Through the Looking Glass

I felt somewhat numb a year ago today, watching live video from Washington DC, a horde of angry protesters storming the Capitol. As I saw the swarm breaking through barricades and ascending walls, I remember thinking, "They're going to get into the building. This is really happening." And then I got distracted. It was the middle of a work day. It was busy. A call was coming in, or some or other issue had arisen, I don't remember. The window was minimized, and I'd check back on it later.

Later would prove to come along in a few minutes. The horde was breaking windows. They were getting into the Capitol. Reports were saying that certification of the Electoral College vote had been suspended amidst the chaos. Of course it had. That was the point of the exercise. It was what an aggrieved president, in the twilight of his first term, had been bleating on about to the crowds who had gathered to hear him speak that day. Our nation's lawmakers -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- were hiding for their lives. Once inside the building, members of the encroaching mob could be heard calling for Mike Pence. Others were erecting makeshift gallows outside.

The seeds of the January 6th insurrection had been sewn for quite some time. If you'll remember, before Election Day 2016, then-candidate Trump claimed that things were rigged against him. It's what insecure people do: try and explain it away when they think they're going to fail. It's also dangerous. Of course, we all know he went on to win the Electoral College, but lose the popular vote (which doesn't matter in US presidential elections). Still, he claimed election fraud after he'd won. Guess that's what you call a sore winner, which is putting it kindly.

Of course, Trump did lose the 2020 election -- both in the Electoral College and with the popular vote -- and took it about as well as you might expect. Claiming that he'd won, regardless, and refusing to concede, the 45th president behaved like a petulant child. Except children aren't usually leaders of the free world. When they are, bad things happen. After stoking the flames of the 'stolen election' narrative for weeks, the inevitable happened: crowds of Trump supporters descended upon Washington DC one day in early January, listened to their resentful leader rattle-off the litany of sins done to him, and then proceeded to storm the Capitol.

Perhaps because of the aforementioned chain of events, stretching back years and increasing with rapid intensity in the preceding weeks, is why I felt initially numb to what was happening. It was, looking back, hardly a surprising turn of events. Hostile rhetoric has a way of twisting psyches and manifesting itself in the most terrible of ways. As events unfolded and, particularly, as they eventually subsided, it all began to hit me like a ton of bricks. An insurrection, an attempted coup -- what ever you want to call it, the gravity of what had happened was nearly overwhelming.

That evening after work, I left the house and took a walk. It was early January, so it was already dark when I walked outside into the brisk evening air. I called a friend who lived out of town. We were, at this point, several months into the pandemic, and the sense of isolation and depression was palpable. I rarely like talking on the phone, but it had been a heavy day and a call seemed in order. We talked for a good twenty minutes or so, with only a small portion of it, at the end, about the tumultuous events of the day. And that was okay. It both was and wasn't the reason I'd called my friend. Ultimately, I just needed to hear his voice. And it helped.

I'm not sure where our constitutional republic goes from here. The 21st century hasn't been kind to our elections. The outcome of Bush vs. Gore was contested (officially for weeks, and unofficially for years) by Democrats. I've already mentioned the spurious claims of election fraud by Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 cycles. And even Hillary Clinton hasn't been above casting doubt on the integrity of the 2016 election. Of course, Democrats haven't stormed the Capitol in a thwarted attempt to stop certification of the results, but the events surrounding our 21st century election cycles are destabilizing for our democracy.

This isn't to say that it's beyond the realm of possibility for election results to be falsified in the United States, like how, at some point, someone crying wolf may actually be under attack by a wolf. But simply saying it -- no matter how loudly or how often -- does not make it so. And people seem to have an almost visceral reaction to such claims. The issue, of course, is that potentially corrupt results can't only be applicable to the presidential race. If a ballot is bad, it's bad for all the candidates whose names are on it. All of the results would have to be thrown out. That's why it's somewhat surprising to see so many Republican lawmakers agreeing to the Big Lie.

Former President Carter has written that "our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss." I don't think that's hyperbole. From the insurrection of January 6th, to the disgruntled people on the left side of the aisle who, for years now, I've heard say things like how we need a revolution (often in reference to capitalism, police reform, systemic racism, etc), to the constant doubt cast upon our electoral integrity, we are precariously positioned on an ever unstable precipice. Revolutions are rarely bloodless. They often look like, well, kind of like what occurred on January 6th.

If you were mortified by what transpired a year ago today, I think that's good. But you need to ask yourself why. Is it because of what happened, or why it happened? The answer to that question will very likely provide a salient prediction as to the future of our democracy.