Ten Years of Darkness
Capitol Insurrection Roundup, Part 2
In Part 1 of this roundup, I mentioned that some of the reaction to the Capitol riot will be legitimate ostracism of those who have struck at the very roots of the American political system. But we should also expect that some of the left's response will be dangerous, vindictive, and a grab for tyrannical power.
You can see this in the way that a lot of people who lobbied for pardons for Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are suddenly getting trigger happy about throwing around the term "traitor." You can also see it in calls for a new domestic spy agency to counter "white terror." This led someone to quip that the left's big 2020 slogan, "Defund the Police," has turned into "Fund the Secret Police."
Focused Vengeance
Obviously, what we need here is not a general crackdown on the right.
I think it would be worthwhile for existing domestic law enforcement to investigate the QAnon phenomenon, because if you boil it down to its essence, QAnon is a fantasy of political murder; it anticipates the day in which everyone it brands as a political enemy will be rounded up and executed. We will be lucky if the January 6 insurrection is the only attempt to make this prophecy come true. The spectacular fizzle of Inauguration Day protests—the only people rioting were Antifa—is a hopeful sign. It seems that even the "Stop the Steal" crowd feels that they have discredited themselves.
QAnon may well fade now that Trump has left office, the extravagant fantasies haven't come true, and all of its followers, like the Millerites before them, are suffering through the Great Disappointment. Then again, a guy who keeps sending me QAnon screeds left this in my e-mail the day before the inauguration.
I've been saying Biden will not be inaugurated, but I've changed my mind. He may be inaugurated, and then removed from office by our military and charged with Treason. They have all the evidence they need. If Trump is out of office, he isn't their commander-in-chief, he therefore isn't responsible for what they might choose to do, and he can't be accused of anything.
This was just the start. I'll spare you the rest, and the fact that it was in ALL CAPS. Suffice to say that conspiracy theories, by their nature, are highly resistant to any form of evidence.
But what we need right now is what a friend of mine calls "focused vengeance."
A relatively small number of people should lose their jobs or be hauled into court for actual acts of violence and insurrection. Check out a rundown of some of the people arrested and what they were arrested for. My favorite case is Jenna Ryan, a Texas real-estate agent who chartered a private plane to go to DC for the "Stop the Steal" protest. Ryan was famous for the way she broadcast her role in the riot "on a Facebook Live video that included her facing the camera at one point and saying, 'Y'all know who to hire for your realtor, Jenna Ryan for your realtor.'" Always. Be. Closing.
The publicity didn't work the way she hoped it would. In case you're inclined to feel sorry for her, notice this detail from the official criminal complaint against her. "Of particular note is an image Ryan posted of herself to her Twitter account, which depicts Ryan in front of a broken window at the US Capitol building, with the caption 'Window at The capital [sic]. And if the news doesn't stop lying about us we're going to come after their studios next.'" So not content to threaten the operations of the US Congress, she decided to threaten the press. The result: Ryan has gone from chartering a private jet to trying to raise money on the Internet for her defense. But it was all a fraud and PayPal has shut her down.
Note also her excuse: "I feel like I was basically following my president. I was following what we were called to do. He asked us to fly there. He asked us to be there. So I was doing what he asked us to do."
We're hearing the same thing from the "QAnon Shaman," Jacob Chansley—you know, the guy with the horns and the Viking tattoos. Here's his excuse, by way of his lawyer:
Watkins argued that Trump had drawn Chansley into a web of lies, but said that Trump's lack of action during the riot and failure to issue pardons had been a wake-up call to his client....
"He regrets very, very much having not just been duped by the President, but by being in a position where he allowed that duping to put him in a position to make decisions he should not have made," Watkins earlier told KSDK-TV.
"Let's roll the tape. Let's roll the months of lies, and misrepresentations and horrific innuendo and hyperbolic speech by our president designed to inflame, enrage, motivate," said Watkins. "What's really curious is the reality that our president, as a matter of public record, invited these individuals, as President, to walk down to the capitol with him," he said.
During his rally just prior to the riot, Trump had vowed to march on the Capitol with his supporters, but instead retreated to the White House to watch the events unfold on television.
This doesn't excuse either of these people, but it sure as hell indicts Trump.
Aside from the individuals who stormed the Capitol, a few lawyers and politicians should suffer full ostracism and never be given a platform more serious than Infowars ever again. Rudy Giuliani is the sort of person I obviously have in mind here, but also guys like Jeffrey Clark, the White House lawyer who schemed to get himself installed as acting Attorney General so he could use the power of the Department of Justice to pressure Georgia to overturn its election results. The attempt was only stopped by a threat of mass resignation from Justice Department staff.
In the Trump era, we're finding that a lot of people were tempted to act as the willing sycophants or shock troops of a would-be tyrant. So focused vengeance should give us plenty of legitimate targets for social and political ostracism without having to stretch the criteria.
For everyone outside these categories, the consequence of this Catastrophic Credibility Loss Event should just be, well, a loss of credibility.
The Conservative Civil War
Whatever other penalties they may suffer, the people losing credibility are not the rioters themselves, because they didn't have any credibility to begin with. No one was taking Nick Fuentes or the QAnon Shaman seriously.
No, the loss of credibility is going to strike the conservative movement and the Republican Party, to the extent that they either supported Trump or refused to take a stand against him.
Senator Hawley has been doing a lot of loud caterwauling about how conservative voices are being silenced, though from what I'm seeing, it's not really conservative voices in general, just him in particular (for reasons I explained in the first half of this roundup). He has been proclaiming his silencing on the front cover of the New York Post, by way of Twitter, as advance publicity for his forthcoming book—a fake martyrdom that is ripe for satire.
But the big story is not actually the left or the mainstream media or Big Tech versus conservatives. What is actually happening is a civil war within the conservative movement and the Republican Party.
There have been leaks of an internal rebellion at Breitbart, one of the conservative media outlets that has been most fanatically pro-Trump from the very beginning. On a higher intellectual plane, there is now an open feud between National Review and the pro-Trump "Flight 93" intellectuals.
At the Washington Examiner, the ignominious end of the Trump presidency is hailed as a discrediting event for "Christian nationalism."
[M]any in the faith community have looked for an audacious political leader to battle secularism for quite some time. After decades of playing relatively nice, they decided on a new approach. In 2016, Donald Trump became "the chosen one," and an era of high-profile Christian nationalism began....
At the end of the Trump presidency, a larger audience sees what critics saw all along: Christian nationalism is not a healthy extension of belief, and Trump is the last person who should have been tapped to lead the reformational charge....
Christian nationalism aims to turn the country back to God through the avenues of patriotism and politics. It's a faulty premise from the start because the focus relies far too much on those who crave power first and foremost. This mindset gave Trump a blank check in which he could behave in any manner he chose with little to no repercussions.
I have seen at least one apology to NeverTrumpers from a Christian conservative, Hunter Baker.
I am writing to offer an apology. The short version is this: I severely underestimated the threat posed by a Donald Trump presidency. The never-Trumpers—who never seemed to stop issuing their warnings and critiques—struck me as psychologically and emotionally weak people with porcelain-fragile sensibilities. It turns out their instincts were significantly better attuned than my own....
My judgment of colleagues and of various conservatives who opposed Trump was privately severe. On the surface, I fully granted the strength of their concerns. But in the confines of my mind, I concluded that they were moral free riders. They wouldn't sully themselves by voting for Donald Trump, but they would benefit from many of his policies....
I knew I was wrong as January 6 approached and the president started calling for Vice President Mike Pence to reject certification of the electoral college results. This, of course, was on top of his disturbing phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State urging him to "find" additional votes. At the same time, he encouraged Americans to mass at the Capitol to support his cause....
I have awakened on too many days with gratitude on my lips for the blessing of living in a peaceful, orderly, democratic, and free society to see such hard-won advances thrown away for immoderate political ambition. Those who realized our inheritance was at risk saw more clearly than I did.
I am sorry that I assumed fragility or a desire to court favor with elites. I should have given greater respect to those who offered valid criticisms and concerns.
I would like to see a little more introspection about all the compromises and self-imposed blindness that was required along the way. (David French uses this as a window into how "Christian Trumpism turned morality and reality upside-down.") But overall, this is about as good an apology as you can hope to get in politics.
I am not entirely caught by surprise by Baker. Subscribers to this newsletter may recall hearing about him a few years back when I responded to his conciliatory comments about conservatives and Ayn Rand. So he is the type I would expect to bolt from Trumpism under the current circumstances, and even to engage in some worthwhile introspection about it.
But he is, so far, in the minority, and The Bulwark offers an eye-opening rundown of the conservative intellectuals who were openly advocating insurrection before the election, even when they still thought Trump would win.
That's how things stand among the conservative intellectuals, who often tend to be slightly better than the rank-and-file, by virtue of being intellectuals and therefore having to come up with semi-plausible rationalizations for their views. The state of the Republican Party may be significantly worse.
"Trump Republicans"
Some recent poll numbers sum up the deep and profound problem for Republicans. According to Pew, Donald Trump left office with historically low approval ratings, and about 70% of Americans "do not want Trump to remain a major political figure after he leaves office." But those who identify as Republicans are in a different world. More than 60% of them buy into some form of the "stolen election" myth, and nearly half approve of his behavior between the election and the inauguration.
An Axios poll provides finer detail, showing who is driving this support for Trump: the 36% of Republicans who now define themselves as "Trump Republicans" and overwhelmingly embrace Trump's mythology and support him as the party's candidate in 2024.
The one thing the Republican Party could do to avoid being sucked all the way into this Catastrophic Credibility Loss Event is to organize a swift and thorough repudiation of Trump. These poll numbers show why they can't do it. Instead, the fanatical "Trump Republican" grassroots is organizing a state-level purge of anyone who is not a Trump loyalist.
Arizona is widely considered to have the craziest state-level GOP organization, and it just voted to censure three prominent Arizona Republicans: Cindy McCain, former Senator Jeff Flake, and popular incumbent governor Doug Doucey, all of whom are treating this as a badge of honor.
It is entirely predictable that this is going to be a disaster for the party.
"Foolish. It's foolish," says Glenn Hamer, former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. "Parties that want to be successful bring people together and expand the number of people who are attracted to the party. What's going on with the leadership at the AZ GOP is the exact opposite. It's self-destructive."
Kirk Adams, a former state representative and adviser to Ducey, called the actions akin to going down "the rabbit hole of loyalty."
"What we're getting is a purity test, and that purity test is simple: are you loyal to Donald Trump no matter what? If you're not, we'll censure you."
That's not the only rabbit hole they're going down. The Texas Republican Party just announced it has joined Gab, an unmoderated social media platform that is notorious as a hangout for white nationalists, and in the same post signaled its support for the QAnon conspiracy theory and the political murder fantasy known as "The Storm."
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse sounds the alarm that "QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within."
The violence that Americans witnessed—and that might recur in the coming days—is not a protest gone awry or the work of "a few bad apples." It is the blossoming of a rotten seed that took root in the Republican Party some time ago and has been nourished by treachery, poor political judgment, and cowardice. When Trump leaves office, my party faces a choice: We can dedicate ourselves to defending the Constitution and perpetuating our best American institutions and traditions, or we can be a party of conspiracy theories, cable-news fantasies, and the ruin that comes with them. We can be the party of Eisenhower, or the party of the conspiracist Alex Jones.
Senator Sasse has bent with the Trumpist winds more than I would like, staying strategically silent in order to survive a primary challenge and declining to vote for impeachment the first time around. But he is right that the Republican Party faces a choice. I am not remotely optimistic about how it will choose.
Individual Republicans will do better or worse. Mitch McConnell has chosen, finally, and seems very much inclined to turn against Trump. He understands what a Catastrophic Credibility Loss Event looks like and how to get through it.
Immediately after the attack on the Capitol, McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, resigned as transportation secretary. And McConnell World, the most loyal of teams that doesn't ever leak, then orchestrated a leak blessed from the top to let the media know the leader "hates" Trump, wouldn't speak to him ever again, was glad House Democrats were impeaching him, and would possibly vote to convict in a Senate trial.
McConnell, and Republicans urging him to distance the party from Trump, know the former president cost the party its Senate majority by depressing votes in the Georgia runoffs, and that his incitement of sedition, willingness to endanger Vice President Pence, refusal to stop the riots while they were ongoing, and praise of the rioters, amounted to a dangerous stain on the country by a leader betraying the Constitution....
McConnell and others aligned with him are merely hoping to distance the party from the illiberalism of Trumpism in hopes of winning back some of the voters Republicans lost in the Trump years. To earn credibility with those voters they must disavow what Trump did.
But he will face a revolt from within his own caucus if he tries to do this.
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has tried to straddle the fence and has discovered that this is an issue where the middle is the worst place to be.
Charlie Sykes looks over this whole pattern and more and refers us to the conclusion that is, unfortunately, most likely.
For a few days, the Republican party appeared to be undergoing a crisis of confidence, if not an outright crack-up.... But instead of a Glasnost for the Republican party, the days after January 6 seem instead to be a Prague Spring—a brief flowering of dissent and questioning of dogma quickly suppressed by a remorseless crackdown.
The heady predictions that the party would break free of the Trumpist grip already seem fanciful. If anybody is suffering repercussions for their response to Trump's autogolpe, it is the Republicans who criticized it. Conservative Republicans are threatening to strip Liz Cheney of her leadership post after she voted to impeach Trump. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, an adept reader of the prevailing winds within his party, offered a non-defense of his third in command: "I support her, but I have concerns." Adam Kinzinger, another pro-impeachment Republican, is facing censure. The Michigan Republican member of the state board of canvassers, who broke with his party to certify the state's election results, is losing his job as a result of his refusal to go along with Trump's lie. Fox News is firing journalists associated with its election call that Biden won Arizona.
A party cannot survive if it insists on pandering to the delusions of a fanatical minority on an issue that is deeply repulsive to the rest of the country. I don't know if this will destroy the Republican Party; that's something that's very hard to accomplish in our system. But I have been predicting that ten years of darkness will be the party's punishment for embracing Trump. The main question in my mind is whether the ten years begins in 2016 or whether it begins now.
I argued recently that the basic issue here is a refusal to accept that A is A. It is a conflict they can't win.
A Is A
To remind you where I began in Part 1 of this roundup, the reason I am going through all of this is to establish the conditions under which we begin the Biden administration: a weakened, divided conservative movement—one suffering in the wake of a Catastrophic Credibility Loss Event and unable to take the basic actions needed to right itself.
So I will be looking very soon at Joe Biden's early actions as president, but I do so with the recognition that there is very little remedy for any of it, because Republicans will not be an effective opposition party any time soon.
I can't leave you on that note, so I will remind you that A is A, and because this is true, the false and evil is always fighting a battle it cannot win.
So, for example, one of the biggest concerns many of us had about the Capitol insurrection is that it was the ideal propaganda tool for authoritarians around the world. To the extent Russian propaganda and disinformation had any role in getting Donald Trump elected—I tend to think we made that mistake predominantly on our own—it would be the most successful intelligence operation in history.
And yet, because A is A, the Russians have much bigger problems of their own.
Rather than emboldening dictators, there is some evidence that our (so far) successful recovery from Donald Trump's effort to subvert the election has emboldened dissidents, and Russia now finds itself convulsed in demonstrations against its authoritarian rulers—a topic I will take up soon alongside my coverage of the new administration here at home.
The Republican Party and the conservative movement may have just suffered a catastrophic loss of credibility, but fortunately the cause of freedom has not lost its credibility. It remains vital even under the most unpromising circumstances, and that is an ongoing trend that is definitely worth covering.