Actually, It IS Who You Are

On Jan­u­ary 6th there was a coup attempt in the Unit­ed States.

Tech­ni­cal­ly it was the cul­mi­na­tion of a “slow burn” coup that had been going for two months, one that start­ed the night the sit­ting Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States declared vic­to­ry before all the legit­i­mate­ly cast votes had been count­ed. 

The coup was doomed to fail. It was car­ried off in a dis­or­ga­nized, half-ass way like every­thing else this admin­is­tra­tion has touched, whether it be build­ing a wall or a vac­cine roll out. It was pri­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed by an online mob of lead­er­less Nazis, neon­azis, and white suprema­cists whose sheer sense of white, male enti­tle­ment led them to do things like take self­ies at Nan­cy Pelosi’s desk and steal her mail instead of con­front the true grav­i­tas of what they were per­pe­trat­ing. And they were incit­ed by Trump who promised to lead them down Penn­syl­va­nia Ave., but instead cow­ard­ly ducked away into his bunker and let sto­chas­tic agents he had whipped up behave like a lead­er­less mob. And so, it might be pos­si­ble to dis­miss the day’s events as some sort of mob psy­chol­o­gy gone hor­ri­bly wrong––a lot of angry peo­ple who got car­ried away.

But in the final analy­sis, what real­ly hap­pened was that an armed insur­rec­tion, with mal­ice afore­thought, hav­ing dis­cussed their vio­lence pre­vi­ous­ly online in forums like Par­ler, showed up to the seat of gov­ern­ment intent on sub­vert­ing the results of an elec­tion* and were allowed in by the police (who thought they were on the same side) in a nation­al secu­ri­ty cat­a­stro­phe. [ETA: That we now know hap­pened because Trump delib­er­ate­ly held back the nation­al guard.]

That’s a coup.

Just because it went off like key­stone capers does­n’t make it NOT a coup. 

The rest of this is smoke-filled, cof­fee-house crap, and after-the-fact arm­chair quar­ter­back­ing. The results of the day may have been anar­chy, but these ter­ror­ists were any­thing but anar­chists. In fact, they had extreme­ly explic­it designs about who would gov­ern and how––and in most cas­es, extreme­ly out­spo­ken ide­olo­gies about what sorts of “slow geno­cide” poli­cies the gov­ern­ment would use its pow­er to exe­cute. That’s not anar­chy.

That the “rev­o­lu­tion,” with its decen­tral­ized author­i­ty, was as incom­pe­tent as the very Pres­i­dent it sought to enti­tle, and unfold­ed in the same epic fail man­ner as every­thing else Trump touch­es, was a stroke of unde­served luck. Had an orga­nized cell with an agen­da and a com­pe­tent leader entered the build­ing in tan­dem with (and under cov­er of) the more chaot­ic insur­rec­tion­ists, the sto­ry could have eas­i­ly been about Democ­rats (and Mike Pence) being pulled out of their offices and exe­cut­ed one by one. And in fact, we saw some peo­ple clear­ly had that very inten­tion if they had got­ten their hands on any­one they did­n’t like.

(*I can’t in good con­science say that it was a free and fair elec­tion, but the right isn’t inter­est­ed in the actu­al problems––like vot­er ID laws, vot­er scrub­bing, ger­ry­man­der­ing, and the elec­toral col­lege itself––that make the U.S. a “flawed” democ­ra­cy in the eyes of the world. Most­ly because those things have all been insti­tut­ed by the right and help them main­tain pow­er.)

And now Lind­sey Gra­ham, who has nev­er found a Trumpian cause unwor­thy of pro­vid­ing a few more stock “angry white guy” pho­to ops, has said “enough is enough,” res­ig­na­tions are hap­pen­ing left and right (includ­ing cab­i­net mem­bers), and even Repub­li­cans are talk­ing about the 25th amend­ment.

But of course, what I heard over and over from Repub­li­can lips was this phrase that reached near “thoughts and prayers” in its mean­ing­less­ness: “This is not who we are.”

“This is not who we are.”

It was like a bro­ken record. “This is not who we are.” “This is not who we are.” “This is not who we are.” Some Democ­rats also said this, and those Democ­rats may need to con­front their will­ing­ness to be civ­il over all oth­er val­ues and/or rumi­nate on what they allowed, by inac­tion, to hap­pen and what they’re will­ing to for­give with­out account­abil­i­ty, but today I speak to and about the Republicans––at least the 90% of them who con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed Trump, those in the lead­er­ship who enabled him, and those who could muster lit­tle more than a piece­meal “deep con­cern” for his behav­ior each time he did some­thing breath­tak­ing­ly hor­rif­ic, but gen­er­al­ly told us we were being “hys­ter­i­cal” and were sim­ply expe­ri­enc­ing noth­ing but the same sort of “hate” for Trump that they’d had for Oba­ma.

To all of you, I want to make this crys­tal clear. I want to make it unswerv­ing­ly direct. I want no room for ambi­gu­i­ty. I don’t want to be mis­con­strued in any pos­si­ble way. 

This IS who you are.

Let me say that again: This IS who you are.

Maybe you’re look­ing at your­self in the mir­ror or at the con­se­quences writ large of the actions an ego­ma­ni­ac who would rather invoke sto­chas­tic ter­ror­ism than admit defeat in a demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion, and the fact that yok­ing the fas­cists to win some SCOTUS seats is look­ing a lit­tle too Faus­t­ian for your tastes when the bill comes due….  

And maybe you’ve decid­ed that it isn’t who you WANT to be, but it IS who you are. 

This IS who you are.

• It is who you were when, out of a field of 17, you chose the guy who took out full-page ads call­ing for the death penal­ty on inno­cent black men, had a jack­et of racist com­plaints going back decades, and spear­head­ed the claim that Oba­ma was not a U.S. cit­i­zen. 
• It was who you were when you picked the guy who bragged about the size of his dick and called peo­ple names in a nation­al debate, requir­ing the birth of a new vocab­u­lary word that means “anti-pres­i­den­tial.”
• It was who you were when he told you exact­ly who he was and you did­n’t recoil in hor­ror.
• It was who you were when he bragged about tax fraud and stiff­ing con­trac­tors and you didn’t con­sid­er that maybe he was going to be a grifter and a fraud. 
• It is who you were when his bla­tant­ly big­ot­ed state­ments earned your admi­ra­tion for speak­ing his mind.
• It was who you were when his doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of racism didn’t give you pause and maybe, in places you don’t talk about in mixed com­pa­ny, you kind of liked it.
• It was who you were when he began to mantra, “We’re going to build a wall. (He didn’t) And we’re going to make Mex­i­co pay for it. (Also no.)” and your cheers only became loud­er. 
• It was who you were when he promised he could get sol­diers to vio­late the Gene­va Con­ven­tions, and that didn’t give you pause.
• It was who you were when you elect­ed a bully––not sit­ting out the elec­tion in a sort of dull hor­ror, but show­ing up for him in droves.
• It was who you were when we told you that some­one endorsed by Nazis, neon­azis, and white suprema­cists would embold­en those ide­olo­gies and you told us we were snowflakes who need­ed to get over it.
• It was who you were when you want­ed him to hurt the right peo­ple.
• It was who you were when actu­al email secu­ri­ty breach­es gar­nered your limp shrugs after an entire elec­tion cycle of “but her emails.”
• It was who you were while you ignored a can­di­date who was chum­my with a known child sex traf­fick­er, who bragged about sex­u­al assault, who had dozens of cred­i­ble assault alle­ga­tions, while the idea that Clin­ton was run­ning a sex-traf­fick­ing ring out of a piz­za par­lor base­ment sound­ed plau­si­ble enough to demand answers.
• It was who you were when you val­ued a real­i­ty show star, who bank­rupt­ed every­thing he touched and with zero polit­i­cal acu­men, over any­one who had the slight­est exper­tise in the art of the D.C. com­pro­mise because he assured you he was a bil­lion­aire and did well in “deals” (usu­al­ly the kind of deals where he’s the boss and has all the lever­age).
• It was who you were when you spent six years with a pull string on your back that said. “Beng­hazi Beng­hazi Beng­hazi. We need anoth­er inves­ti­ga­tion. I just want the TRUTH.” And it was who you were when you mocked and belit­tled the Rus­sia probe after it (rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly) found actu­al cred­i­ble over­whelm­ing evi­dence of elec­tion inter­fer­ence, some lev­el col­lu­sion (and prob­a­bly more), and led to dozens of con­vic­tions.
• It was who you were when you ignored the evi­dence that actu­al states­men (states­peo­ple?) would have the diplo­mat­ic savvy to run rings around him and he kind of bent to who­ev­er was the last per­son in the room with him.
• It was who you were when you shrugged at how chum­my he was with dic­ta­tors and how he just couldn’t get along with allies. It was who you were when you gig­gled along instead of giv­ing him that “dude.…no” look every time he made his haha jokes about author­i­tar­i­an regimes real­ly know­ing how to do things, even when he was stand­ing in places known for geno­cid­ing their mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. 
• It was who you were when he insist­ed he had, in fact, won the pop­u­lar vote against Clin­ton and that––despite ALL evi­dence to the contrary––all four mil­lion votes he lost by were fraud­u­lent. And that didn’t raise alarm bells in your mind that he wasn’t going to be able to han­dle los­ing.
• It was who you were when you blew off his com­ments about extra terms or about lik­ing the con­ve­nience of being a leader under author­i­tar­i­an­ism.
• It was who you were when he couldn’t han­dle his any­thing being small­er than Obama’s, lit­er­al­ly looked at a pic­ture of a frac­tion­al­ly-sized inau­gu­ra­tion atten­dance, and lied his ass off that it was big­ger. And instead of becom­ing con­cerned that appar­ent­ly the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States was appar­ent­ly SO self-absorbed and del­i­cate that he could­n’t han­dle the truth, you laughed and went along with the “joke” and did­n’t notice that you were argu­ing that 2+2=5 on day one. 
• It was who you were when high-rank­ing mem­bers of his admin­is­tra­tion prof­fered the idea of “alter­na­tive facts” and you laughed because that “trig­gered the libs.”
• It was who you were when he reversed every cam­paign promise he made to dis­close his finan­cials, his health, his sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions, and you shrugged.
• It was who you were when you dis­missed our con­cerns about his dis­re­spect for prece­dent, and the fact that every week was a new con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis because, if he knew the con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its of his pow­er (doubt­ful), he didn’t CARE. And it was who you were when the ardent warn­ings of his­to­ri­ans, peo­ple from author­i­tar­i­an coun­tries, even the frick­en ADL (and you know it’s not just Godwin’s law when the ADL is jump­ing up and down and scream­ing) made you roll your eyes even hard­er and dou­ble down on the cult men­tal­i­ty of we vs. they think­ing.
• It was who you were when one by one, every mem­ber of his inner cir­cle got caught in a bald-face lie about their involve­ment with Rus­sia and you blamed lib­er­als and Democ­rats for hav­ing the audac­i­ty to bring it up.
• It was who you were when you pre­tend­ed you couldn’t even wrap your brains around what Trump might have POSSIBLY done that wasn’t above reproach when the full Muller report came out. You who spent entire news cycles apoplec­tic about hot sauce and tan suits and half-heart­ed salutes.
• It was who you were when you told us to fuck our feel­ings. It was who you were when you called us snowflakes for pro­vid­ing so much as a speed bump in the road to hurt­ing “the right peo­ple.” It was who you were when you told us we’d lost and to get over it. It was who you were when you did­n’t bat an eye­lash as the GOP aban­doned all pre­tense at gov­ern­ing a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety.
• It was who you were when you didn’t stop obscene pow­er grabs at the state lev­el (like in Michi­gan), and instead prac­ti­cal­ly dared Democ­rats to stop you.
• It was who you were when one by one, you kissed the ring and the par­ty became Don­ald Trump and Don­ald Trump became the par­ty.
• It was who you were when you let him peel off con­sci­en­tious objec­tors (who had an iota of integri­ty) one by one and send his fol­low­ers like jack­als to rip them apart.
• It was who you were when he retweet­ed white suprema­cists, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, and open big­ots with no con­se­quence.
• It was who you were when you allowed him to attack the media unre­lent­ing­ly if they said any­thing he didn’t like. It was who you were when you allowed him to attack the courts unre­lent­ing­ly if they made a rul­ing he didn’t like. It was who you were when you allowed him to attack the leg­is­la­ture when they did any­thing he did­n’t like. It was who you were when you shrugged as he bat­tered away at the very pil­lars of democ­ra­cy.
• It was who you were when Trump cheered the police vio­lence (and ordered more) dur­ing demon­stra­tions of groups that had the temer­i­ty to say, “Please stop killing us.”
• It was who you were when he called white nation­al­ists, whose ide­ol­o­gy had led some­one to com­mit vehic­u­lar manslaugh­ter, “very fine peo­ple” and you voiced noth­ing but “trou­bling con­cern” in con­cert with some deeply fur­rowed brows.
• It was who you were when he wouldn’t denounce white suprema­cy and instead told the Proud Boys to “stand by” and that got swept under the rug as a mis­s­peak. 
• It was who you were when he wouldn’t denounce white suprema­cy the time before that and you didn’t care.
• And the time before that.
• It was who you were when he did­n’t sound­ly con­demn a plot to kid­nap the gov­er­nor of Michi­gan, and you weren’t hor­ri­fied at such par­ti­san behav­ior.
• It was who you were when Trump was impeached for sub­vert­ing U.S. democ­ra­cy and lit­er­al­ly the only defense the best legal minds in the fuck­ing world could come up with was, “Yes, he clear­ly lied and sub­vert­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion and did all the high crimes and mis­de­meanors of which he stands accused, but it’s late in his term, so let’s just wait for the elec­tion, kay?”
• It was who you were when you would­n’t allow wit­ness­es at said impeach­ment tri­al. 
• It was who you were when he said “ani­mals,” “shit­hole coun­tries” “Chi­na virus” (and JFC “Kung flu”) and you fell over your­selves to excuse, ratio­nal­ize, and jus­ti­fy his crys­tal clear mean­ing with mis­placed mod­i­fiers and gram­mar sleights of hand.
• It was who you were when you looked the oth­er way at kids in cages.
• It was who you were when trav­el bans earned your praise.
• It was who you were when you ignored how Trump start­ed repeat­ing QAnon––how you gig­gled and exchanged know­ing glances when he said “The valiant truth-seek­er, fight­ing-the-good-fight-against-child-traf­fick­ing patri­ots who like me very much? Nev­er heard of him.”
• It was who you were when Trump ignored and crim­i­nal­ly mis­man­aged a glob­al pan­dem­ic for months, lead­ing to the deaths of hun­dreds of thou­sands who did not have to die, and you took up the ral­ly­ing cry of “econ­o­my” and threw the most vul­ner­a­ble into the meat grinder of our imme­di­ate finan­cial recov­ery (which didn’t even work).
• It was who you were when you poo-pooed the dan­ger of the virus to such a degree that you fol­lowed him in aggres­sive­ly refus­ing to take even the sim­plest pre­cau­tions to pro­tect oth­ers, like wear­ing a mask or not throw­ing par­ties.
• It was who you were when you cheered Mitch McConnell for not even bring­ing bills (with the sup­port to pass) to the floor of the Sen­ate, enact­ing his per­son­al, one-man veto on any­thing he didn’t like and then, stand­ing in front of stack of leg­is­la­tion taller than him that he refused to vote on, accus­ing the House, with a straight face, of not get­ting any­thing done.
• It was who you were when voice after voice after voice warned you that Trump was the kind of dan­ger­ous author­i­tar­i­an who could end a democracy––that there wasn’t going to be an adult in the room; that the con­sti­tu­tion would not come to life and form a giant Mecha with ener­gy can­nons if it was ever vio­lat­ed TOO much––but instead of lis­ten­ing, you tossed them into an ever-grow­ing con­spir­a­cy of “haters.”
• It was who you were when you enjoyed the deli­cious boun­ty of your “Faus­t­ian deal,” as you rushed through a tax code “reform” in the dead of night with­out debate (that end­ed up being worse for every­one but the super rich when it was final­ly unpacked) and when you rammed through one SCOTUS nom­i­nee (while silenc­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into his cred­i­ble sex­u­al assault threat that even the FBI said they didn’t have enough time to fin­ish), and when you blast­ed anoth­er through with weeks to go before an elec­tion (in breath­tak­ing, spec­tac­u­lar hypocrisy of your “total­ly not par­ti­san” posi­tion four years pri­or). It was who you were, by the way, when this rushed con­fir­ma­tion left stim­u­lus by the way­side while mil­lions of Amer­i­cans fell into pover­ty from your con­tin­ued inac­tion.
• It was who you were when Trump start­ed to con­test the elec­tion results as fraud­u­lent and you found that was real­ly good for fundrais­ing, so you didn’t shut him down.
• It was who you were when lit­er­al­ly you could tell which GOP mem­bers were mak­ing a bid for 2024 by who was still say­ing the elec­tion was rigged.
• It was who you were when his calls for sto­chas­tic ter­ror­ism grew loud­er and you watched (or joined) as he fed his peo­ple a diet of dis­trust for any court, jour­nal­ism medi­um, expert, or sci­en­tist who dis­agreed with him, so that the whole lot believed with grow­ing fer­vor in debunked and out­ra­geous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.
• It was who you were when your response to a pres­i­dent refus­ing to peace­ful­ly trans­fer pow­er was to form a cau­cus with “sedi­tion” in the name.
• It was who you were when you all but ignored an exo­dus from Face­book (which is not like…..super mean to right-wing groups) so the alt-right could say what they REALLY want­ed on Par­ler, and what they want­ed to say turned out to be explic­it calls for vio­lence and increas­ing orga­ni­za­tion. 

IT IS WHO YOU WERE.

And it was still who you were when the vio­lent con­se­quences of your deci­sions man­i­fest­ed in the form of a group of domes­tic ter­ror­ists and in a way you seem to think wasn’t telegraphed for years. You can’t retroac­tive­ly uncou­ple your­self from the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of your long his­to­ry of behav­ior in the last few sec­onds before the cul­mi­na­tion like a pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal who real­ly only laments the mis­take they made that got them caught.

You can­not be com­plic­it in every step lead­ing up to a (pre­dictable) result and then mag­i­cal­ly excul­pate your­self from the con­se­quences.

It is who you are when your col­leagues STILL get up, even the next day, and repeat the most out­ra­geous claims (“it was all ANTIFA!”) with lit­tle or no con­se­quences. When they have sup­port­ed a slow coup and ducked any real or seri­ous con­se­quence by say­ing “That’s not who we are” when the direct con­se­quence of their behav­ior was vio­lence. It is still who you are when you deliv­er slaps on the wrist instead of offer­ing seri­ous con­se­quences and remov­ing from pow­er all those who have tech­ni­cal­ly com­mit­ted trea­son. It is who you are when near­ly half of Repub­li­cans still sup­port the storm­ing of the capi­tol. 

So when you say “this is not who we are” you are in error. At least in the moment you spoke it. This is the just the inevitable con­clu­sion to who you have been for years––for what you have been court­ing for polit­i­cal gain. This result stood atop the scaf­fold­ing you’ve been method­i­cal­ly assem­bling most of your lives and/or polit­i­cal careers. This is the reper­cus­sion that we have been try­ing to tell you has been inex­orably approach­ing for decades––because, real­ly, Trump was no more than the avatar of all the things fes­ter­ing with­in the GOP and exploit­ed for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy. 

This IS who you are!

But it doesn’t have to be.

Now you have to decide, hav­ing looked at the naked, inevitable con­clu­sion of what you have wrought, if this is who you want to con­tin­ue to be. You can­not be John Ham­mond stand­ing amongst those killed by the dinosaurs and give a glib, “This is not who we are.” You chose all the steps that led to this moment. You encour­aged it, orga­nized it, and facil­i­tat­ed it. You can’t clutch your pearls that some took the next step. And you can’t act as if not repu­di­at­ing these steps won’t con­tin­ue to lead to esca­la­tion. If this isn’t who you want to be, then every­thing lead­ing up to it has to go as well.

If it doesn’t…this IS who you are.

Ques­tions? Com­ments? Want a future arti­cle to go into more detail? Mail me through our con­tact form. Just be sure to pick the right top­ic from the drop down menu, and check the archives—particularly the F.A.Q.—to see if your ques­tion has been asked before.

If you’re enjoy­ing this blog, and would like to see more arti­cles like this one, the writer is a guy with rent and insur­ance to pay who would love to spend more time writ­ing. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing to my Patre­on. As lit­tle as $3/month (less-than-a-lat­te a month) will get you in on backchan­nel con­ver­sa­tions, patron-only polls, and my spe­cial ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

Or if a one-time dona­tion (or some type of non-mon­e­tary dona­tion) is more your speed, I have a Tip Jar with all the ways to help.