Watching the Jan. 6 committee’s new footage once again showing the violent glee of America’s would-be coup-makers more than a year later, I flashed back to a thought I had on the day of the insurrection attempt, when we first saw the barbarians wearing and waving American flags breaching the gates and attempting to depose the American government.
The traitors hate other Americans. That is how they justify their violence. A series of lies pushed at them or internalized over their life experiences had separated them from the reality that this nation is governed by stewards selected by their countrymen, and the reality that American democracy isn’t endangered by our representatives but rather depends on them to maintain it.
My question for these rioters who cosplayed as a militia: Why do you care so much about how other Americans choose to live?
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Why do you care if some men wear women’s clothes? If another state—not even your own—wants to prevent people from walking around with guns? If Black people want to protest?
Don’t you have better things to do? Isn’t there a game on? All this unnecessary anger seems exhausting.
July 4 will be the 127th anniversary of the poem America the Beautiful, often referred to as our national hymn. Most Americans could sing you the first stanza about amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty. But most Americans—and most insurrectionists—could not recite the end of the third stanza: “Till selfish gain no longer stain, the banner of the free.”
America was not actually built on unlimited individual freedom, as a shocking number of Americans seem to believe it is these days. The foundation of our nation, the bedrock of its multi-century success, is the philosophy of democratic liberalism: the government will not interfere with your pursuit of happiness unless your pursuit interferes with that of other people.
Yet American freedom has been diluted, corrupted and repackaged into hyper-individualism—substituting a social poison for the antidote to strife. The salesmen peddling this snake oil are selling the opposite of what our founders wanted. They are selling the idea that your own freedom is more important than that of your neighbors.
The insecure insurrectionists swilling that toxic “medicine” tried on Jan. 6, and are still trying now, to force it down the throat of the vast majority of Americans. They are willing to undo our nation to enforce their minority rule. They are tearing at civility and comity like a toddler ripping off its shirt in a crying fit, unaware or uninterested in their own unhappiness that others also have a right to happiness.
Instead of sharing the bountiful “fruited plains” of America the Beautiful, they want to inflict the all-against-all landscape Daniel Plainview memorably described in There Will Be Blood: “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone. I see the worst in people. I don’t need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I’ve built my hatreds up over the years, little by little…”
The law this mad minority wants to impose would not only make Americans less safe but in doing so also infringe on our right to happiness. For instance, a national right to carry a firearm will obviously endanger the rights of millions of Americans. The lack of an assault weapons ban already does—and not just because it’s led to the murder of innocents. The fact that children now fear being shot to death in school is a direct infringement on their right to happiness, and that of their parents. One cannot be scared and happy simultaneously.
At the same time, the insurrectionists are not just trying to change the rules of our country, but also its referees. Years of methodical work to install ideological justices has put the Supreme Court on the precipice of reversing laws on abortion and guns that act as sentinels of the liberalism our founders built. And they are empowering local officials to suppress voting rights, shifting us from Constitutional democracy to autocracy of the mob.
That is the true coup. Americans will always have disagreements, even moral impasses—that is why we have duly elected and appointed officials to act as intermediaries to step in and tell us when my rights run into yours. When we remove the refs, it’s game over.
As a New Yorker, who is surrounded by and inundated by all kinds of people and cultures all of the time, I just do not understand how America got here. I go to a Polish church named after an Italian saint with an Indian priest that celebrates masses in Spanish. It’s great.
The insurrectionists should take a lesson from New York City: judge everyone, disrespect no one. Save your energy for things that matter, like getting up early for the good fresh rolls or complaining about the trash pick-up.
Have a beer. Watch the game. Grumble to your spouse. And leave our laws, our country and our civilization alone. Enjoy July 4 and your freedom to be an intolerant idiot. Sing America the Beautiful. It was written by Katharine Lee Bates, a feminist from Massachusetts.
