What the Capitol Hill attack revealed about America

Wasn’t the worst supposed to be behind us when 2020 finally slithered out the door? Apparently not for those us living in America. A revitalised pandemic, a slow and inefficient Covid-19 vaccination process and contested elections greeted the New Year. And then came January 6, 2021 and the assault on Capitol Hill. Will that be the end, the worst that will happen? I don’t know anyone who has the answer because this inglorious act may be an old and outdated mishap between my writing about it and you reading it. Donald Trump has only days left in his presidency, but in America we have learned that days can seem like weeks when he gets busy.

Capitol Hill hosts both the United States (US) House of Representatives and the US Senate. That day, when the elected tenants of both of these temples of democracy were going about their most vital work – affirming the collective will of Americans to choose their president and the vice president – pro-Trump thugs and hooligans, in a brazen act of domestic terrorism, stormed the building in an attempted coup. Both chambers were evacuated and the ongoing voting was suspended.

Encouraged by the president himself and his sycophants, this growling, overwhelmingly Caucasian mob assaulted a suspiciously understaffed Capitol Police force, vandalised offices and rushed through the edifice of our democracy at will. Some carried weapons, pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. Five people died.  The mob smashed windows, broke doors, stole or tore up important documents while looting elected members’ offices and occupying their chairs. They desecrated the hallowed halls of our venerable legislative institutions.

Many observers have pointed to the lack of law enforcement presence when peaceful participants in the June Black Lives Matter march were barricaded, tear-gassed and arrested by the large police force. Many, including incoming President Joe Biden, correctly assert that had the insurrectionists been people of colour, the law enforcement response would have sadly been very different.

Trump’s inept and weak attempt at contrition after the smoke cleared rang hollow and was an obvious attempt to quiet the swelling calls for his resignation, impeachment, or forced removal from office.

The American dream?

While the world watched this chaos in a country that has long been considered a mecca of progress and innovation, one that has been preaching to the world for decades about democracy and the rule of law, I slumped in a chair, shocked.

My numbed mind rippled across the oceans to Punjab in India, where I was born and raised. I recalled the America I knew from the movies, the printed word, and talk of those Indians who had become Americans or whose relatives were in America before March 6, 1999, when I first landed here as an employee of a software company.

America had all that I had ever imagined and wanted in a country: power (I don’t mean 24-hour electricity) and strength on a global level; initiative and resources that made it a world leader in almost every sphere; a pathway to success. It wasn’t called the Land of Opportunity for nothing.

It had a democracy in the real sense that was better than the washed and ironed version of the one practiced in India’s parliament; or on the Indian roads by its traffic police. It had law and order that was visible and not just confined to selectively enforced rule books. It had Apple, IBM, HP, Compaq, Motorola, Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, Intel, and the others I had read and heard about during my computer science engineering days.

The relative ease of starting and running a business as an entrepreneur energised my dreams after my arrival here. It seemed the country had an impeccable system for everything that worked smoothly and efficiently. Only a couple of things kept it from being perfect: Punjabi wasn’t its national language; rotis and naans were not part of its national diet; and baseball was too different from our south Asian cricket.

I had never bought or owned anything with wheels in India. A few months after arriving here, I had a Honda Accord, followed by other vehicles. I successfully started multiple software companies here, one after the other. My wife and I bought a home on an acre of land. We went on vacations with our daughter and son to almost every part of the world, and we even visited Pakistan during Guru Nanak’s 550^th birthday anniversary celebration.

But when people I know in India, Pakistan, Europe, or elsewhere asked me in 2016 how Donald Trump got elected, I had no answer. What I did know was that I would do my best not to let it happen again. I never worked for a political cause with such energy and passion as I did before the November 2020 election. I made 300-plus calls a day to Sikhs and South Asians across the country, wrote cards, raised and contributed money, and digitally defended Democrats and Joe Biden supporters in cyberspace against Trump followers and Republicans trolls.

Why Trump?

It was apparent to me and many other Americans that Trump was not only unfit to lead the country but that he posed a real danger to our democracy. His legislative assaults, incendiary tweets, constitutional brinkmanship, cruel immigration policies, and abuse of power were the hallmarks of his leadership.

In the Republican Party under Trump, these routine and systematic atrocities numbed tens of millions of Americans, gradually desensitising them with their frequency and intensity. He had somehow managed to transform the party into a cult.

One friend, an artist and writer, reminded me: “Trump’s niece wrote a book about him, having little or nothing kind to say, and her final statement was to the effect that before he left, he would burn the house down.  Well, maybe he just got others to do it for him.”

Another friend, a Delaware state senator, Bryan Townsend, offered this assessment: “The sight of an angry mob violently storming the U.S. Capitol and occupying the chambers and offices was surreal, in some ways unthinkable. There is no doubt, President Trump stoked the anger and violence; the question now is, how does a President Biden and our political leaders more broadly best advance the agenda Americans so desperately deserve and need without fueling that fire?  Thankfully, a transition of power is just days away.  We soon will see real leadership in the White House and, hopefully, a coalescing of the American people.”

A New Year, a new way

Is America past its zenith? We will see. I wish and pray for fellow Delawarean Joe Biden’s success, a great leader and man of integrity, who said, “The words of a president matter.  At their best, they can inspire; at their worst they can incite.” We hope that he will be able to arrest America’s descent. So, is 2020 really over? For me, the New Year will begin at noon on January 20^th.