The Flames of Wrath

 When I departed the shores of my native land some twenty years ago, I expected to miss some aspects of life in the old country and I was not disappointed in my expectations. What I did not miss was the violence and death that stalked our elections, and that I naively believed I had left well behind. Till now. This past month and more, it has been increasingly obvious that this nation I now call my residence was hurtling towards a cliff and that the leaders of the executive branch of government were busy pushing it forward ever faster instead of making any attempt to stay its course towards mayhem and destruction, aided and abetted by their allies in the legislature. On a wintry afternoon in the first week of the new year, the United States found itself on the edge of the cliff and staring down into the flames of chaos and as this week turns, it is far from clear if we have reeled away from the precipice or whether we are still tethering there, arms windmilling and wondering if the slightest mistake will send us hurtling down into the abyss. 

For as long as I can remember, the world has looked, rightly or wrongly, to the United States as an example of how a democratic republic should function. Unlike the United Kingdom, with its centuries long history and tradition that helped them develop their democratic institutions, the USA was a better example to newly independent nations emerging into the light of freedom, especially when for nations that had suffered years under European colonial rule but also for nations that had fallen under dictatorships or communist rule during the Cold War. To be sure, the Philippines may have taught us a thing or two about American colonialism, but we saw that less and were generally enamored of the brighter image, of a nation that cast off colonial rule and forged its own destiny by adopting a progressive and revolutionary government where the power resided with the governed populace. And while the US model was flawed, it always seemed to be trending forward leading towards a better, brighter future for all. And one thing that was never even questioned was the transfer of power from one administration to the next. Even when the 2000 election transfixed the world and opened our eyes to the myriad oddities of the US electoral system -  electoral college, no national or even state-level system, archaic and non-uniform - on the far side of the world, I never doubted that there would be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power. It was one of our greatest sources of pride in India that our own young republic had managed a similar tradition and that no matter how deep the political or personal differences, a losing government graciously yielded to its vanquisher, while an unsuccessful challenger ruefully accepted its loss, and this in contrast to most other nations in the neighborhood and further abroad.

In 2016, I never expected Donald Trump to defeat Hilary Clinton but I sensed that something had changed forever in his continuous talk about how the election was rigged against him (it wasn't!) and his refusal to accept the results unless he won. I suspected that he was simply setting up for his defeat, as a way to avoid that he had lost to a woman; I also suspected that Russia expected no more than to create divisions, to cast doubts and de-legitimize the incoming president, and were as surprised as anyone else when Trump tapped into a deep vein of rural discontent and rode it to victory. Four years of corruption and ineptness later, President Trump returned to the same playbook, railing about rigged elections though the electoral college actually favors him and the Republicans fully control or at least share power in all the battleground states, sowing division and hatred, lying shamelessly with absolute disregard for reality or truth. And when he finally came up short, to the tune of seven million votes, he refused to accept his defeat and did all that I had expected in 2016, except that his actions were now the actions of the President of the United States.

From the moment it became obvious that Biden had restored the Democrat's "blue wall" in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and flipped Georgia and  Arizona to cement his victory, Trump went into overdrive with ludicrous claims of fraud and after barely a moment's hesitation, the elected congresspeople of his party swung into line. Some of them tried to have it both ways, neither endorsing Trump's false claims but not repudiating them either nor acknowledging the obvious victory of president-elect Joe Biden. Others were less bashful and leaned into the president's dangerous narrative, claiming to share his beliefs of dead voters, fake ballots and other fake assertions. And through their self-serving acts of omission and commission, they fanned the mistaken belief of Trump's more fervent believers that their champion's victory had been stolen by nefarious actions. Rather than highlight the fact that Trump's lawyers had never stood by their claims of fraud in court nor brought any evidence before the courts in even one of more than five dozen chances. But his supporters never saw, or at least never acknowledged the sixty to one record in court challenges. They were fed an unvaried diet of lies on their preferred source of propaganda (it is impossible to pretend that these are news services), amplified on Twitter and Facebook and other less social media. Rather than let them move through the stages of grief, the president trapped his supporters in denial and as the clock counted down to the end of his inglorious term of office, they finally reached anger, and finally on January 6th, it boiled over in a way that we had never imagined but should have seen coming all the way from 2016.

When an angry, armed mob storms the Capitol, chanting their intent to hang the vice-president, it is impossible to call this anything other than an insurrection. It failed, partly because this was a mob led by a morally corrupt coward, a man who embraced them while things seemed to go his way but denounced them and threatened them with dire consequences as soon as it became obvious that he would have to pay for his role in the violence. A fanatical supporter, an Air Force veteran was shot dead, while a policeman was beaten to death and three others died of indirect causes and the death toll was no larger only because the mob had no plan beyond storming the Capitol and stopping the pro-forma certification of the winner of the election win. Had they actually encountered Democrat or the small number of Republicans who accepted reality, though, things may have been much, much worse. The rioters were largely drunk on lies and white privilege and no one explained their attitude better than Elizabeth from Knoxville, who was shocked that police used mace on her while she was storming the capitol as part of a"revolution". But while the execution may have been ludicrous and their attitude lends itself to mockery, the anger is real enough. When millions of people buy passionately into so dangerous a lie and believe that they have been wronged and robbed, they are not going to easily accept that they were in the wrong and quietly accept that they have lost. When many of them have come to believe the wildest of conspiracy theories and come to view the situation as a pivotal point of history with themselves as the guys in white hats, and when so many of them are also owners of weapons of war, the potential for violence is beyond possible and almost certain. Trump and his Congressional enablers have sown the wind, and while Mitch McConnell may have decided to hop off the crazy train now, the situation is now beyond their control and it is the nation that must reap the hurricane. Opportunists like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, Trumpists like Matt Gaetz, the owner of Devin Nunes' cow, Mo Brooks et al, and conspiracy-crazed newcomers like Representatives Boebert and Greene might seek to ride the wave they've helped unleash, in reality they control it as much as a rider on a tiger - if they ever try to pivot back towards reality, they will find themselves considered traitors and hated even more than perennial enemies of this movement. Mike Pence has experienced it already, as have others like McConnell and Lindsey Graham. Even the nominal leader of this movement, Donald Trump himself, is now irrelevant and his feeble calls for peace are likely to be ignored; many of his supporters have dismissed these messages as coerced or fake and have vowed to continue with whatever it is they believe they are doing.

Donald Trump has to answer for so many sins against this nation, from gutting the Affordable Care Act without any alternative to destroying the postal service, from stacking the courts with hundreds of unvetted, and often, unqualified judges to politicizing the civil service, from destroying the environment to turning his back on combined action on climate change, from disparaging the US intelligence services in favor of Russia's (in all but name) dictator to stealing housing funds from the military to fund a mostly meaningless, ineffective and environmentally disastrous border wall. He is arguably culpable in the death of four hundred thousand victims of Covid-19. But this is the deepest and most lasting wound he has inflicted on his own country. He has sown the grapes of wrath and now he will skulk away into ignominious obscurity leaving us to harvest the bloody results.