The Black Swan of Trumpist Insurrection, Part I

This would be my 2nd coup d’état. My first was in Moscow, when I witnessed Russian tanks opening fire on the Russian Parliament. Label attackers of the United States Congress what you will: terrorists, revolutionaries, insurrectionists, rioters, a marauding mob. Despite the Department of Defense characterization of this as merely a “first Amendment protest,” whatever we name it, this trauma has forever changed personal and global understanding of democracy in America.

Our mindset, the mental window that frames our understanding of the world around us, has cracked. The fight over how to understand what has happened is the battle for the future of the country. And in this, the war of words matters. Need we more proof than Trump of the power of language: “this is just the beginning,” “good people on both sides”? Calls for “unity” and “moving on” from criminals and the criminal minds that energize them are perhaps even more damaging to the nation than the tragic loss of life and the surrender of the Capitol. How we understand and internalize what happened becomes the reality we carry into the future.

Neural networks shape and reshape our minds. Our perceptions evolve, memories morph, patterns develop, and pathways become more fixed with repetition. Systems of behavior, habits, become harder to change. Fights over how to define a ‘new normal’ cause personal pain and stress systems that have not been designed to be resilient.

What we see and what we cannot see are products of our mindsets. The attack itself-- fomented by an unhinged, megalomaniacal, vengeful, and emotionally stunted con man—turned on the successful peddling of a myth about election fraud. Weaponized, that myth infiltrated the softened minds of fearful people looking for a villain. Any villain. Social media, of course, was just a delivery tool, the syringe that injected the poison.

Fear, collusion, and incompetence are a deadly combination. That we couldn't defend the Capitol from an insurrectionist mob was a failure not of intelligence but a failure to be intelligent. The handwriting was not on the wall but displayed as a flashing neon sign and announced in advance. There was time to design, produce and sell sweatshirts for Trump's "be there...be wild’ event! That a white mob would beat to death a Capitol Police officer on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in broad daylight was so outside the realm of the believable that flashing lights were not seen.

There is a system in America, a systemic ‘unseeing’ of our body politic’s birth defect. Systemic racism has enduring power because it is embedded in the frameworks of our mind. And because that has been true generation after generation, the social operating systems we have built reflect that mindset. And still, many of us remain ‘unseeing.’

The façade of ‘this is not who we are’ crumbled this week. The curtain has been drawn back for all Americans to see. As sure as the confederate flag was paraded through the Capitol, the plotters, their henchmen, and their apologists are now scrambling to whitewash this. The future of democracy in America depends on whether or not we permit them to airbrush this trauma out of our collective minds or redesign the social, economic, and political systems that we have built.