With Liberty and Justice for Some
An avoidable attack on the Capitol forces America to face its demons.
It’s been exactly a decade since what Egyptians remember as the 25th of January. On one eerily quiet night, a concept which always rouses suspicion in lively Cairo, I drove home with a friend just days after a Coptic church bombing that made time stand still. We agreed there was this feeling in the air that something big was about to happen, the calm before the storm. These were my last days living in Egypt; I’d be back in New York City a week later, just before the events of what was then referred to as the revolution would break out. I kicked myself for leaving the country too soon and missing the opportunity to take part in what would later go down in history: the grassroots organizing, the protests, the beautiful shows of solidarity and creativity that came out of Tahrir Square and beyond, and best of all, the jokes. So I did the next best thing, I watched and supported from abroad as generations sorted themselves into civilian watch groups and looked out for their neighborhoods and communities, come what may.
That familiar feeling of eerie silence is back.
On Wednesday night, the unfathomable played out right before our eyes on live television. A mentally unstable and objectively unfit commander-in-chief unable to accept the end of his reign and relevance, with even his closest turning their backs on him in favor of adherence to the Constitution. An unmasked mob storming into the Capitol, incited by their high priest to wreak havoc and display little other than their blind faith, callous entitlement and above all, rancid white supremacy.
At the time of writing, five people have been confirmed dead, and a second attack is planned on the Capitol for January 17th.
The inevitable hour of reckoning is here, and it is astounding, though not a surprise, that all the ugliness of the last four years has finally bubbled up to the surface. After the year that was 2020, even living through a historic pandemic with its recent surge in cases and deaths is no longer the main headline in the United States. Instead our attention and embarrassingly, the world’s, has been shifted to the fitting end to a disastrous presidency: a dangerous man-child and his cult having difficulty processing defeat at the expense of the rest of the country’s safety and wellbeing.
The scenes in DC and around the rest of the country conjure up a mess of emotions as we witness government’s response. As an Arab American in unity with my fellow people of color and more broadly, people of conscience, I’m stunned by the sheer and casual hypocrisy of the response in quelling the thugs, or rather, the domestic terrorists who clearly felt so at liberty to waltz right into what many of us see as the temple of American democracy. I wonder what that sort of entitlement feels like — had this been a non-white demographic, I’d be willing to bet all existing bitcoin that this mind-boggling performance would have been met with the most brutal force, resulting in far more bloodshed. Instead, as evidenced by the brazen accounts of pro-Trumpers that continue to trickle out of Wednesday’s events, the response of local government and the Capitol Police was tepid at best.
The shock as a spectator is therefore two-fold: The glaring contrast between the response to an army of mostly white men who answered his “stand down, stand by” call, stomping into the Capitol building, vandalizing Congress members’ offices and destroying property while armed with semiautomatics and Molotov cocktails — and what the imagined aftermath of a breach by Black and brown people would look and sound like. The language used and proliferated by the media. The continued harm done to the general American sociocultural perception of the Black looters and ingrates; the Arab savages, or, by default of ethnicity, terrorists, attacking the pure and sacred symbols of democracy.
The second shock is in the target of the rioters and the recent history that’s culminated in this moment. The terrifying image of Congress members hiding under their desks, making panicked calls to loved ones and praying in the fear that these may be their final moments, isn’t one that inspires confidence that this is a government that can protect its people. Bipartisan rifts over the countless mass shootings and restrictive gun legislation over the years have some responsibility in this.
By giving the powerless such easy access to the tools and ammunition to express their rage so shamelessly over indignant lies over the election, they have found their power in numbers and in aggression. Racial supremacy and American exceptionalism breed extreme entitlement; an unshakeable sense that something is owed. Entitlement without fulfillment of that need, growing inequality, and an electoral threat to that supremacy, would understandably make one feel an impending obsoletism of their very identity. Even further, the perception that something has been stolen from you, combined with lack of critical thought to analyze for oneself lies coming from the highest office, breed a righteousness that to everyone else appears as it actually is: not revolution, but mayhem.
In the wake of these events, Republicans have an identity crisis to contend with. Not only has Trump’s incitement spurred a flurry of resignations that will have consequences for some time, but it’s now loud and clear that thoughts and prayers will no longer do. The cultish fury is not in a remote town far removed from the nation’s capital and easy to ignore or wave away. It’s right on DC’s doorstep, and it’s blown the door in.
The Capitol insurrection was a massive security failure. How is it that these spaces were so easy to break into? Why did it go on for hours before a (mostly ignored) curfew was imposed? Why did DC mayor, Muriel Bowser only submit a request for a National Guard deployment on December 31, though we knew this moment was coming since well before the election?
Resignation of top Capitol security officers is confirmation that this did not follow standard procedure. Cops taking selfies with protestors and allowing them to march around with such arrogance is not standard procedure. We’ve learned this through experience with Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street; any semblance of peaceful protest in recent memory.
The only conceivable conclusion is that there is a mass of individuals for whom the ingrained belief and lived experience affirms: Whiteness is the standard; it is worthy of life, of freedom, and of the right to belong in any room one chooses. They are protestors, not terrorists. Their bats and guns are not weapons. Their violence is self-defense, even in the absence of offense. Everyone else is foreign, second-class. Black, brown, Indigenous are the other, and are not worthy of protection or basic human dignity. Not in public, not in their homes, not in their beds. This is the fullest manifestation of entitlement, and our acceptance of it whether minor or broad, poisons us all.
There’s one particular image that stays with me: a Black cop running from a group of armed thugs chasing him up a staircase. He tries to avoid using force, as he would push them back with his baton. He does not charge at them, beat them, nor does he reach for his gun. He is clearly outnumbered, and I struggle to imagine a scene in which the tables were turned. A white officer using minimal force, employing self-restraint and not abusing his power against a group of angry, armed Black demonstrators, hesitating in any way or becoming intimidated or discomposed.
The double standard is as unbelievable as it is unacceptable. Here’s a grotesque statistic: for each arrest made since Wednesday, 269 Black Lives Matter protestors were arrested. Of the hundreds that stormed the Capitol, just 52 have been arrested, compared to 14,000 BLM demonstrators arrested across the country since May 2020. And while it’s reassuring that President-elect Joe Biden has acknowledged the disparity, if not immediately followed by serious action, they will be just words.
For a visual representation of the contrast in arrest numbers, see Mona Chalabi’s diagram.
America is in a dark place. I wish I can say that the result of the community building and fundraising and sense of a common goal in Egypt ten years ago amounted to a new kind of country that values social justice, freedom, bread; the demands most commonly chanted for in those days. It resulted in a coup. The military junta took back power from a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. Inequality intensified, a free press was crushed, and unfair trials continue against political and falsely convicted prisoners.
The United States, contrary to Hollywood’s suggestion, is not infallible, and as with everything, the only way out is through. We will need a heavy dose of accountability, critical thought, actual justice, and tangible measures to bridge mounting inequality if we are to get past this sad attempt at a coup, as well as the coming weeks.
Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms have taken away Trump’s megaphone as a response to his use of the tools to spew hatred and intolerance. It’s a start, but if only DC would step up and do its part, not by silencing angry voices but addressing the root of the problem, the joint effort would live up to his slogan and truly make America great again.
