A world of fantasy
Isaac Chotiner at the New Yorker talked to Eric Foner about the attempted insurrection.
These events have drawn comparisons to coup attempts around the world, but also to the Reconstruction era, when white mobs inflicted violence on citizens and legislators throughout the South.
To better understand the lessons of Reconstruction for our times, I recently spoke by phone with Eric Foner, an emeritus professor of history at Columbia, and one of the country’s leading experts on Reconstruction.
He literally Wrote the Book on the subject.
Foner: I guess the sight of people storming the Capitol and carrying Confederate flags with them makes it impossible not to think about American history. That was an unprecedented display. But in a larger sense, yes, the events we saw reminded me very much of the Reconstruction era and the overthrow of Reconstruction, which was often accompanied, or accomplished, I should say, by violent assaults on elected officials. There were incidents then where elected, biracial governments were overthrown by mobs, by coups d’états, by various forms of violent terrorism.
There was the Colfax Massacre, in 1873, in Louisiana, where armed whites murdered dozens of members of a Black militia and took control of Grant Parish. Or you can go further into the nineteenth century, to the Wilmington riot of 1898, in North Carolina. Again, a democratically elected, biracial local government was ousted by a violent assault by armed whites. They took over the city. It also reminded me of what they call the Battle of Liberty Place, which took place in New Orleans, in 1874, when the White League—they had the courage of their convictions then, they called themselves what they wanted people to know—had an uprising against the biracial government of Louisiana that was eventually put down by federal forces. So it’s not unprecedented that violent racists try to overturn democratic elections.
One big difference, he goes on to say, is that they just straight up said it was white supremacy.
Let the white man rule, this is a white Republic. I mean, racism was totally blatant back then. Today, they talk about dog whistles or other circumlocutions, but back then, no, it was just that armed whites in the South could not accept the idea of African-Americans as fellow-citizens or their votes as being legitimate.
Chotiner asks, cautiously, about the absurdity of the whole thing.
Chotiner: But you see some of these guys, you see some of the things they’re wearing, you see them taking photos with statues, you see them with their feet up on desks. You see the fact that it was obviously not going to work. And I think some people say, “There’s something ridiculous about this”—as indeed there’s been something ridiculous, as well as awful in many ways, about the last four years. And I’m curious if that has any precedent in the Confederacy, too.
Foner: I think these people are living in a world of fantasy. That’s why it seems absurd. They thought, honestly, that they would be able to overturn the election. They thought that by seizing the Capitol, they would somehow get President Trump reëlected. I mean, President Trump has been living in a world of fantasy for the past couple of months, as we know, insisting that he won the election in a landslide and that the result was not fixed and could be overturned. And these are his followers, who have been soaking up his lies and fantasies for four years. So it looks ridiculous to us.
Trump has been living in a world of fantasy the whole time. He was playacting throughout. He was like a child wearing a parent’s work clothes, but not cute.
I’ve seen other historians remark that the phenomenon of people doing horrible violent things as some kind of “lark” is not new, either. Apparently people used to bring picnics to a lynching and treat it all as a fun party.
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And of course Trump was getting everyone else (including all those weirdo, low class, mouth breathing supporters he wouldn’t give the time of day) to do the actual work for him. He was probably hoping that once Congress had been frightened into nullifying the election, he would just waddle in and start his second term. Evil, but fortunately stupid and lazy too.
I wouldn’t dismiss how close this thing came to succeeding.
Imagine a scenario where the mob gets there a little quicker, before Pence and the Congress have been evacuated. Pence’s Secret Service guys and the remaining Capitol Police are overwhelmed. Then there’s a bunch of different ways it could go, but they all lead to similar places:
(1) Intimidate Pence into “declaring” Trump the winner
(2) Execute Pence and ask Senate president pro tem Chuck Grassley if perhaps he’d like to consider declaring Trump the winner
(3) Murder enough Dem Congresspeople so that the Electoral College votes are rejected. The election now goes to the House and Senate, where, again, the GOP has majorities.
You certainly can’t expect the GOP Congresscritters, who still haven’t found the courage to stand up to these nutjobs (or, in many cases, are nutjobs themselves) to show courage in the face of armed captors.
Trump then declares Biden and Harris traitors who were “proven” to have attempted to commit election fraud, and his Attorney-General orders their immediate arrest.
Now what? You think the U.S. military is going to step in and fight for Biden? Trump is still President for this term, and Congress (albeit at gunpoint) has declared him the president-elect. You think the Secret Service is definitely going to get into a gun battle with federal officers coming to arrest their protectees? Maybe. But it’s anyone’s guess.
You’re essentially hoping the military is willing to mount a (counter) coup on behalf of Joe Biden. Realistically, they’d be hopelessly split and you could easily see different units choosing different sides.
From there, it’s an open question as to whether we get complete chaos and ongoing violence, or if the military and police fall in line behind Trump.
Well, there’s this…
Suppose the insurrection wasn’t quite successful, in the sense of giving Il Douche a second term. But suppose that it succeeded in killing a couple of Democratic senators or representatives from states with Republican governors. Do we expect that those governors would stand on principle and appoint Democrats to replace them? I am…skeptical. So even a failed insurrection could swing the Senate. I’m sure the rules for replacing deceased congresspeople vary by state, so my apologies if this scenario is unlikely.
I’m with you, Screechy. If they had been even slightly better organized, it could have been completely different. It was hanging by a thread as it was, actively looking to execute “enemies,” like Speaker Pelosi. Shudder to think.
I read somewhere that today DJT has his lowest rating ever, at 29%. How in the world can over a quarter of Americans approve of this guy? It’s been astonishing this whole time.
>>”How in the world can over a quarter of Americans approve of this guy? It’s been astonishing this whole time.”<<
Because the US has been poisoned and permanently damaged by marketing and advertising, television, and religion.
@#6: It was a close-run thing. Around 25-30% or so of America looks like Trump’s core constituency: noisier and perhaps better armed than Biden supporters.
Though some members of certain military units made Trump-approval noises, Trump as Commander-in-Chief called none of them out to show support for the demonstrators. He appears at this stage to have taken counsel and to have decided to go quietly.
If the military was divided 30% for Trump and 70% for the Constitution he is sworn to uphold, I don’t see how the Trumpsurrection could win either.
I don’t know, though. A lot of Trump’s people finally ditched him after the attack. A few Rs in Congress ditched him. I think most military, most cops, most Secret Service – obviously not all, but most – would be horrified enough to refuse orders from the attackers.
It is not a great book, but Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History is one I can’t get out of my mind. Donald Trump, alternative medicine, Christian Nation, and transgenderism — all points on the same continuum.
“From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams, sometimes epic fantasies—every American one of God’s chosen people building a custom-made utopia, each of us free to reinvent himself by imagination and will. … America has mutated into Fantasyland.”
Andersen argues that there used to be more rational checks and balances. He also claims that, while other countries have similar problems, there are some special features which made/make America worse. Maybe.
Rob @4,
That statement from the Joint Chiefs is a good thing, and I’m glad they did it. But note two things:
1) This is a minor point, but the Joint Chiefs are not in the operational chain of command. (This surprises a lot of people; I know I was when I learned it.) If the President wants to order the Umpty-Something Battalion to do something-or-other, the order goes from him to the SecDef, to the operational commanders. The Joint Chiefs have no legal authority to countermand it. Now, the Joint Chiefs are highly respected generals who carry a lot of influence (and who do have authority in non-operational areas), so what they say in a crisis would be very important as a practical matter.
2) There is a HUGE difference between condemning after the fact an unsuccessful coup attempt that essentially NOBODY of importance is defending — even Trump felt forced to issue one of his hostage video-style statements pretending to deplore the use of violence — a week before a new administration comes in who absolutely agrees with your condemnation, and refusing an order from the ostensible Commander-In-Chief and risking your career, your liberty, and perhaps even provoking a violent confrontation between your unit and other units whose commanding officers are loyal to Trump. And note that Trump could simply fire and replace any commander who disobeys his orders, meaning that they then have to either step aside and hope their replacement (and his replacement, and his replacement) does the right thing, or else ignore THAT order too and attempt to remain in command unlawfully.
So yes, the statement of the Joint Chiefs was important inasmuch as it sends a signal. But it doesn’t tell us that much about what would have happened in an alternate scenario.
Omar @8: if the armed forces divide 30% for Trump, and 70% for “the Constitution,” as you suggest (and I’ll just assume that by “the Constitution” you mean an interpretation that says coups are bad, not a literal interpretation that says “well, the Constitution says the President is the Commander-in-Chief, and Congress determines who won the election for President”), that does not reassure me. It’s like telling someone in 1859, “don’t worry, the South could never win a civil war, so what’s the big deal?” The big deal is that any non-trivial split in loyalties in the military in a violent situation is likely to lead to massive military and civilian casualties.
Look, I don’t know what would actually have happened in the alternate scenario. There’s a ton of guesswork involved, and among other things I don’t have a good feel for what the military would do. But any time you’re down to “well, hopefully the very large group of trained killers with weapons of mass destruction will all come together and agree to do the right thing,” you are in very dangerous territory.
There may be countries of which I would say “it can’t happen here,” but America is not one of them.
I absolutely agree that we were in very dangerous territory and the coup came way too close to partial “success.” But I have doubts the top brass would have backed it if it had had more success. Trump had discredited himself more every day since the election, and he was hemorrhaging supporters. The coup people just looked like…how shall I put this…rabble. I think they would have looked like that and worse to most of the top brass…but as you say, it’s just a guess. It was way too close, and it was horrendously bad in itself.
Thanks Screechy, your information at (1) was new to me. I must have watched too many movies or read too many headlines. I guess it makes sense to separate the responsibility for administering the armed forces, setting internal policy, and advising the President, from those actually fighting wars. I’m not trying to minimise the insurrection – it was very dangerous largely because the Capitol Police leadership chose to be blind to the clear risks and warnings from multiple analysts. Luckily the people in the building on the day were just like Trump on the whole – half-baked plan, formless anger, more interested in noise and performative nonsense, and the attention span of a gnat. Show me another revolution anywhere where the mob has stormed the political heart of a country and with a couple of hours gone back to their hotels for buffalo wings and fries. It’s just an embarrassment really.
I have no doubt that there were individuals and small groups within the mob that were really dangerous and did have some sort of plan to do very bad things indeed given the chance. I suspect the story of how well prepared they were, how much internal assistance they had and how close they came is still to be told.
Even so, I would like to think that the military leadership would have told even a successful initial storming and decapitation of Congress to GFTS. We’ll never know for sure I guess.
At this point, no matter what anyone does, the Constitution makes clear that at midday on the 20th trump ceases to be President regardless of Martial Law, insurrection, tantrums or whatever. Short of the various enforcement arms of the State staging an unexpected coup, he’s done. I hope someone makes a metaphorical kebab out of him and his toxic adult family, their enablers and the bottom feeding grifters who have aided the conflagration that American society has become.
Rob,
Yeah, I didn’t think you were minimizing, and your characterization of these doofuses isn’t wrong. It’s just that I think even doofuses can create the kind of “constitutional chaos” in which things start to go in unpredictable directions. And even having the military be paralyzed with indecision and/or desire to be “apolitical” would be pretty bad, if not as bad as them actively taking Trump’s side.
The President, as head of the US armed forces, has had throughout the Constitutional authority to take the country to war: as in an attack on Iran. That would likely have generate increased political suppot for Trump, as it did initially for General Galtieri after his attack on the Falkland Islands.
Galtieri likely thought that Margaret Thatcher would go to water. She didn’t, and the rest is history.
Trump appears to me to be not much of a crisis manager, and inclined to vacillate and dither. That I suggest is why Putin supports him so heartily.
Omar, actually only Congress has the power to declare war (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11). Sadly, as with many other of its powers, Congress has allowed successive Presidents to unsurprisingly or bend those powers.
Thank you, Rob, I’ve been explaining that to Omar for a long time. Since I have a degree in PoliSci, including Constitutional Law, I sort of do know this; I don’t know if he doesn’t read my comments, or if it is my woman’s voice. (I know, you all think I’m a biologist, and an otter, but I have been many things in my life. One day I may figure out what I want to be when I grow up, bur for now, I’m still enjoying the exploration of my interests/skills.)
Rob and iknklast:
As I recall, in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, it was Kennedy’s call as to whether or not the US went to war. In a crisis, nuclear powers do not have the time to organise parliamentary, congressional or whatever approval. Which is yet another reason why no army in history has ever been a democracy.