statues with graffiti.
The crowd was not a Tea Party crowd. They brought their folding chairs and their canes. They drove more than they flew. They spat their dip on the ground. They peed on the trees. And they didn t just disrespect the cops guarding the Capitol, they crushed past them.