When the screams of horror quiet, when the blood is scrubbed away, when tears subside to sniffles, and the smoke begins to clear, we often find ourselves asking how it is such scenes of terror could happen to us. We sit still, shocked, stunned, needing answers to understand the chaos, needing to make sense of it all. Sadly, these episodes all have narratives that have become routine at this point: spectacles of mass violence upset the public consciousness, followed by autopsies from authorities explaining the carnage, then the periods of mourning and finger-pointing over policies that never change. National tragedies have been normalized for us. Whether it be school campuses, places of worship, office buildings, music festivals, or even supermarkets, terror has become so commonplace to us that we completely missed the moment when we lost our war against it. Hell, a suicide bombing of Nashville happened last month on Christmas Day; how many of us even remember that?
Yet this week’s attack has already joined privileged company in our American tradition of traumatizing television. I myself spent the entirety of Wednesday, January 6, 2021 as I’m sure many other people did, glued to a screen watching aghast as an attack against the U.S. Capitol broadcast in real-time, needing to absorb every second with my eyes and ears to believe it. I ended up watching more than twelve hours of continuous cable news coverage. I did not relent until, in the early hours of the following morning, Congress finally completed its Constitutional duty of certifying the election results. It echoes my psychological habit of needing closure that I felt in 2016 as the results of the vote came in that fateful evening, staying up late to witness the strange, dreaded victory speech few imagined possible. Even further back, I was mesmerized by the 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq, the theatrics of “Shock and Awe” and the endless hours embedded with troops on the ground — and before that, forever searing into my brain the inescapable images of those smoking towers crumbling down from the Manhattan skyline. However, as common as these scenes have become since then, normalizing this new overtly political terror in our statehouses and in D.C. will come bearing a cost that we shall never recover.
Democracy and terrorism are too diametrically opposed to coexist in the same society, to the point where the expansion of one can only come at the expense of diminishing the other. Where a democracy relies on free, fair elections to effect societal change, terrorism coerces a populace with violence and intimidation, weaponizing fear to achieve political goals. Terrorism suffocates democracy, and that’s exactly what has happened here.
As astonishing as it is to know that the seige of the Capitol not only happened but was incited by the sitting President, the dangers that produced this moment have been clear and present for a long, long time. Nearly twenty years ago, when George W. Bush called upon the world to carry on with life as before, in courageous defiance, to “not let the terrorists win,” he not only promoted the wrong message — his own was a flat out lie. America didn’t return to business as usual after September 11, 2001; Congress convened and decided to declare to the world that we were willing to sacrifice some freedoms in order to feel safer. This concession, cynically named The Patriot Act, was the first monumental subversion of the Constitution in my lifetime, permitting a massive expansion of the national police state that has led to slow, steady further erosion of our liberties ever since. If the mission of al Qaeda’s terrorism was to lead to the destruction of the United States, all events since that day indicate that they are succeeding.
What was actually needed to be prescribed to protect democracy, then as today, is accountability. Without justice, the cycle of violence will only continue and worsen. Choosing not to reconcile the subjugation America’s colonial empire has wrought across the world, to avoid the racial inequities imposed by white supremacy, to pretend that the corporate elite haven’t committed massive thefts of wealth from our own people just as they did to other nations, has deteriorated our republic to this vulnerable state. Instead of eliminating terrorism, we have chosen to live with it, to assimilate it into our daily itineraries. All the concessions that we have ended up choosing have only been the wrong ones, to our own detriment. Anyone observing how Americans have largely responded to the coronavirus pandemic shouldn’t be surprised; we can only be bothered with enough effort to adapt to and merely accept new burdens to our quality of life — any more effort than that is too much of an incovenience. You expect us to wear a mask to prevent the spread of a deadly disease? Who are you kidding? We’d rather roll the dice on the next trip to Olive Garden than shelter in place. With all the gun violence here, practically every day is already a gamble of survival. Just look at the combat training we’ve introduced to schools (taught under the monicker “active shooter drills”); we’d rather condition children to be soldiers who know how to navigate war zones than address gun control. Terror has won. The flipside is that democracy must then lose, and we are now witnessing the final stages of this process.
During my own retropsection on how we as a country have arrived at this pivotal crossroads, my mind keeps returning to a book that I read some ten years ago in college, The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. HBO recently produced a televised adaptation of the novel, which I have yet to see, but I may find myself viewing it soon as the imagery the source story evoked never truly haunted me — until now. I read the book as part of an English literature course on fascism back in 2010. Now, maybe it seems like this was a bizarre time to offer such a class; Barack Obama was president, the world was slowly emerging from the Great Recession, an Arab Spring was brewing in the Middle East, and the War on Terror was on the decline. What relevancy did the idea of fascism have during this period? Well, my own experience coming of age during the Bush presidency, in the shadow of 9/11, was more than enough to inform me that a vitriol was boiling just beneath the country’s veneer.
Growing up queer in America, you learn quickly not only that fascism is here, but who the fascists are, where they live, where they work, and what they look like because they don’t hide it — they parade it proudly. Even in liberal Sonoma County, California, one hour north of San Francisco, I heard the growing chorus of disgruntled voices asserting their delusional entitlement, targeting marginalized peoples with their misguided grievances. They started out on the fringes of society, but quickly began finding inroads welcoming them to the mainstream. Personalities on TV parroted their lies, Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly shouting about the death of white supremacy in thinly veiled language, blaming China, Mexicans, black people, Muslims, the gays, abortion doctors — any boogeyman they could conjure for ratings. Same-sex marriage was made into a prominent issue to galvanize Republican turnout during the 2004 Presidential Election, and in so doing further agitated homophobic sentiment in the country. The following year, my high school was the target of anti-gay demonstrations run by hate groups from around the state during my senior year, the year I came out of the closet. I still remember seeing the hateful billboards they drove around town on the back of their trucks, the derogatory sweatshirts they hawked on the street corner across from campus that I passed on my walk back and forth to school every day. These fascists are people who can’t win arguments democratically in public debate; their ideas are too poisonous for any rational mind to abide. Instead, they rely on lies and violent intimidation, on fear to get power and have their way. It has evolved since then to the gruesome display last year in Kenosha, where a white, male teenager armed like a soldier traveled across state lines and committed “vigilante” violence against Black Lives Matter protestors, conduct that has been defended and celebrated by Republicans.
So, being aware of fascism’s presence in this intimate way made me sensitive to it as a point of interest, left me wanting to learn more about how it operates. The late, great professor Bob Coleman, a beloved mentor, indulged my need to stare into the abyss. He led our class as we read Mein Kampf, watched Triumph of the Will, studied Birth of a Nation. We examined the seminal role media plays in disseminating fascist propaganda, the rhetoric used in constructing their manipulative narratives, the political stratagems deployed across various nation’s histories. We came to understand how fascism, at its heart, is an ideology built on denying reality, on fantastical lies that masquerade in the place of substantive public policy, and that it exploits moments of terror to expand its influence. I can honestly say that there was no class I attended, no information I learned that was more vital to my development as a freedom-loving citizen of democracy than this course. And I can also say that I sincerely wish that its wisdoms aren’t as necessary as they are today.
But returning to Roth’s novel, if you’re unfamiliar, The Plot Against America is an historical fiction that imagines a different timeline for America where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the election of 1940 to a fascist demagogue. The details are worth noting as they were eerily prescient (likely explaining its newfound interest in current times): Charles Lindbergh, famed aviator who was the first to pilot across the Atlantic Ocean, and essentially became the country’s first modern celebrity figure, leverages his outsize media following to enter politics and launches a campaign for president. Lindbergh — a real-life Nazi sympathizer — then uses his presidency to champion isolationism, befriend international dictators, stoke racial tensions at partisan rallies, and turn Americans against one another, polarizing the urban coasts against the rural midwest and south.
(Spoilers for the plot lie ahead)
I distinctly recall being frustrated upon reading the story’s conclusion. One night, returning from reveling in the adoration of his rabid following at yet another rally, Lindbergh’s plane mysteriously vanishes before landing, sparking a national crisis. No one knows what happened; all searches fail to find any crash site. The public is left in the dark, full of questions, with no answers from the Administration. Confusion grips the nation. Then, suddenly, German state news produces sensational evidence framing Jews and the far-left for the disappearance, alleging a plot to overthrow the government. This ignites fascist riots that break out all across the country centering on racial violence. The Vice President, a shadowy figure who was chosen to be the elder party statesman lending credibility to Lindbergh’s candidacy, assumes authority as Commander in Chief and immediately begins a massive consolidation of emergency powers, arresting many prominent Jewish figures. However, following a short, separate disappearance of her own, the First Lady, Anne Lindbergh, surprisingly emerges sometime thereafter to publicly call for an end to the violence and urges the country to move on without her husband. Astonishingly, Roth asks us to believe that this is what happens, that sanity magically does return to the nation, and months later Roosevelt wins the 1944 election, returns to the Oval Office in time to help win World War II, and the U.S. is set back on the right path of history. Democracy wins, fascism loses, the Grinch joins hands to sing with all of Whosville, and all is well once more in the Land of Oz.
If you can’t tell, my problem lies with accepting how cleanly and easily the conflict resolves. Why go to the artistic trouble of crafting this cautionary alternate reality to only use such restraint, to yank the thread back from the precipice of disaster? Why subvert the most potent point of the lesson and soften the scare of democracy’s total collapse? And, worst of all, for a rosy, happy ending that feels completely unearned? Denying the audience a resolution where the republic endures severe, irreparable damage is exactly the dangerous lack of imagination that permits the myth of American exceptionalism to persist, that contributes to the belief that it can’t really happen here. Our artists should warn us in no uncertain terms. Do not spare us from the truth. Yes, it can happen here — and given the chance, it absolutely will.
Which leads me back to these past few days, to the images of tear gas swirling around the Capitol rotunda. The immediate horror fading, here we are left with all of these questions, all of this confusion. This is when the connection hits me, Roth’s fictional crisis finally resonates, creeping into my bones like a deep, unsettling chill. Just as happened after the disappearance of President Lindbergh, we are now in a precarious moment where no one yet knows exactly what really happened, how any of this was possible. How could a terrorist mob so easily overrun security and ransack one of the most sensitive government facilities in the world? How did the attackers have such extensive knowledge of the property’s layout, even locating secret, unmarked offices of top officials? Why were the perpetrators allowed to leisurely stroll away from the crime scene? Why did it take several hours for reinforcements to arrive? Why have there been no press conferences by law enforcement explaining the incident to the public? None of this is normal.
This information vacuum the Administration has created is a perilous threat all its own. The President has largely disappeared from public view. His supporters are downplaying the severity of the attack, even doubting the true identity of the mob, trying to frame leftist factions, asking us to disbelieve our eyes. Instability and uncertainty are allowed to reign, confirming the conviction many of us have that this crisis is far from over. The real damage has yet to be done. Setting aside my criticisms of his story, it’s important to observe that Roth’s imagined scenario mirrors how many real-life fascist regimes exploit moments of emergency — especially ones they self-manufacture — to end democratic rule and consolidate power in themselves: the march on Rome; the burning of the Reichstag; the Spanish coup…
We’ve already experienced a few close calls of our own, and in a relatively short amount of time. Reports circulated last year that on June 1, 2020, the day federal forces assaulted the peaceful BLM demonstration gathered in Lafayette Square in front of the White House, the President allegedly attempted to order the military to occupy American cities, an effort that was rejected. Paramilitary groups have been occupying statehouses across the country and stalking pubic officials more openly since the pandemic began. On Wednesday, it is believed that the President personally withheld additional forces from responding to the riot, the one he incited to overturn the results of the Electoral College, occuring at the Capitol. There’s a real possibility that this current period, with less than ten days before Biden’s Inauguration, may be when the President and his MAGA mob try again to seize a moment of crisis and “cross the Rubicon,” to use the phrase they themselves are actually sharing among themselves online. We all need to be vigilant, to be ready for the worst and be willing to resist it. We are still in danger, this national tragedy is still unfolding.
Benjamin Franklin is thought to have famously said that the United States is “a republic, if you can keep it,” but many today do not understand what is required of us to keep such a fragile thing as a democracy. My great-grandfather served as a member of the Navy in the Pacific theater during World War II, and then returned home to work in journalism at the San Francisco Chronicle. My generation, on the other hand, has acquiesced to the complete surrender of our privacy to behemoth tech monopolies. Most of us alive have never felt our way of life so directly threatened, but we have precious little time to protect the republic from these brutes, if we truly do intend to keep it. Power under fascism is not transferred peacefully; it is obtained and maintained by force. We cannot submit in resignation when the moment comes — we must tirelessly advocate for truth and accountability, and accept nothing less. Until this President is out of office, and even afterward, it will be incumbent on ourselves to be prepared to get involved and fight if we wish to save our democracy, to keep this imperfect union we inherited — the real world has no First Lady Lindbergh who can rescue us from our own carnage.
