‘It Was Wild’

 

Last week, a sitting U.S. President, loser of a recent national election, urged his followers to show their support of him, by marching on the Capitol and showing their belief that the recent election result was a mistake. He saw the show of numbers that was planned on January 6th, apparently orchestrated to express strong public disbelief in the validity of the election result amongst his supporters, as a joyful event: ‘It’ll be wild!’ 

Well, it certainly was exactly that. It was wild. 

The U.S. Republic, from its buildings and its design, to its Constitution, is designed on the Roman plan. Its emphasis on democracy, individualism and on the rights of its citizens, is also a Classical foundation. 

To protest against the validity of a process that takes place in these conceptual spheres and physical buildings of justice and legislation, you have to speak the language and look the part. 

The 45th President’s attempts to appear and be Presidential were somewhat erratic and impulse-based. His communicative style was informal, and his irreverence appealed to his supporters, who were frequently approving of his raucous, bawdy, crude and vulgar presentation. He was seen as the embodiment of individualism and praised as an original. 

His supporters, however, the most visible ones who stormed the Capitol and climbed walls and broke windows and doors, definitely breached not only the security parameters of the building which represents U.S. governance, but the limits of tolerance extended to him by even members of his own Republican Party. 

Ivanka Trump initially attempted to describe the protestors as ‘American Patriots’, but deleted her comment as the footage of the violence was visually broadcast throughout the world. If you are focused on appearances, and what PR and marketing executives call ‘optics’, you realize it’s not a good look to be calling people ‘patriots’ when they are desecrating and defacing public buildings and historically significant statuary and items of furniture which are of symbolic importance to the people. 

There are a lot of theatrics involved in coups, insurrections and insurgencies. Trump is quoted as saying later that day that he wished his supporters didn’t ‘look so low class’. Many of them were brought in by bus from the regional areas of the country, and had only imperfectly understood the principles of the glorious revolution that their leaders had planned. And overestimated their leader’s seriousness when he promised he would ‘be there with them’. 

On a basic level, they were told that they were going to be making themselves heard, that they were going to ‘conquer the Hill’, that they were going to ‘fight for their country’, that they were marching to ‘take back their country’ and ‘occupy the Capitol because it belongs to them’. 

These foot soldiers were going to protest the election, because under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, they are entitled to express their opinion, and entitled to engage in peaceful protest. They were armed, because under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, they are entitled to carry weapons for self defense.  

But ropes and ties which can be used to restrain people and take them hostage are not weapons of defense; and a hanging gallows is nothing but a threat of assassination, and flag posts and fire extinguishers used as clubs to beat policemen and guards were not used in defense but in assault. 

Some elements of the mob came prepared to intimidate, wound and kill the perceived enemy, including lawmakers Pelosi and Pence, as leaders of the administration they considered fraudulent in their practices. 

The mayhem that ensued looked as if it was a film, rather than a real event. It looked tribal, and primitive, as if the building had suddenly been co-opted for a giant cosplay event. It looked like scenes from the French Revolution, except in this era people had mobile phones to record their acts of  ‘patriotism’, and through which their presence in an insurrection can now be traced, and held against them. 

Attempts to glorify what happened over the hours of January 6th are not likely to succeed. It was too public, and too crude, too obviously orchestrated - and too wild. 

The organizers had apparently lost control of the situation, and now have subsequently lost control of the narrative about who is right and who is wrong. Their chosen form of assertion of their rights lacked any balancing measure of any sense of responsibility. 

Howling like a wild wolf in the seat of legislative process made one vegan man famous. But the caption to his meme embodying American individualism might well have been written by the poet Walt Whitman: 

‘I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world’. 

The 45th President has been praised for not starting a war during his term in office. He has not started external wars. But he has incited civil war, within the country, fracturing a divided nation over which he presided, to the point where neither side respect nor trusts the other, and every act and word is seen as politicized and partisan.