This shouldn't be us

In a way, I saw this coming. Four and a half years ago, in paradise of all places, I saw this coming. Or I imagined it. Whatever terminology you’d like to use.

I was sitting at a bar at the Hilton Hawaiian Village next to my husband and a guy he used to work with. I’d heard of this guy a lot — he and Dan had traveled a lot together in his previous life as an international consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton. By luck, he happened to be doing some business in Pearl Harbor the same week Dan and I were wrapping up our first “honeyversary” — two weeks in Hawaii that served as our honeymoon, exactly one year after our wedding. 

I’d looked forward to meeting this guy — the stories Dan told me about their trip to Estonia were legendary. I could tell Dan respected the guy immensely. Dan’s deferential to a lot of people, but he was practically reverent about this guy. What began as happy hour stretched into dinner. What was dinner stretched into after-dinner drinks. And during those drinks, somehow, we got on the subject of the 2016 election. At that point, we knew it’d be Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump — but in late September, the prospect of the latter becoming president was a laugher. 

“I’m backing Trump,” the guy said. 

I’d just taken a sip of my drink, and it took a herculean effort to keep from spitting it clear across the bar. 

“I’m sorry, what?” I managed to say. 

He launched into a long soliloquy about how the world order had failed America, and how we needed to push back, how we’d gotten soft, how we needed to get tough. I looked at Dan, who gave me a silent signal to just move along and let him change the subject. But then the guy said something that scratched the record of my memory.

“We need to burn it all down.”

Those thoughts have echoed in my mind repeatedly over the past four-plus years. But they never rang louder than this afternoon when I saw the first news of a potential breach of the Capitol barricades. 

“Burn it all down.”

Sitting here after more than five hours, things haven’t all burned down — yet. But it’s hard to feel like they haven’t. The kind of lawless insurrection we watch through the lens of foreign press agencies is happening, in our own country, on and in our own Capitol. The “peaceful transfer of power” that’s been the hallmark of American government for nearly two and a half centuries, gone. Up in proverbial smoke. 

“Burn it all down.”

Between refreshing Twitter incessantly for news and checking my texts — a good friend of mine is a nurse in the Capitol, and she wasn’t responding to messages as usual — I barely stayed in mental touch with work. I picked up my son from daycare. I started cooking dinner. I poured a long swig of Sagamore Spirit from the bottle sitting on the island — I’d made a promise to drink only once a week in the new year, but we hadn’t taken the bottle down to the basement bar just yet — and took a sip. And I just couldn’t do it anymore. Dan took care of TJ for the rest of the night. I took my glass of watered-down whiskey, slid down the back door, and cried. I yelled, loudly enough for Dan to come back downstairs to see if I was ok. 

I wasn’t OK. I’m not ok. It’s burning down. 

It’s not just burning down because a lawless mob — abetted by some members of Capitol Police, who kindly pulled back the barricade to let them in — overran the building as the duly elected members of government were completing the last stage of the time-honored American election process. It’s not just burning down because people walked the Confederate flag for the first time through the halls of the United States Capitol. It’s not just burning down because this mob literally took down an American flag and replaced it with the colors of the Trump campaign. It’s not burning down because — for at least a moment — the gears of the American system of government have ground to a halt, and the electoral process remains incomplete. 

No, it’s burning down because so many Americans are OK with it. Americans I know. Americans I love. Happy for it. Proud of it. 

They’re not decrying this as an act of domestic terrorism. They’re not even taking the line of “We agree with your sentiments, but your actions are wrong.” No — they think it’s *right*. They think armed people storming a federal building, full of civil servants just trying to do their goddamn jobs, is *right*. And why? 

• Because after weeks of failed attempts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election legally in courts — in several GOP-controlled states, many of which had Trump-appointed judges — these people refuse to acknowledge their candidate lost. He lost close in some states, but he lost fairly. Scores of Republican officials said, although it pained them, their candidate lost. 
• Because isn’t this just the same as last summer, when some people destroyed property in a couple of cities after peaceful protests of police brutality? If we weren’t pissed about that violence, why are we pissed about this violence? Never stopping to consider that perhaps the majority of us were, and are, against *all* of this violence, regardless of whether we empathized with the events and emotions that may have precipitated it.
• Because even when Trump lies — about this, about everything, repeatedly, and baldly — he’s not wrong. It’s the Democrats who are wrong. It’s Antifa who’s wrong. It’s your friend/niece/cousin Kristin who’s wrong, because she reads the Washington Post, she’s been living in cities too long, she has forgotten her place. 
• Because when all legal avenues are blocked, it’s time to scream. It’s time to fight. It’s time to burn. 

I have no doubt this particular episode of insurrection will end, and soon. People will be arrested. Some will be tried. Some will be jailed. But the fight won’t be over. It won’t be over until the many of you — and yes, I’m pointing at *you* if you think I am — put the matches down. Step away from the internet theories that require other unfounded theories that require other conspiracy theories to make sense. Stop drinking Donald Trump’s Jim Jones Kool-Aid. Look at the big picture. And *think*.

The man cares about literally nothing but himself. Literally. Nothing. This weeks long crusade, up to and including his incendiary speech on the Mall this afternoon, his video address from the White House this evening, and the tweets that have (finally) gotten him temporarily banned from Twitter — it’s been about his ego and lining his pockets with your donations, not about making any marked difference in your or anyone else’s life. We’re in the middle of the biggest spike in the COVID-19 pandemic, and for weeks, he’s done nothing but play golf, attend rallies, and pardon the people who’ve ingratiated themselves by committing felonies on his behalf. Today’s entire bizarre-turned-violent crusade has been about his obsession with himself — not a hair more.

Let me try this in some “no more bullshit” language you might understand: 

He. Doesn’t. Give. A. Damn. About. You. 

No matter what Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, or Parler tells you. 

I’m can’t promise you that the mainstream media, the Democratic Party, or the establishment wing of the Republican Party care particularly much about you, specifically, either. I’m fairly certain they don’t give a damn about me, specifically, to be honest. But I do know that, compared with Trump and his handful of loyal media companies, a significant portion of those entities and individuals — maybe even most — care about *something* greater than themselves. And what this country needs, more than anything else, is a return to the believing that it matters to care about something greater than yourself, your family unit, your worldview. 

Because at the end of the day, there’s one basic fact we can’t escape: We’re in this together. Whether you’re a Trump voter or a Biden voter. Whether you’re white or Black or Native American or Latino or Asian or other. Whether you’re straight or gay or bi or undecided. Whether you’re rich or middle class or working class or destitute. Whether you’re from the North or the South. Whether you were born here or immigrated here for a better life. 

If they burn, we burn. If we burn, you burn. And so forth. 

Not a single one of us has to burn at all. Ever. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not 10 years from now. Never. But we have to start now. Put the matches away. Put Donald Trump away.