Insurrection, Impeachment, and Inauguration: Three

Where were you on Wednesday, January 6? 

It’s funny, really, the feeling of living through history. In the moment, it doesn’t feel like history at all, just normal day-to-day life. And as 2020 seemed to grow progressively crazier with each month, the events of that Wednesday didn’t seem too out of place at all. 

On January 6, I was at home, frantically refreshing the live updates page on NBC & announcing the latest bit of news to my family. I scrolled through hours worth of tweets, consuming what felt like millions of hot takes from all over the world. As the evening waned further, we turned on the TV & listened to the Senate deliberate over the day’s events. I went to bed that night not feeling any different. Just another day in the hellish year we have been surviving. 

It wasn’t until several days later that it really hit me: people had actively planned an insurrection. Some planned to kidnap our elected officials (Evelyn & Pengelly 2021). The coup ended in chaos, with five dead (including a Capitol police officer) and perhaps many exposed to COVID-19. For most Americans, we can only imagine this kind of coup happening in foreign, far-away countries. While they had the right to peacefully demonstrate, the most frustrating part was the hypocrisy. Many of the people who stormed the Capitol and endangered the lives of the police are the same ones who righteously uphold the police department. The same people who accused Black Lives Matter protestors of widespread rioting were actively storming one of our nation’s greatest symbols of democracy.  

A week later, Donald J. Trump was impeached for the second time, a historic moment that shines a less-than-flattering light on our 45th President. Impeached on much stronger grounds this time, the charges levied against him include attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and inciting a violent coup at the nation’s Capitol. A conviction on these charges in the Senate would guarantee that Trump could not run for president again. And if I’m being honest, it’s a fitting way to end his term: doubling down on his false claims that election results were tampered with was the cherry-on-top to four years overshadowed by racist, sexist rhetoric that affected real people I know and love. He will certainly be remembered, but perhaps not in all of the ways he would want to. 

Finally, on January 20, most of the nation took a collective deep breath. The news didn’t feature violent activists climbing walls or a spotlight on another one of Trump’s outrageous tweets. Instead, NBC wrote about Michelle Obama’s burgundy ensemble and Kamala Harris’ hair. In four years, we’d come full circle. From electing a man who deemed it appropriate to grab women by their genitals (Prasad 2019), and calling Mexican immigrants the sort of people that bring drugs, crime, and sexual violence to US (Phillips 2017) to swearing in the first woman in the executive branch, Auntie Kamala. 

Some days it feels like our world is slowly descending into chaos; the first two Wednesdays of 2021 certainly felt like it. But I often have to remind myself that college students in 1939 and 1955, during World War II and the Vietnam War, probably felt the same. As long as our earth keeps spinning, nations will rise and fall, wars will be fought, and each generation will have their own trauma to deal with, their own chapter in the history books. 

References

Evelyn, K., & Pengelly, M. (2021, January 11). Capitol attack: Two men arrested over zip-tie 

handcuff allegations. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/us-capitol-mob-rioters-arrests-violence-brutality

Phillips, A. (2017, June 16). ‘They’re rapists.’ President Trump’s campaign launch speech two 

years later, annotated. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-rapists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-later-annotated/

Prasad, R. (2019, November 29). How Trump talks about women - and does it matter? BBC 

News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50563106