This Is Patriotism?
On January 6, 2021, I sat before the television until early in the evening shocked and then infuriated by the act of domestic terrorism I was witnessing: thousands of Trump supporters storming and breaching our nation’s capital building, something that hasn’t occurred in this country since 1814.
I long ago predicted this would happen. Not the storming of our nation’s capital – I had no way of knowing how such violence would manifest -- but a similar cowardly act of comparable and pointless stupidity.
For four years, President Trump has catered to and encouraged the lunatic fringe of the Republican party. No disgraceful act he has ever committed is worthy of their condemnation. When he attempted to solicit a bribe from the Ukrainian president, and was rightfully impeached for doing so, every Republican senator in the senate, save one, voted to acquit him. When he has, over and over again, not so subtly encouraged his supporters to commit violence – equating white supremacists with “fine” people, encouraging them to rough up protesters at his rallies, calling an armed mob who earlier this year stormed the Michigan state house “patriots,” labelling the press the enemy of the people, alternately threatening and cajoling the Georgia secretary of state to overturn a democratically decided election, congressional Republicans, at best, have looked the other way, but have far more often justified his despicable behavior with the feeble explanation that, well, the Democrats…
His supporters, of whom there are many, are unable or unwilling to see through the blatant hypocrisy of his actions and words or beyond their unshakable faith in him. They are impervious to reason, data and facts, as unreachable as a stone in the bottom of a cesspool. Instead, they insist that the presidential election was thrown because it is inconceivable to them that Donald Trump, a man whom many of them believe, with the fervent conviction of zealots, was anointed by God, could possibly have lost. And so they bring endless, pointless lawsuits to the courts, and demand endless and pointless recounts, none of which have, nor will they ever, change the results of the election one iota. All this based on nothing more than what they profess to know: that only an election decided in Donald Trump’s favor is valid.
Trump and his craven enablers in congress, including Greg Gianforte and Steve Daines, whom I am ashamed are the governor and senator in my home state of Montana, should be held to account for their actions, which have allowed a mob of delusional fanatics to storm and vandalize our nation’s capital.
I’m not going to hold my breath that that will ever happen. Already, conservative talking heads are ginning up conspiracy theories – that the mob was led by undercover antifa agents, that it was composed of patriotic citizens frustrated by not having their voices heard, at nauseum. These self-serving lies will never end, for there is no end to the self-deluded who believe them.
But the rest of us need no longer pretend that the willful ignorance and stupidity of Trump and his supporters have no consequences. And we should not forget.