The Final Straw: The Capitol Attack
It all started with George Washington, America’s first president, placing the cornerstone for the Capitol in 1793. Since then the United States Capitol has been the meeting place of the United States Congress and the seat of the legislative branch of the U.S. federal government. It has been a ‘’monument to the American people and their government’’, representing the political power and social order of the country.
The Capitol was built to represent strength, justice, and democracy for the people of America but it would be a lie to say that that’s all it symbolizes. From the burning of the Capitol in 1814 to the only successful coup d’etat in 1898, the Capitol building has also been the site of violence, shootings, break-ins, and strong hatred. Knowing that the Capitol has a history of violence, the attack on January 6th was neither unexpected nor unprecedented. The experts did anticipate that the elections would spark protests where extremists would exploit to commit violence. However, few anticipated that it would escalate this far. Nobody noticed when or how thousands of Americans felt the need to attack and start a war against the temple of American democracy.
On December 30, Trump called on his supporters to head to Washiıngton D.C for a rally. “Be there, will be wild!’’ he tweeted and many answered his call. Nine o’clock on Wednesday morning, the crowd was growing outside the Capitol building. Around noon Trump came outside the White House to speak to his supporters. He called out to the public, “We will stop the steal. After this, we are going to walk down and I’ll be there with you at the Capitol’’. And that was exactly what his supporters did. By two o’clock, there were thousands of violent protesters shouting and damaging the walls surrounding the Capitol. But that wasn’t enough for them. They eventually stormed into the building and the congress which was meeting to accept the 2020 Presidential Election results stopped certifying the votes. Around six in the evening, lawmakers had been evacuated from the building. At one point during that day the Trump team put out a video of the president telling the protestors to leave but he didn’t back down on his unsubstantiated fraud allegations. It also didn’t look like a video that was referring to extremists storming in the building and creating great turmoil. Trump told the protestors that he loved them, that he understood their pain and their anger caused by the ‘stolen’ election, and just told them to go to their homes as nothing happened. In the early hours of Thursday morning, lawmakers returned to congress, and at 3:40 in the morning Joe Biden was confirmed as president-elect. By that time, four people were dead, many were injured and at least 50 people were arrested.
After that day there are still a lot of questions such as “Was the attack completely planned?”, “Why weren’t there enough police on duty?” and “What immediate steps are needed to safeguard the Republic?’’ that are still waiting to be clearly answered but we shouldn’t forget that the issue we are talking about revolves around bigger questions and uncertainties. What happened on January 6th was a part of the longstanding distrust of America’s political system and ongoing political polarization, inflamed by the Republican politicians who stood next to Trump and normalized his unacceptable approaches, rhetoric, and behaviors. To understand the cause of this conflict maybe we can even go back farther, back decades and even centuries, stretching from slavery to birtherism, from historical social divisions based on race and class to the extreme income inequality and partisanship of the Trump era. As Susan Herbst, professor of political science and president emeritus at the University of Connecticut said “There’s no question this is kind of a unique violence of 2020, but it’s been building over the past few decades, not just the last four or five years’’.
Resources
“How the Attack on the Capitol Happened, From Planning to Siege to ….” 11 Jan. 2021, https://www.gq.com/story/wednesday-capitol-attack-summary.
“The origin of the violent attack on the US Capitol … — Hartford Courant.” 10 Jan. 2021, https://www.courant.com/politics/hc-pol-capitol-how-did-we-get-here-20210110-hkbcebw42rhwvfgpt3l6a4o23q-story.html.
