Text of an email i sent to a friend. His name has been deleted.
G: I would describe myself as “cautiously pessimistic” about the country’s future, short-term and long-term. Pessimism comes almost naturally to me, mostly because I’ve seen too many wars and revolts and riots and acts of terrorism. In other words, I’ve been witness to a lot of history, defined by Gibbon as largely the “record of the crimes and follies of mankind.” My experiences have made me skeptical about humanity’s capacity for moral virtue. People tend to do the right thing only when the wrong thing fails to present itself. What makes me cautious is that I could be mistaken in predicting that the sack of the citadel of democracy by a mob was not the end of something but the beginning, and that that something will make yesterday’s events look decorous by comparison. Weather forecasts are the only prophecies we can rely on, and even they are often off the mark.
Anyone who has followed closely the fraying of our social and political fabric in recent years would not have been surprised by what happened yesterday. Shocked, disgusted, appalled, angered, yes, but not surprised. The storming of the Capitol building was the expression of what Philip Roth termed “the American Id,” and the armed thugs were its embodiment, as is the man who incited them. Donald Trump is, moreover, both a product of the darker impulses in our national character, as well as their accelerant.
A headline in today’s Times read: “Americans at the Gates: The Trump Era’s Inevitable Denouement.” The last word implies a climax, an ending. It suggests a hope that once Trump is out of office, a semblance of normality will be restored and his legion of followers fade into the shadowy margins inhabited by cranks. Trumpism, the thinking goes, is not an ideology but a cult; with its leader off the stage, it will eventually disappear. Well, maybe. I don’t doubt that the incoming Biden administration will considerably improve things, but I find it difficult to believe that Wednesday’s insurrection was, as it were, the breaking of a national fever. Even if Trump winds up where he belongs — in prison — and never utters another public word, never sends one more hysterical tweet, that we’ve heard the last from the people who worship and idolize him: white supremacists and right-wing militias, the whole huge mass of QAnon lunatics, conspiracy theorists, anti-immigrant fanatics.
I read somewhere that 70 percent of the 70+million who voted for Trump are convinced that the election was stolen from him, despite the total absence of evidence. Millions of our fellow citizens live in an alternate reality, embracing every lie he’s told, absorbing all the outrageous propaganda injected into their brains by the house organs of the extreme right. It’s not that they’re innocent dupes of a huge disinformation campaign — they seek disinformation, they want their views and biases confirmed, they want easy, off-the-rack explanations for the social and cultural changes the U.S. is undergoing, because they’re too lazy to examine the issues themselves and draw reasonable conclusions. They can’t drink enough from the fountains of conspiracy theories, no matter how outlandish, because they need to think of themselves as recipients of special knowledge not possessed by the elites they despise. They likewise need to stoke their rage.
If those millions represent the shaft of the spear, the thirty-thousand who took part in Wednesday’s festival of vandalism are the blade, and the armed militias are the point. Those are the ones we should look out for — the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Precenters, or the lesser-known, localized bands like the one that planned to kidnap Michigan’s governor, or who, armed to the teeth, broke into the state capitol (rehearsing for the one in D.C.?) to protest pandemic restrictions. I have studied these groups, read their manifestos. What they want is civil war; they fantasize about it, imagining themselves marching under their Gadsden flags to battle socialists, lefties of all stripes, blacks, hispanics. Most of them, if not all, have never seen or fought in a war; if they had, they wouldn’t find it so attractive.
They are going to go ground for a while, but I think they will improve their organization, acquire explosives, train more, and then strike.
It could come in a week, it could be in a month or two or six, but we have not heard the last primeval howl from the Great American Id. Once again, I might be wrong, I certainly hope so. In fact, I would like you to persuade me that I am.
Regards, PJC.
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There is little doubt that in any type of warfare that the greatest of all enemies is the enemy within. Century upon centuries have shown the power capabilities of the silent sleeper within the ranks, often a ‘spy’. There is no doubt in my mind that within the ranks of those wonderful security agencies in the USA that there exists sleeper agents. Of course these agencies have their detractors, as do the police forces throughout the US – but let’s be honest, when you are lying in bed at 2.00am and you hear someone downstairs you don’t reach for your phone and call Walmart. You call the police. prejudices are left behind when we are in a time of need.
I have read comments from Homeland Security and the FBI et.. al. that insurrectionists are planning events at each state capital on January 20th, some people attending have indicated that thy will be armed. My own view on this is quite extreme and may not sit well with other people. I firmly believe that no matter who has the weapon, if it is being used to harm, hurt or kill people unlawfully, then the utmost defense mechanisms must be engaged. Otherwise any thug with a gun can create a lifestyle or a style of life that they want and that they can impose it on others, as in non-democracy.
The security services must be prepared now for these idiots. What do you call an idiot with a gun?….a really dangerous idiot.
I hope next Wednesday and thereafter will return to some level of normality. Firstly by recognition, by this I mean a recognition that their opinion matters even if it is off the wall as in ‘crooked elections. Their opinion matters and discussed and even if the end outcome is ‘to agree to disagree’ then so be it.
Violence begets violence and the cycle will undoubtedly continue.
It’s a fine line defending yourself and your principles from people with violence on their minds. I pray for a peaceful outcome for the upcoming events but equally hope that the bad guys (and girls) are denied their opportunity to incite fear and create chaos, injury and death in their withered minds that they are being patriotic.
Well said. I pray, too. But without a determined effort to penetrate and neutralize the white supremacists and ultra-right militias, all the prayers in the world will be so much smoke.
I’ve learned all too late that my hopeful, oxytocin-laden brain has not up until now been accurately reporting to me just how bad things are. But neither are our greatest hopes as a nation irretrievable. Things will get worse before getting better. There will be more violence – and hopefully we true patriots who believe more in the word than the sword will be ready. Thanks for posting, Phil.
Thank you for the insight. If trump where to fall off the face of the earth tomorrow it wouldn’t matter much. This “movement” isn’t going anywhere. God forgive me for sounding like Joe McCarthy but the cultists have infiltrated every strata of our society, military, the cops, politics, the media, secret service, FBI, teachers, doctors and on and on. It seems that everything now hinges on either breaking the spell now holding our fellow citizens captive and bring them back into the fold or I fear like you that this will come to some awful end.
In response to your reply to my previous comment Mr. Caputo, I only mentioned Ms. Babbitt as an example of someone who has betrayed the uniform she once wore, and the oath she took to defend the Constitution of the United States “against all enemies foreign and domestic.” You are absolutely correct in distinguishing between being in a war zone and being in combat. That would be like comparing our simultaneous “combat” experiences – which don’t even compare. Based on what you wrote in “A Rumor of War” (which I made required reading in my U.S. History college courses) you were in heavy combat in Vietnam while I was in a war zone in the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic. I realize very few people realize that Johnson had two wars going at the same time in 1965 because one (Vietnam) heavily overshadowed our other illegal invasion (the Dominican Republic). Your point is very well taken and a lesson people should know about our over hyped “heroes” who never left the U.S. but strut their stuff every militaristic holiday.
It is a very small number of the 74M who voted for Trump who stormed the capitol building. Most did not and did not approve of it. But I think some key factors are missing in these comments. I’ll note that I did not vote for Trump in either election, but rather for the Libertarian candidate, but I do know a lot of Trump voters including family members. I’m a conservative guy, so had there been any other Republican on the ticket I would have voted for them. I didn’t vote for Trump because 1) I’m in California so my vote really didn’t matter, and 2) I figured there was too much risk that Trump was someone who could go beyond being obnoxious and do something appalling, which happened, even before the election. The separation of children from their parents of people crossing the border illegally particular appalled me.
Look at what’s happened over the past few decades. People have been moving out of the northern states and heading south in search of opportunities that they believe are being killed off in their home states (and now on the west coast). How many companies contemplating setting up a manufacturing operation now choose a northern state? Zoning restrictions have resulted in housing costs in many cities rocketing out of reach. I bought my first house from a retired school janitor and sold it to a young technology executive. Janitors are now expected to live 4 to a room. Energy costs are increasingly making electricity a significant portion of someone’s monthly budget in hot seasons. I can go on, but the migration really tells the story. Even California’s population is believed to have declined in 2020. Where are young working class guys’ prospects better – in Michigan or Illinois or Texas?
Trump’s support ultimately came from the growing belief that the Democrats intend to impoverish them and that they are succeeding in doing so. According to the Census Bureau California now has the highest poverty rate of any state when adjusted for living costs, exceeded only by Washington, DC. This may be done for environmental reasons – an industry that actually pays blue collars well might pollute, or cut down trees, or dig up the ground for mines. Not woke but it does pay. Of course, too many people in comfortable office jobs will argue that if they live like I do my well-being will be diminished.
Had Trump not been such an idiot about the pandemic he probably would have won. Unemployment was low and working class incomes were rising. He even increased his vote among some minority groups. He was perceived as standing between them and the Democrats, and certainly, he would have won had there been no pandemic. His loss is entirely his own fault. Given his demonstration in the past week of what is capable of doing, you could say a bullet was dodged.
The Trump supporters remain and they are angry, though the ones I know are actually pretty nice though a bit boorish on the subject. They would never invade the capitol buildings. But they had the power to inflict Trump on the nation once and could probably do it again if angered to that point. So, don’t anger them so much. If kept employed, which means quit discouraging employers who might actually want to hire them, they’ll be less inclined to want to sic a rabid dog on the country. The response, however, will probably be to try to crush them further, so the strife will continue. How long can 52% keep down 48%?
Just finished “Acts of Faith.” I know many of those characters. Hell, I am some of them: old Africa hand, inveterate do-gooder, conflicted moralist. One things I am not: a pilot, although I used to hang out at the Aero Club and flew a number of sortied with outfits that worked out of Wilson. I have had several projects up and down the Sobat River and currently and helping build a school in Bor.
I moved my family to Nairobi on the day Beryl Markham died, August 3, 2006. Moved into an old colonial bungalow off Ngong Road across from Uchumi’s, although Uchumi’s wasn’t there at that time. My post box was at Adams Arcade, not far from where Beryl Markham lived. Sorry I didn’t get to know her.
One of my friends crashed in Sudan in 1988. Bad weather or shot down? Who knows, but he wasn’t where his flight plan said he was going. His daughter and my daughter were roommates at boarding school in Kijabe.
I still commute to Africa: all over. This virus has curtailed my flying, but I hope to get the vaccination and get back to Africa. I made it out of Uganda in March by the skin of my teeth: another hour or two and I’d have been stuck in quarantine.
Did you know Smith Hempstone, our U.S. Ambassador to Kenya at the time? Hemingway-esque writer and newspaper journalist and ex-Marine like yourself. He was my friend and neighbor, not in Nairobi, but later on the coast of Maine. I live in Africa half the year, in Maine half the year, and in Kentucky half the year: makes for a full year!
Thanks for the book! Well done, Caputo, well done!
As a person, non-American, who has lived his life in Ireland, I have been a great admirer of America and it’s attempted values. I say this because one/people can only attempt, they cannot guarantee success. To watch, from Ireland, what happened on January 6th on Capitol Hill was stomach painfully sickening. Certainly not surprising but definitely sickening. It was not surprising because this was coming for 5 years. One year before Trump took office and the 4 painful years he was the President of The United States (now the non-United States). We all saw it coming but hoped against hope that it would fizzle out like the fire that had engulfed the USA since Trump came on the scene. It is said that a fire is at it’s most dangerous when at the ember and ash stage, as it is now when it can be spread by a single piece of ash. Last Wednesday displays this perfectly.
To see an adult male with a long beard stomping through The Capitol building shouting ‘USA, USA’ simplified my worst fears. The majority of people who supported this insurrection/vandalism are no more entitled to call themselves Americans than someone from Moscow, Caracas or even Dublin for that matter.
Interestingly the majority of flags being waved were wither the Trump flag or the USA flag with the Trump flag attached to the banner. This was not even tribal politics. This was cult-like stupidity. This behaviour has a really bad legacy throughout history.
My thoughts and best wishes go out to the real America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Not the land of the Vandal and the home of the despot
Just a thought or two: All of us are conditioned to one degree or another, or one persuasion or another.this can seem to lead individuals to bizarre or mundane pursuits. You referenced the 70% of 70 million(49 million) as confirmed deluded, desperate, unbalanced, followers of a sort of prophet of the vanities. They are a sad, pitiful, desperate and fearful group that could also be said to represent members of the failed human experiment. But in a very real sense they are also anarchists who drank the kool-aid of destruction and rebirth and think the events of the moment have a root far deeper and essentially are the product of a government and a people broken beyond the point of salvation ready to follow the prophet to their illogical end. Destroy it, burn it down, and out of the ash a new order of “enlightened Christian type of soldier will arise.”
Certainly this is not the end but a sounding board for what is likely to follow. This is a dedicated anarchistic movement evolutionary presented by the natural cycle of the failed human experiment. Very few overcome their conditioning or even have an inclination to do so. So as you said this is a point in the process, a beginning and certainly not an end. But it is also certain that an end will come and with it likely another beginning, or so we hope.
You have hit on what may be the essential character of Trumpism — nihilism. In another context, the Donald himself would be holed up in a bunker with his Eva Braun.
Very well stated, and a good analysis of what may be yet to come. Towards the end you stated “Most of them, if not all, have never seen or fought in a war; if they had, they wouldn’t find it so attractive.” Well it may be true that most of them have never fought in a war, one thing we have learned is that the leaders of many of these right-wing anti-government mobs received their arms and bomb making training in the U.S. military. Several investigations have uncovered an astonishing number of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis on major military installations. I do not know if the military draws these people, or if they are converted while in the military. But it is a problem that has been known for a long time but shoved under the rug by (mostly) Republican lawmakers who do not want to face the fact of domestic terrorism or domestic terrorists. Always look for the enemy without, but never see the enemy within.
And the assault on our center of democracy on Wednesday, January 6, 2020 was led by some of those same people who once wore the uniform of the country they are helping to tear apart. Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed in the Capitol was a Air Force veteran who had served several tours in war zones according to news releases.
I fear, as you do Mr. Caputo, that this is just the harbinger of things to come. May god help us all if that comes to be.
You might well be correct re: military veterans in the ultra-right, Trump cult. That doesn’t mean they have seen war up close and personal. Ms. Babbit’s service in a war zone is nowhere near the same thing as being in battle. Nor would her experience qualify even if she’d heard a few shots fired in anger. As Michael Herr observed in his great book, Dispatches, there is combat, there is heavy combat, and then there is combat when it all comes down. Antietam. Argonne. Iwo. Chosin. Khe Sahn — examples of the last category.
Breathtakingly clear. Incredible piece of writing.