by Ruth A. Sheets
Happy New Year! I remember beginning 2021 with great
hope that 2021 would see the end of COVID-19 (it hasn’t) and that Joe Biden and
Kamala Harris would bring some strong positive changes to our nation (they
have). I also hoped climate change AKA global warming would become the
top priority it should be (it hasn’t but some small movement is happening).
I knew Donald Trump could not let go of power and was scheming to keep Biden/Harris from taking office. I had no idea his obsession with power would lead him to incite an insurrection. That horrific event unfolded in front of the nation on TV, radio, and social media. I had known in the past that rioting sometimes happened when poor, disenfranchised people had given up hope that their lives would improve and that they would finally be treated like full citizens of this country, but not a riot by privileged white folks.
Trump’s supporters are not disenfranchised, though some are poor. Most are white and have the privileges that provides. Despite this, Mr. Trump and his entourage had convinced a significant number of them that they are owed something and had the right to claim it by whatever means necessary. In addition, Democrats in general and minorities in particular had cheated Mr. Trump of the presidency and his followers had the right to take it back for him.
As a former teacher, I can’t help but wonder why the teachers of the insurgents hadn’t gotten them to understand how our government works. When a fair election is held (as the 2020 election was), the actually elected president and vice-president would assume their positions at the head of our government.
Where is critical thinking among the Trump supporters? How is it they would believe a man who lied more than 30,000 times in public in the four years of his presidency over the thousands of Republican and Democratic election officials throughout the country who had certified the election for Biden/Harris?
I remember reading that if a person has been entitled and given all kinds of advantages, equality seems to them like oppression. I think that is what is happening here. Trump and his entourage are tapping into the deep fear among some white folks that somehow they will lose their advantages which, of course, they don’t see as advantages, but rights. They are so used to everything being a competition where someone wins which means the rest have to lose. They have no concept of a win-win scenario where everyone can win. People of color can obtain full citizenship without causing white Americans to be less than full citizens. Too many of the Trump supporters think that somehow they have the right to become millionaires because that is their destiny, so taxing millionaires and billionaires at fair rates might cause them to lose some of their “hard-won” money.
I have been pondering this for a long time. How did such a large segment of our population come to be so fearful of everyone and everything that they don’t fully know? I believe it is largely because over time there has been very little accountability for this group’s behavior. There has always been double standards for the ways white people and people of color have been treated in our country. From the very beginning, white individuals and groups have perpetrated violence against those they don’t like or trust. Rarely have they been held responsible. In fact, they have often been encouraged.
Even though most white people in the South, for example didn’t own slaves, they saw slavery as their right. Most white people didn’t wreck the homes of Black people moving into their neighborhoods, but they saw it as their right if they had chosen too because “those people didn’t belong here in our neighborhood anyway.” When Chinese-owned businesses were destroyed, it was often seen as just the way things were and “if those people didn’t like it they should go back where they came from.” Rarely was anyone even charged for these crimes. Lynchings were often public events, family fare. If anyone questioned the behavior, they too could be targeted no matter their color. Few spoke up against the US Government’s imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. It is rare for charges to be brought against workers at detention centers who abuse, even kill the immigrants imprisoned there.
The insurrection, as I see it, is an outgrowth of irresponsibility. The media covered Trump as though he were worthy of attention beyond anything he had done. All he had to do was read a script on the teleprompter and he was “acting presidential.” The media when he ran for election covered him and his antics many times more than Hillary Clinton who actually deserved quality coverage because she had experience and plans to help the people of this country, while Trump had neither.
Trump was given the OK to speak outside the White House on January 6, 2021, another speech filled with lies and insults of people he didn’t like. He claimed there was so much fraud in 6 of the states that he actually won the election. His speech has been replayed in part and whole during the past year, so anyone who pays attention knows what he told his most rabid supporters.
Trump and his cronies had planned a lot of what happened following his speech. The goal, stop the formal electoral college count no matter how. (OK, it is just another proof that the electoral college needs to be gone, but that is an aside.)
I can’t help but wonder how things would have been different had those who attacked our Capitol been Black or other people of color. I suspect there would have been many left dead on the floor. That was one of my first thoughts even as the attack was going on. That’s because racism is really alive and very healthy in our nation as it has always been. Events of this past year make that quite clear.
- A white man killed 2 men and injured another at a protest
he had no business being at and was found not-guilty.
- School boards all over this country are trying to
reinstate the old practice of white-washing American history so fragile little
white kids won’t be upset by the appalling actions of people who could have
been their ancestors.
- School boards are working to ban books by and about people
of color so their straight white kids won’t have to read about people different
from themselves.
- Anti-voting bills have been introduced in 48 states and
several have passed, particularly in former Confederate states to specifically
keep people of color from voting.
- Donald Trump and his racist rants still play very well on
Fox “News” and other outlets run and visited primarily by scared whites, mostly
men, and he still holds rallies for his racist supporters.
So, it is the anniversary of January 6th. What are we going to do about it? Will Donald Trump and the organizers of the insurgency be held accountable? I honestly doubt it. Our Attorney General did not seem too keen on dealing with this event with the urgency it deserves. Somehow, Donald Trump will again be let off like a spoiled child and our nation will be scarred by our continued inability to hold people accountable for their actions, or rather, the white Republican ones. Biden is already being held accountable, blamed for not doing something in his first year, I am not quite sure what that is because he rolled out COVID vaccines to all the states with unprecedented speed, passed a bill to financially support families, got an infrastructure bill passed that will fix a lot of our roads, bridges, railways, as well as expand the internet, and appointed really qualified judges for the federal courts. That’s pretty damn amazing, but not to the media which is already regularly predicting a Republican take-over in this year’s elections.
Do I think there will be fair accountability for the insurrection? No, I don’t. I do want to be proven wrong, though.
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