January 28, 2022
Boomerang
Washington in January was abuzz with the marking of the 1st anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection, when the US Capitol was stormed. This time around, the threat perception is centered on those enwrapped in American flags, many of them clean-shaven, some neatly attired in suits, doctors, lawyers, and engineers. One rallying point, “Stop the Steal,” is a rejection of the outcome of November 2020 Presidential elections, where their hero, Trump, lost to Biden.
One year after the Capitol Hill rampage, the country is deeply polarized. According to an NBC News poll released on January 5, 73% of Republicans do not believe that Biden was elected legitimately as President. More rifts loom ahead at the end of this year during mid-term elections. There is increasing disrespect for electoral integrity. About 1 in 3 Americans say that violence against the government at times can be justified (Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, released January 1, 2022.)
Erosion of unfettered majoritarian power has engendered a backlash against fast-changing demographics, shifting socio-economic landscape, and high rise of multiculturalism. Those accused of killing blacks are being held accountable and convicted.
It is a far cry from Mississippi 1955. Then, Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old Chicago boy, visiting his relatives, was abducted, tortured, shot, and his body dumped in a river for his alleged offense of whistling at a white woman. Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley, took the brave decision to have an open casket at his funeral so people would see the horrors inflicted on her son. It was a seminal event in the history of the civil rights movement, and had a profound bearing on the direction of the life of a young Muhammad Ali, 13 at that time. At trial, an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted the two defendants in only 67 minutes of deliberations, despite overwhelming evidence. Subsequent to their acquittal, the two white defendants sold their story to Look Magazine and, in a January 24, 1956 story, admitted murdering the 14-year-old child.
Coming back to the Capitol Hill rampage, there is considerable breast-beating about it being an assault on democracy. There is selective amnesia on one’s own past conduct. In 2013, the lawfully-elected government of Egypt President Morsi was deposed in a murderous military coup, and was received in Washington circles with quiet delight. Just recently, an American friend called to tell me how he, his wife, and daughters were harassed and detained in Cairo for merely expressing a desire to visit Morsi’s gravesite.
On December 28, 1991, the Washington Post reported that the Islamic Salvation Front political party “swept to power in Algeria, gaining almost half the seats in the country’s first multi-party legislative elections … setting the stage for the Arab world's first freely elected Islamic fundamentalist government.” That never came to pass. Authorities cancelled the elections and banned the Islamic Front, triggering a bloody upheaval in which 100,000 people reportedly died. Margaret Tutwiler, US State Department spokesman, did not condemn the action, saying only that “we view with concern the interruption of the electoral process” in Algeria.
People can be quick to embrace decisions that undermine or affect others. What is not foreseen are its boomerang side effects and repercussions. Power is a powerful intoxicant. It has a blinding effect. It doesn’t foresee its own downfall. It sees power as existing in perpetuity.
Pervasive has been the spread of toxic tribalism along partisan lines. Attitudes that divided and roiled America during the segregationist ‘60s of George Wallace have not evaporated. Politicians shouldn’t be leaders but, in reality, they are. There is an old quote: “Gentleman, we have met the enemy and he is us.”
NBC on January 5 did a report encaptioned “State of Extremism.” And on January 11, Matthew Olsen, Justice Department’s national security division head, announced to the Senate Judiciary Committee the creation of a new unit within the Justice Department focused on domestic terrorism. About time.
--------------------------------------------------------------
