Democracy Prevails

One hour ago, the Senate and the House of Representatives voted to confirm the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the next President and Vice-President of the United States! They fulfilled their constitutional duty in spite of a coup attempt by an angry mob inspired by Trump’s lies of voter fraud. For several unbelievable hours, the mob of Trump loyalists waving Trump flags and Confederate flags roamed aimlessly in the Capital building, vandalizing the building and forcing elected officials to evacuate under threat of bodily harm.

How the mob breached the building so easily is a mystery, but nowhere did we see the militarized police response that seemed to be the norm when the protestors in the streets included black and brown bodies. Though the Capital police kept the elected officials safe, they seemed to treat the insurrectionists with respect and deference, even as they breached the sacred halls of democracy.

Make no mistake, this was a coup attempt, inspired and led by our sitting President. His months of lies, his calls to come to Washington and even his remarks to the same crowd that morning urging them to march to the Capital were the source of this rage and violence against the institutions of democracy. Republican Senator, Mitt Romney put it this way: “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.”

The good news is that they failed.

It turns out that even Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, who have been enablers in chief for Trump’s lies and ongoing seditious behavior, stood firmly against Trump’s mob. Republicans and Democrats, minus a small minority, stood together to defend the election and the will of the American people. Both chambers immediately reconvened after the Capital building had been cleared and proceeded to duly ratify the results of the Electoral College.

This morning, though we have less than two weeks until Trump will be duly removed from office, there are calls for the invocation of the 25^th amendment that provides for the removal of the President in case of his incapacity to govern or for his immediate impeachment. He has demonstrated, now even to most of his formerly loyal cronies, that he is unfit for the office of President of the United States—a fact that some of us have believed for the past four years.

The drama of yesterday afternoon almost obscures the wondrous news that was emerging earlier in the day that BOTH senate races in Georgia were won by the Democratic challengers. Four years ago the Presidency, the Senate and the House were all controlled by Republicans, as the inauguration on January 20, they will be controlled by the Democrats. Along with the incalculable damage Trump has wrought on our democracy and the dangerously insular right-wing conspiracy-driven media bubble he has promoted, this shift of governmental control is part of Trump’s legacy as well.

But we are not home free.

No matter what happens between now and the Biden-Harris inauguration, it will take us years to recover. And we must go beyond ‘recovery.’ The racist roots of our political divide were on full display yesterday in both the seemingly lax actions of the police in response to the ‘white’ mob who seemed to stroll into the Capital and in the flying of the Confederate flag – a symbol of a system of brutal oppression and torture of millions human beings of black and brown skin – fondly remembered and mythologized by Q-Anon and Trump’s most ardent right-wing followers.

All decent Republicans should put as much distance as they can between themselves and Trump’s racist and authoritarian view of our country. We should unite to condemn the insurrectionists that stormed the Capital yesterday as well as Trump and the other political leaders who have fanned the flames of false conspiracy for their own personal gain.