A House Divided
Some thoughts on the storming of the Capitol, blaming Trump and why the Democrats are part of the problem
It’s quite a sight, watching a nation losing its collective mind.
Losing your mind means departing consensus reality, it means not being able to agree on what the colour blue is, what a chair is and what a fact is.
The real problem here isn’t Trump. The real problem is that we have two sides, each living their own reality, each sneering that the other side, fully half the country, are stupid, mad, and corrupt.
Each side believes the other side has lost touch with consensus reality. Each side is doubling down on its own reality. Each side is doubling down on its own ideological positions. Each side is rationalising its own position as being the only legitimate position, the other being illegitimate.Each side is strutting around assuming bad faith on the part of the other.
The real problem, the real danger, isn’t Trump, it is “a house divided.”
It is this problem, this division, this deepening, continuing crisis, that Donald Trump took advantage of and rode into the White House. Trump is someone who exploited, crudely, this fissure to get himself into power. The storming of the Capitol is nothing more than a crude attempt by Trump to cling on to power. The actual events are far less consequential than reactions to these events.
White liberal outrage at events is both self-serving and disingenuous.
Consider this story from the New York Times on December 17, 2020:
“Members of Congress on Thursday hurled withering comments and furious questions at two members of the billionaire Sackler family that owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, seeking to use a rare public appearance to extract admissions of personal responsibility for the deadly opioid epidemic as well as details about $10 billion that records show the family withdrew from the company.”
The backstory:
“On October 21, 2020 it was reported that Purdue had reached a settlement potentially worth $8.3bn, admitting that it "knowingly and intentionally conspired and agreed with others to aid and abet" doctors dispensing medication "without a legitimate medical purpose.”
And members of Congress did what? “…hurled withering comments and furious questions”? Why didn’t they do something else? Why didn’t they act? Why didn’t they legislate? Why didn’t they enact justice?
Consider who the key victims of the opioid crisis are.
Trump voters. What do you think they see when they see the Sackler’s getting away with it? The game is rigged. Who do they turn to? Congress? The elites? No, they look to an outsider. And they got one.
Consider that perhaps anti-vaxxers being suspicious of big corporations isn’t really so batshit crazy?
While I might think anti-vaxxers are wrong in the specifics of their stance on vaccines, will I be surprised at a Purdue Pharma style story about one of the companies currently profiting from covid-vaccines? No not really.
Does that mean I won’t take a vaccine, oh I will, but all I’m saying is that being afraid of big pharma isn’t really that crazy an idea. It certainly doesn’t mean that anyone suspicious of big pharma is stupid. Vaccine suspicion is a dangerous, difficult, serious problem to tackle but unless we stop sneering at those with doubts, we won’t get anywhere.
The point is this.
This was not an insurrection. This was not sedition. This was not domestic terrorism. This was a dirty little skirmish in a longer battle.
The Thursday, 7 January 2021 storming of the Capitol building was a prelude, a little trailer for what is to come if this house falls. It will look very different from losing control of the Capitol building for an hour. It will unfortunately look very different from the loss of five lives.
Unless we stop, unless we take pause, this was nothing compared to what is coming. Unless we stop characterising people different from us as corrupt, stupid or cynical, as acting in bad faith, sooner or later, we will arrive at a logical conclusion, that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”