On yesterday’s attempted coup
To say yesterday was a disaster would be an object lesson in understatement. Armed insurrectionists overran the U.S. Capitol. Though their rebellion was doomed from the start, the treasonous mob embarrassed the nation on the world stage. The fact that their rebellion wasn’t met with overwhelming force only serves to deepen the shame.
The entire four years of Donald Trump’s presidency has been a global embarrassment. Yesterday was just (hopefully) the culmination of it. It’s going to be a long time before the rest of the world is able to take us seriously again. The president of the United States, aided and abetted by several senators, incited a rebellion in the capital. What the hell?
Let’s talk consequences. Impeaching Donald Trump with under two weeks left in his presidency is probably not going to happen fast enough. Though barring Trump from ever holding federal office again would be a good thing. (More understatement.) Whether or not impeachment happens, the Justice Department should prosecute Trump to the fullest extent possible. I don’t have to have taken Criminal Law or Constitutional Law yet to know that he probably broke several laws this week alone. Normally, it’s not a good look for a new president’s Justice Department to prosecute that president’s former opponent. But an exception is in order for sedition.
The Senate should also bring the hammer down on Trump’s enablers. Josh Hawley has already lost his book deal. The free market has delivered its own brand of justice. But that’s not enough. Hawley, along with Ted Cruz and the other senators who helped Trump incite yesterday’s rebellion, should be censured by the Senate. Let history remember them the same way it remembers Joe McCarthy: would-be demagogues willing to sacrifice any principles they might have had on the altar of their own ambition.
However, we should also be clear that now is not a time for the wholesale denunciation of conservatism. Indeed, open dialogue and the push-and-pull between honest liberalism and honest conservatism is as necessary now as it ever has been. Writing off a whole way of thinking because of its worst elements will only serve to deepen the divisions of our nation and lead to further violence. This isn’t a both-sides-ism. The next coup might not be led by an idiot so we should be careful about summoning that demon.
For precisely that reason, I’m glad Joe Biden is going to be the next president of the United States. He may not be the world’s most inspiring statesman and he might not have had all the policy proposals that I would have preferred. But he’s a decent man and a steady hand. More than any others, those are the leadership traits that America needs right now. I’m praying Joe Biden will be the man for the moment. I genuinely believe he will be. But God help us if he’s not.
