Shelter in Place, San Francisco, January 9, 2020
The neighborhood whimsey continues, as I take my walks. This time, a whole clay household lies at the foot of a tree along the sidewalk - bed, table, chairs, tea set, and more. Most intriguing, a cheery little flowerpot and window are tacked onto a giant tree, an invitation to another world, it seems, a chance to look inside.
After two days of reading analysis and aftermath of the attack on Congress I am more frightened, saddened and discouraged than ever. For several years, we have been warned by the security and defense professionals that the greatest threat to our democracy is not from external terrorists, but from a white, right wing fringe in our midst. It was easier for us who are also white and relatively well off, to believe that such movement(s) could not grow sufficiently to harm our way of life, easier to focus our outrage and dread on the daily buffoonery of a single man, the president. But last night I heard that 40% of those who voted for Trump believe that this week’s attack was justified; the election was stolen. Forty percent. That is millions and millions of people. Neighbors. Relatives. Friends.
What has become clearer to me in the past few days is that everybody involved in this act of sedition was using everybody else to bring us to this boiling point. Trump, for his own purposes, riled up his base for years and this week he incited them to riot, but didn’t lead them into battle, didn’t care what happened to them and was embarrassed, his enablers say, that the crowd looked so rag-tag and "low class"; the really scary folks in the mob - the ones who have wanted and have been training for years to bring down the government, the ones who were prepared to kidnap and to kill - were using Trump and the fervor he engendered to recruit and to build an angry base of their own; they were using Trump’s election grievance to instigate what they believed to be the start of a bloody revolution that, in the end, would happen with or without the president; the politicians who shamelessly supported overturning the election and who ignored or defended every bad action and instinct the president has displayed for months and years, were not just afraid of him, they were using him to further their careers and pick off his voters; and, of course, the rightwing media perpetuated Trump’s lies and foaming fervor not from principle, but for money. And here is the saddest part - those who stood outside the capitol singing hymns and believing that they were doing Trump’s and God’s work, the ones who have consumed and internalized the lies… they were the ones, of course, who were abused and used, and they are the ones who will suffer for it most.
The window into this alternative world this week has been heartbreaking and sobering. I have no doubt that there is more to come - the window will open wider and we will see more, experience more that will further rock our comfortable white middle class world. And so I’m asking myself this today — what if this week (heck, the last twelve months) has not been, after all, a window out, but a mirror in, a time of self-analysis on a national and personal scale? What did we do or not do to get us here, and what must we do to make things better?