Divided we fall
Letter from Away — January 16, 2023
I was recently asked if I have become complacent, if I had given up on trying to make the world a better place. The last few years of public anger and violence are sending me into the quiet center. I am looking for peace in an anthroposphere that runs on adrenaline.
It seems we get some kind of thrill from being cheated. It gives us permission to be pissed off, someplace to put the fighting that’s built into our bodies. Anger’s chemicals spread through us, instilling confidence in our own rightness and excellence. We feel larger, our ideas exaggerated by the contagion of outrage and resentment, until the sane, quiet voices are silenced.
To consolidate its grip, anger blinds us to what stands in front of us, convincing us that success — prevailing over those who oppose us — is all that matters.
I spent a good part of January 6 reading the speech from the Ellipse. More than an hour — 11,000 words of venom addressed to those the outgoing president said, “ … are not going to take it any longer.” Most of the speech was a litany of allegations of election fraud and abuse that have, over the course of the last three years, been proven false. Still the crowd, agitated by their own inner demons and the rhetoric of their speaker, believed the claims and using them as fuel for what was to come.
“I’m honest,” he said, and with whatever discretion their whipped-up emotion left them, the crowd chose to believe that, too. In spite of a vote count separating the candidates by a margin of less than 3 percent, he said “We will never give up, we will never concede … This was not a close election.”
His lies circulated through the winter air, increasing the agitation of those who had traveled thousands of miles for a satisfaction rarely found in politics. They sought the catharsis of the battlefield and the speaker encouraged their rage. “We’re not going to let it happen, I’m not going to let it happen,” he said. They responded with calls to fight for the man on the stage and he thanked them. “We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution,” he said.
This man, who now claims he has never been an officer of the United States and says the laws of this country do not apply to him, incited more than 50,000 cold, tired, angry citizens to stop Congress from doing the business we require of them, the job assigned by that very Constitution.
“Patriotism means to stand by the country,” Republican former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1918. “It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
But in 2021, the man who will not give up called experienced legislators from his own party “weak” and “pathetic” because they would not exert influence to change the vote count. He chided his own vice president for refusing to put him above the law.
And the will of those gathered at the Ellipse grew stronger from the comparison. “You have to get your people to fight,” he said.
“And after this,” he said, “we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down … to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them … You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”
The most disappointed man in America went on to describe his expectations on the night of the election just passed, saying, “ … we were going to sit home and watch a big victory and everybody had us down for a victory. It was going to be great and now we’re out here fighting.”
I have never been a fan of violent rhetoric in politics. I am tired of candidates who say they will fight for me. Fighting is easy; all it takes is adrenaline. Working, on the other hand, requires patience and compromise. Good laws cannot be crafted by those who want to beat, attack, battle, challenge, clash, feud, and brawl against those with whom they don’t agree.
It is possible to share consensus with those you generally despise. I agreed when the man on the stage that day called for an end to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a policy that gives immunity to online computer services for content generated by third-party users. That does not make him less a liar or absolve him of responsibility for his words and actions.
We are all responsible for what we say and do. Mr. Trump’s rudeness and abusive behavior is not a pass for anyone else to call him names or dismiss his followers. Fighting fire with fire may work in the forest, but in the burning building that is 21st century politics, incendiary speech is not just irresponsible, it is dangerous.
The outgoing 45th president of the United States of America used his position as a sworn office holder to reach into the place where anger lies and give it a reason to come out and play. Its contagion made us all combatants when we should be collaborators, and further engaged us in battle while the entire human world suffers in violence.
When social action becomes a fight, opportunities are lost; the distance between me and whatever I oppose becomes a sunk haze of confusion and hostility that can only be avoided by walking away. In the context of a universe that is always changing, we can only be effective if we see our that our job is not to change the world but to change ourselves.
Shortly after this column is published, courts in Maine and Washington, D.C. will decide whether this incendiary man will appear on ballots this year. The outcomes hinge on two issues: was Donald J. Trump an officer of the United States and did he participate in insurrection?
Here is what this man said at his own inauguration in 2016.
“I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear — that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States — and will, to the best of my ability — preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
It is, in fact, called an Oath of Office. As for the second question, here is a definition for you to consider:
Insurrection (noun) — an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.
And from 18 U.S. Code § 2383 — “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
Shlomit Auciello is an award-winning writer, photographer, and human ecologist who has lived in Midcoast Maine since 1988. Letter from Away has appeared online and in print, on and off since 1992.
