Category: Terrorism

What Would You Have Done?

What Would You Have Done?

Imagine a fictional 2012 America. Barack Obama is running for his second term against Donald Trump, who many people feel is a mentally unstable white supremacist wannabe dictator. At every campaign rally, Obama says that he’s hearing that Republicans are going to cheat and steal the election. On election night, Obama thankfully appears to be well ahead of Trump, but by morning, Trump is suddenly leading Obama and wins. Obama does not concede. Instead, he says that there were significant voting irregularities and even tampering with voting machines, and without those, he would have won by a landslide, as it looked like he would on election night.

Fox News and Alex Jones assure everyone that the election was perfectly fair and nothing underhanded happened, but the news outlets that you go to for information repeat Obama’s claims of an election that was very questionable and may in fact have been stolen. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer say that the election raised serious questions that need to be looked into. Your friends say the same, and send you videos and articles that they say show clear evidence of ballots being changed, batches of Obama votes being thrown out, batches of Trump votes being brought out from under tables, vote counters keeping observers at a remote distance, and voting machines being reprogrammed. Some states hold recounts at Obama’s request, but Obama raises questions about how the votes were recounted and who did the counting.

Despite the videos and the constant questions that you’re hearing on the news, from politicians, from your friends, and from the President whom you’ve trusted for four years, things keep moving forward to inaugurate Donald Trump. You fear the totalitarian government that Obama has repeatedly said that Trump will impose. Obama announces, with affirmation from some Democratic Senators and Representatives, that there is one chance to save America from a Trump Presidency: during an obscure ceremony that has normally barely been noticed, the Vice President can call into question the vote counts from some states, and if he does so, it will allow for the possibility of Obama rightfully serving a second term.

Obama posts on social media and sends out emails encouraging Americans who want to see him remain President to come to Washington DC for a “Save America” rally on the day of that ceremony, to encourage the Vice President to “do the right thing.” Obama says that it’s going to be a wild time. You care about your country. You believe that America’s democracy is about to be stolen, and you want to protect your country from the fascist regime that you are certain will come if Trump becomes President. You buy a plane ticket, book a hotel room, and attend the rally. You hear Obama, less than 75 feet away from you, say that the future of the country is at stake, that you have to fight to save it or you won’t have a country left, that Republicans have done unprecedentedly criminal things to thwart his legitimate and rightful election. He ends the emotional rally encouraging you and the rest of the crowd to march on the Capitol.

What would your mental state have been at that point? Having started marching from the “Save America” rally, would you believe that you were headed to the Capitol to save your country? Might you see it as your patriotic duty to take action to prevent a Trump Presidency? If people around you at the Capitol became unruly, would you leave immediately, or might you possibly start thinking of the founding of America that you had learned about in school, and see this moment on the Capitol steps as a time that you need to be a patriotic hero for your country in a battle just as important as that waged by people 250 years ago who fought for our nation’s independence? How far would you be justified in going against a government that was ignoring your concerns about democracy and was instead bulldozing forward installing an illegitimately elected fascist?

To be certain, there were opportunistic neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the crowd on January 6, 2021, just as there are often violent antifa and anarchist elements among protests of the left. But it is doubtful that they were anything more than a small minority among the rioters. Most of the Capitol crowd saw themselves and the situation through the lens of standing patriotically against an election stolen by people who want to see America become another China. Yes, this was completely divorced from reality, but it was what they believed. California State Assemblyman Randy Voepel said of the riots “This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny. Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear in on January 20th.” One rioter going through the halls of the Capitol shouted “This is 1776!”

This is in no way to justify their actions, but merely to explain them. The people who stormed America’s Capitol on January 6 have been called terrorists, insurgents, insurrectionists, seditionists, rioters, a mob attempting a coup. From the world of objective, factual reality, all of those are accurate and appropriate descriptions of their actions. The rioters who broke into the Capitol Building are now being arrested, and many will likely face years in prison, as they should. They are America’s Taliban. The ones who planted bombs and plotted kidnappings are America’s al-Qaeda. They are a threat to America and deserve long prison sentences.

But it is too simplistic to just dismiss them as nut jobs and walk away. It is important – not to them, but to the rest of us – that we recognize that the source of their terroristic act was the delusion that they were defending the U.S. Constitution from a coup via a fraudulent election. That belief is very real to them, and to many others who were not at the Capitol. That belief persists, and will last long past the Inauguration of Joe Biden. It is dangerous to allow that belief to simply be smothered without being addressed. Among Republicans, 35% blame Joe Biden for the events of January 6 – a leap of logic that would not even have occurred to most Americans – and the majority of Republicans would like to see Trump able to run for President again.

The most unifying thing that Biden can do for our country is to have a thorough investigation of all the election fraud allegations, conducted by a team of investigators from the reality-based community working together with a team of investigators chosen by Trump supporters and Q-Anon believers who Trump supporters see as legitimate. The purpose of the investigation would be to uncover the truth, a thorough report on which would begin to help Trump supporters see that they were lied to about election fraud. The truth is almost certainly that America had a legitimate election with about as many irregularities as we have in every election, and no grand scheme to change votes, manufacture votes, or destroy votes. However, the people who most need to be convinced of that currently believe something very sinister. It is vital to America’s future that we whittle away at the cult of Trump, and such an investigation would be an excellent first step.

– rob rünt

Trump was a More Stealth 9/11

Trump was a More Stealth 9/11

Trump was a More Stealth 9/11

Most Americans over the age of 22 can remember where they were on September 11, 2001 when the planes hit the Twin Towers. It was a memorable spectacle, and was intended to be so.

I was getting ready for work, watching with mild fascination as one of the network morning shows reported the oddity of a small plane or a commercial airline – they were unsure – that had accidentally flown into the Twin Towers. As the TV cameras focused on the smoke pouring out of the building, the second airline hit, prompting news anchors to speculate that there might a problem with the air traffic control at JFK. It was still largely unthinkable that this might be an intentional, coordinated act.

Few of us can say where we were when we first experienced Russia’s 2016 cyber-attack on the United States. It was an attack that was not intended to be seen, and it was just as successful as 9/11. Indeed, there are those to this day who deny that the attack even happened.

The 9/11 attack killed over 3,000 people and left a smoldering hole in the ground in downtown Manhattan.

The Russian cyber-attack – still in progress – has killed our civility to one another and left a smoldering hole in our democracy. Many of us can still see the black smoke rising daily from the Oval Office, ignored by a Republican-led Congress that nervously whistles and looks the other way.

But we often fail to notice the smoke emanating from each of us.

Putin’s attack was meant to divide America, to sow chaos, and ultimately bring down the nation that he holds most responsible for the humiliating collapse of his own then-much-larger nation – the USSR – in 1991. To the degree that we turn on each other, shun friends, demonize and belittle those on the “other side” of the Trump divide, we are doing exactly what Putin would like to see.

For a brief time after 9/11, an America that had been in deep disagreement over Bush Administration policies came together against a common foe. Today, many of us see a portion of our fellow Americans as the common foe. Trump supporters view “snowflakes” as naïve, blissfully or willfully unaware of the hardships of many, and too brainwashed to see how the Deep State is trying to bring down one of the greatest Presidents in history. Those who oppose Trump view his supporters as ignorant, racist, and/or uninformed, and too brainwashed to see the imminent threat to our nation posed by a corrupt, lying, divisive, mentally unstable, and woefully incompetent President.

These views are solidified daily by our choices of news, social media, and interpersonal interactions, all of which reinforce one of two widespread but wildly different realities. Ongoing reinforcement of these realities makes mending the divide nearly impossible.

Today as we reflect on 9/11, we can honor those lost by reminding ourselves that we are all Americans, that our new attacker’s main goal is to see us divided and to watch our nation devour itself from the inside. A reconciliation between the two sides of our nation may not be realistic at the moment.

However, we can each commit to learning more about each other’s perspectives and “facts,” and trying to understand them – not agree with them, just understand them. This is a decision as personal and intimate as the Russian cyber-attack was. We can counter the effects of that ongoing attack by occasionally tuning in to news sources that we consider bogus and trying to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who believes what is being said there. Again, the goal is not to agree, but to understand. We can also commit to learning more about our common adversary, Vladimir Putin.

At some point, the Trump Presidency will be over. Then we will be left with ourselves.

– rob rünt