Assault on democracy itself

It's understandable that we'd fixate on the horrific violence Donald Trump incited on January 6. The graphic video and audio from that day is an assault not just on the senses, but on the psyche and the soul.

And it's proper to recoil from the vile desecration of the nation's Capitol, a sacred place where our highest ideals as a national polity are instantiated.

Never forget, though, that it was not just the place, sacred though it may be, that was defiled. It was not just our national symbolism that was debased. And it was not just the occupants of that place who were threatened and harmed.

Horrendous as all those things were, it's crucial to apprehend that the attack on the Capitol was an assault on more than just an abstract ideal: it did real and lasting violence to the actualized expression of our democratic project. It was an assault on the conduct of democracy itself.

Nowhere more clearly can this be grasped than in the stark recognition that Donald Trump sought to systematically subvert the peaceful transfer of power after a free and fair election. Never before in our nation's history has that happened.

And in so doing, Trump also sought to cast doubt on the electoral process, delegitimizing the election in the eyes of tens of millions of enraged fellow citizens, who he deliberately inflamed.

It's imperative to ask how democracy can survive such an assault that's sustained for very long. That's the question Trump's jurors in the Senate should be asking. By all appearances, many of them are not. Many Republican senators who seemed deeply shaken by the video evidence of that horrible day are still poised to acquit, somehow losing the forest in the withering onslaught of trees. Some even demagogically misconstrue the entire endeavor.

"The result of this trial is preordained," said Ted Cruz. "I think the trial is a waste of time and is the result of  seething partisan anger on the part of congressional Democrats."

Copyright (C) 2021 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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