From the Battlefield of Gettysburg to the Storming of U.S. Capitol: Will American Democracy Survive?

A year ago today, America faced an existential crisis similar to the Civil War that raged from 1861-1865. But in a sense, the insurrection of January 6, 2021, in which ex-president Donald Trump tried to orchestrate a violent takeover of the country, was a greater threat to America than the Civil War because of its intent and purpose. The Republican Party, in thrall to a morally bankrupt psychopathic demagogue, went along with Trump’s incitement to the rioters to “fight like hell” to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the 2020 presidential election. The live-streamed attack on the U.S. Capitol, the bastion of our democracy, by the murderous mob known as Trump fanatics, aided and abetted by the conspirator-in-chief and by Republican sycophants, brought America to the brink. 

It may sound like a cliché, but Providence saved America from ruin on January 6, 2021, a day that, like December 7^th, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, will also live in infamy.

So, what now? What can we ordinary Americans do to ensure that January 6, 2021, never repeats, that the rule of law will still prevail in a viciously polarized country, that the tradition of peaceful transfer of power will continue to endure as the hallmark of our democracy?

Not much, really, unless the midterm elections this year propels Democrats to significant majorities in both Congress and Senate. How likely is that to happen? Not very.

The immediate issue at hand is applying the rule of law to the Trumpers who scaled the walls and smashed the partitions in the Capitol on this day last year.

 

Over 725 people have been arrested but only 71 – about one-tenth - have been sentenced so far. They include a company CEO, an architect, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, a gym owner, a former Houston police officer, a wealthy Texan realtor who flew her private jet with friends to join the insurrection, and a University of Kentucky student. One of the most notorious, Florida businessman Robert Palmer, was sentenced to 63 months in prison. Palmer’s tears of repentance did not sway the judge. “It has to be made clear that trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers is going to be met with certain punishment,” said the judge.

 

The elephant in the room, of course, is the ringleader and his acolytes. Unless Donald Trump and Republicans like Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others pay the price for their mendacity, instigation and active support of the insurrection, merely sentencing the fanatics and the foot soldiers will make a mockery of the law.

 

So far, not only has nothing happened to Trump, his star seems to be rising even higher among Republicans since his defeat. That is the reason why America’s experiment with democracy and the rule of law continues to be under assault, with no assurance that democracy will hold the fort.

 

From Lincoln’s Gettysburg exhortations to Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery and beyond, America has faced one crisis after another with courage, resilience and fierce loyalty to the foundational values of our nation. 

When historians peel away the layers leading up to the insurrection of January 6, 2021, they will find at its core one dominant idea: The fear of white supremacists, overwhelmingly Republican, that America is slipping away from their grasp. The original sin of America is not slavery but white supremacy. This supremacy monster has now bared its fangs in its possibly final attempt to put all non-whites in their places and reinstall white supremacy back to the throne.

 

Will this work? The tragic truth, given how hyperpolarized America is now, is that we don’t know. 

Yet, if Providence has been kind to America whenever it faced an existential crisis, perhaps Providence will be kind to America this time too. But, as the saying goes, God helps those who help themselves. It is up to us ordinary Americans who, despite our differences, still believe in our country as a shining city upon a hill, to make sure that government “of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

A Bangladeshi-American Reflects on the Insurrection

I became a naturalized American citizen in 1985, joining about 150 about-to-become-Americans from around the world to take the oath of allegiance in a spacious room in the old City Hall of San Jose.

On January 6^th, when armed insurrectionists, incited by president Trump and his enablers, stormed the US Capitol, I re-read the oath I took over three decades ago. One sentence stood out: “I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

It is the last word of that sentence that riveted me, for it was clear watching the horrific events unfold in our Capital that what most threatens our country now is domestic terrorism by white supremacists.

While lawmakers weigh various options to prevent a rogue and reckless Trump from causing even more carnage in the last days of his presidency, I find myself asking, “As an ordinary citizen, what can I do to defend my country against domestic terrorists in these terrifying times?”

Here’s what I am committing myself to, and I hope my fellow-Americans, by birth or naturalized but perhaps silent until now, will make similar commitments.

First, I will join hands with as many organizations as I can across America who are determined to root out the evil of racial superiority through legal means. In that regard, irrespective of creed and color, we must always remember that it was blacks who were most instrumental in delivering the presidency to Joe Biden in the November 2020 election. His campaign was on life support until South Carolina’s congressman James Clyburn offered his impassioned support in February last year that propelled him to the front of the pack. Biden never looked back after that.

What about Democrats flipping the Senate only a day before our Capitol was desecrated? The wins by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were mostly due to massive voter enfranchisement effort led by Stacey Abrams, whose ‘Fair Fight’ group helped register 800,000 new voters in just two years, despite insidious voter suppression tactics used by Georgia’s Republican establishment.

Second, I will connect with our elected officials to convince them that while we revere our Constitution, we should not treat it as an immutable, timeless document. The history of amendments, beginning with the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1-10), adopted in 1791, to Amendment 26, adopted in 1971, show that we can treat our constitution as a living and breathing document that can change to meet the challenges of the times.

The anachronistic electoral college is certainly something to be looked at, but one area that needs urgent consideration is the power of the Executive branch of our government.

The constitution was written by patriots for whom it was an article of faith that the highest office in the land will always be held by an American of character, decency, reason and sanity. The last four years have shown how a president, bereft of such qualities, can exploit the constitution for his vile and demagogic purposes. Unless we close the loopholes that give unlimited power to an unfit president with his personal mercenaries, more carnages and assaults on our defining values will continue under future Trumps.

Evil triumphs when good people do nothing, as Edmund Burke wrote over two centuries ago. I know I can do more, but these are my two immediate action items to help me keep my promise as a Bangladeshi-American to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”