One year ago today, thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters, “average” Americans by several surveys, overran thinly manned police lines, fought hand to hand with hundreds of U.S. Capitol police, broke windows and doors, entered the building chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” and interrupted the electoral vote counting process for hours. Security teams evacuated members of the House and Senate to secure rooms. Staffers sheltered in place. Insurrectionists sacked the building as the world watched in horror on live television. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the president watched it intently on TV for hours and resisted pleas from family, aides, and members of Congress to stop it.
To this day, Republicans sworn to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution resist efforts to define for history the events of January 6, 2021, and to bring to justice those whose machinations led to the violence.
It was the first time in over 200 years that the building had been occupied, and then by foreign enemies. People died. Over a hundred police officers suffered injuries both minor and severe. Several officers later committed suicide.
Former president Jimmy Carter wrote Wednesday in the New York Times that Trump and promoters of his stolen-election lie have relentlessly stoked animosity to set American against American and to undermine faith in the electoral process.
Carter cites the Survey Center on American Life from February:
More than one in three (36 percent) Americans agree with the statement: “The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” Six in 10 (60 percent) Americans reject the idea that the use of force is necessary, but there is significant partisan disagreement on this question.
A majority (56 percent) of Republicans support the use of force as a way to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life. Forty-three percent of Republicans express opposition to this idea. Significantly fewer independents (35 percent) and Democrats (22 percent) say the use of force is necessary to stop the disappearance of traditional American values and way of life.
“The view that the political system is rigged against conservatives and people who hold traditional values is also widespread, particularly on the political right,” the survey reports.
But what do Trump’s overwhelmingly white-Christian followers mean by traditional American way of life? What America do they want to make great again? That is an open secret.
Researchers studying the insurrectionists at the University of Chicago estimate millions of Americans make up the insurrection movement:
In the CPOST polls, only one other statement won overwhelming support among the 21 million committed insurrectionists. Almost two-thirds of them agreed that “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.” Slicing the data another way: Respondents who believed in the Great Replacement theory, regardless of their views on anything else, were nearly four times as likely as those who did not to support the violent removal of the president.
But by “more rights than whites,” respondents really fear equal rights with whites. And that Trump’s MAGA insurrectionists find unacceptable. That violates their traditional understanding that in this country, white Christians rule. All others should know their places and stay in them. “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression,” goes a familiar expression.
The overwhelmingly white, middle-class and employed, 30% white-collar, and two-thirds over age 34 Americans behind the insurrection movement are experiencing status anxiety in this diversifying nation of immigrants. They feel oppressed, as if something is being taken from them: their economic, social, and religious dominance of others.
Millions of these nominal Americans, then, would accept using force to maintain that traditional arrangement. Even to the point of rejecting American democracy and replacing it with de facto if not de jure one-party rule. And with an autocrat in the White House.
One year ago today, thousands of Trump supporters acted on that belief. MAGA insurrectionists attempted a coup, egged on by the outgoing president, his allies and his aides, and predicated on the fiction that their white-nationalist president had the election stolen — from him and from them — by the diverse population encroaching on their turf.
The greater problem, then, is that many flag-waving neighbors no longer believe in the democratic principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution. Democracy for them is disposable, contingent on whether or not they can control the outcome of elections.
The Declaration of Independence states that “all men [persons] are created equal.” But have polling operations surveyed U.S. opinion on this foundational American tenet? By generation, by gender, by economic quintile, race and party? Because by their words and actions, insurrectionists and the Republican Party express their rejection of political equality as an American ideal.
Ask Republican candidates this fall if they believe “all men [persons] are created equal.” Watch them hem and haw. Ask again. If they agree, their base will disown them. If they dissemble, make them own it.
Fox News recently spent a week in Hungary lauding autocrat Viktor Orbán. Donald Trump just gave Orbán his enthusiastic endorsement for his reelection (that is not in doubt). What the insurrectionists want, what Carlson wants, what Trump wants, what Republican leaders across this country want is the appearance of democracy without the substance.
Therein lies a tale.
The dining hall staff was setting up for a Board of Trustees dinner.
The university was still nominally Baptist when I attended. Alcohol was forbidden on campus. Thus, I was stunned when after my Friday dinner shift I spotted a pallet in the kitchen stacked with cases of champagne. What?
Beside the pallet were glass racks filled with champagne glasses. Nearby were shining ice buckets.
One of the cases was open. I pulled out a bottle to examine.
Sparking Catawba. Non-alcoholic. Green bottle. Punt on the bottom. Wired and foiled cork on top.
The high-rollers would have a “champagne” toast that evening. There would be all the ceremony and trappings of the champagne ritual but without the fizzy alcohol. Their celebration would be within official rules, but phony.
Once Republican-led state legislatures reengineer election machinery nationwide, we will still have Fourth of July picnics, American flags, Pledges of Allegiance, the Star-Spangled Banner, and fireworks. Even elections. All the trappings of a democratic republic. Only without the democracy. It will still be the United States of America, but a Sparkling Catawba version.
That, after all, is what many conservatives always wanted: a tidy, monochrome U.S. with everything and everyone else in their proper places, and perfectly designed to keep them there.
That was the goal of the violent insurrection one year ago today.