January 8, 2021: From CHAZ to Capitol Hill - Nihilistic Populism
In which, a dangerous idea is defined.
“Take a break for the holidays,” I said.
“The news slows down over the holidays,” I said.
“There’ll be more to cover after the Georgia run-off,” I said. Well, in the words of Ron Burgundy:
2021 couldn’t make it out of the gate without terrible and tragic scenes playing out, this time in the very heart of the American republic.
From CHAZ to Capitol Hill - Nihilistic Populism
By now, anyone not living under a rock, which I presume to be all my well-informed readers, know about the events on Capitol Hill on January 6. After the Senate run-off elections on January 5 seemed to hand Democrats “control” (I guess 50-50 is better than nothing) of that chamber, Congress met the following day amidst nationwide protests to certify the Electoral College’s December 14 vote, which cemented Joe Biden's electoral victory.
What happened next was, in a word, chaos. A group of pro-Trump protestors broke off of a much larger peaceful demonstration supporting the President to storm Capitol Hill in an apparent attempt to prevent the certification of the Electoral College ballots.
Over the course of the next several hours, these barbarians (I’ll explain the term below) occupied the Senate chamber, some Congressional offices (notably, House Speaker Pelosi’s), and scuffled with an overwhelmed Capitol Police force before the National Guard was called in and the protestors dispersed, but not before one person was shot and killed while three others died due to other medical emergencies. The next day, a Capitol Police officer died from injuries sustained in the melee.
The aftermath
The response to the storming of Capitol Hill was immediately broad, visceral, bipartisan and (unfortunately) predicable. America’s adversaries gloated over the apparent state of chaos engulfing the world’s most powerful democracy; Congressional leaders prior to and after the event condemned such efforts to undermine the electoral process; Republicans split between the Trump base insisting that evidence of election fraud has been ignored and the rest of the party seeking to distance themselves from the now almost completely isolated President who called on protestors to leave before finally acknowledging his electoral defeat.
The predictable part? The spin. Media and the political Left went into hysterics over this act of “insurrection” and “domestic terrorism” and immediately called for the removal of President Trump from office either by impeachment (again) or an invocation of the 25th Amendment. Conservative media, like the GOP itself, has split between trying to distance the President from the protest by arguing he did not directly incite the event and joining more Progressive media in calling for Trump to be removed from office.
Invoking the 25th is highly unlikely, though, as severalCabinet members most likely to sign on to such a move have already resigned from the Trump administration.
Here’s the thing, though...
Amidst the perfectly understandable shock at the events of the week, it’s really important to bear a some things in mind:
Protestors were cleared out of the building within hours, which allowed for
Congress to continue with the certification of the Electoral College vote, which in turn
Confirms Joe Biden as President-Elect and sets up his January 20th inauguration
Despite the chaos of the day and the chaos of the months leading up to this moment, the Constitutional process for electing a new president was followed and defended.
Is democracy fragile or adaptable? I’d argue that it depends on the institutions that undergird a democratic process. In the case of America’s federal structure, it would appear that America’s Constitutional system has proven far more adaptable and capable of taking hits than far more brittle democratic systems.
And yet…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m deeply troubled by the attack on Capitol Hill, there’s only so much flex in a political system, and I’m mad at just about everyone.
I’m mad at the President for his years of inflammatory rhetoric that has radicalized a particular wing of his base.
I’m mad at Democrats for using similarly inflammatory rhetoric to whip up and radicalize portions of their base.
I’m mad at a media (traditional and social) environment that has so thoroughly poisoned the public square with an incentive structure that rewards such rhetoric with clicks, revenue, and celebrity status.
Mostly, though, I’m mad at us. America is not Trump, the RNC, the DNC, or the Media. They are merely dysfunctional parts of the whole. America is “We the People,” and it’s our continued inability to hold these institutions accountable for their words and actions that poses the biggest threat to our republic.
Populism with a nihilistic twist
Where do we begin? We should start with recognizing that both sides of America’s political spectrum, left and right, must now confront very dangerous forms of populism. In 2016, I noted that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were cut from the same populist cloth. The growth of both their movements, or tribes, within the major parties have been key elements of the political realignment we’ve been experiencing.
However, what I and many others missed, was that this was not your great-great-grandparents’ populism. The populism that now animates the radical elements within the parties are the same as that which animates groups like Antifa: It is a nihilistic populism - an impulse to destroy institutions on behalf of a people wronged (necessarily an exclusivist group). It’s classic barbarism.
There may be differences among these populist nihilists in terms of what, if anything, is built upon the ashes of the American republic, but this ideology’s main priority is destruction pure and simple. This is a dangerous notion and must be rejected. So, rather than calling it out in your opponent’s camp, perhaps we best start with calling it out in our own camps. The barbarians are within your gates and my gates.
Field Notes
Some quick follow ups on stories that I ended 2020 with
In Ethiopia, the fighting in Tigray carries on, and Ethiopian troops have killed several leaders in the break away province, which likely signals prolonged fighting.
Even as Ethiopia flails, Egypt and Sudan are attempting to reboot talks on Ethiopia's massive Nile dam.
With a final deal nailed down, Brexit is official and Great Britain is no longer part of the EU.
Iran is ramping up uranium enrichment ahead of the Biden administration’s first day in office.
In yet another diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East, it seems as though the Gulf monarchies are repairing their relations with Qatar, cementing an anti-Iranian bloc of opposition.
In Libya, fighting appears to have imperiled what had been a months-long, but fragile ceasefire.