There’s a scene in the second episode of Arrested Development where Michael Bluth opens the refrigerator door and sees a brown paper bag, labeled, “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.” Michael opens the bag and looks inside, and when he pulls back in surprise, there’s a moment of recognition. “Well, I don’t know what I expected,” he says. There is, true to the bag’s word, a dead dove inside the bag.
I’ve felt like Michael Bluth a lot these last two-plus months, assuming this—whatever this is in each instance, whether it be the voting results becoming clear, the calling of the election by major networks, the culmination of recounts, the certification of results by states, the emphatic rejection of so many baseless lawsuits by the courts, etc., etc., etc.—will be the end of the idiocy. Of course, every time, it isn’t, and every time it isn’t, I pull back in surprise, and then wonder why on earth I’m surprised.
I’ve written before on this site about how the United States is bigger than its government, and how we often place a higher import on our federal government than is warranted. Reactions to yesterday are not an arena in which the government’s importance is being overblown. At its core, so much of what makes the United States the United States is its tradition of self-governance—by the people, for the people. Yesterday, that was attacked. It was attacked via a violent uprising, an uprising that managed to break through into the U.S. Capitol, disrupting one of the most fundamental processes of our self-governance: our presidential election. It was shocking. It was heartbreaking. And at the same time, it was utterly unsurprising.
Because what did we expect? This was something the mob, and others of their mindset, had fantasized about, in the public light of festering sewers on the internet. This was something fed gluttonously by the significant segment of right-wing media that prioritizes inflammation over fact. This was something encouraged in many words by the outgoing president, who continues to claim, despite it being relentlessly proven otherwise these last two months by the courts—which are, by the way, the largest and most reliable non-partisan fact-finding commission this country could create—that the election was “stolen” from him. What did we expect?
And what did we expect to beget, over these last however-many decades, as we’ve watched and participated in the creation of a hate-fueled information market in which significant segments prioritize inflammation over fact, reflecting a consumer base that often prioritizes inflammation over fact, large swaths of which, when forced to choose, will evidently believe the festering sewers and talk show jesters over the judicial branch of the government of the country they so brashly profess to love? This wasn’t just the physical mob, believing their grievance legitimate and their violence justified and willing to carry out that violence. It was the societal mob, a larger one, also believing the grievance legitimate, also believing the violence justified, and just partially unwilling or circumstantially unavailable to carry it out. And it was a larger mob than that, too, for even among those who believe violence unjustified, many believe the grievance—despite all evidence pointing to the contrary—is legitimate, including seemingly many representatives and at least one senator.
One of the wisest things I heard yesterday came from Jason Isbell, the singer-songwriter, who posted a tweet that concluded, “You are what you do, and America is not better than this. Not yet.”
It’s true. This is who we are. This is what America is right now. We are not better than this. We are not better than a country in which a militant faction storms the legislative chambers in an effort to overturn the result of a free and fair election. We are, factually, a country in which a militant faction stormed the legislative chambers in an effort to overturn the result of a free and fair election. They did it yesterday.
And yet…“not yet.” Not yet, because we can be better. Because we have been better. And because we must be better. As a country.
We didn’t know what sort of content to post today. We still don’t, if we’re being honest. But the time’s here to make the call. There have been a few times this past year in which we’ve chosen to sit back quietly, or to post things directly dealing with an issue we perceive to be of critical national importance. We did this the weekend the coronavirus began to take over our daily lives. We did this for a day during the George Floyd protests and riots. We did this on Election Day. We aren’t doing it today, and that’s for a few reasons, so we wanted to communicate them clearly to those of our readers (and thank you, earnestly, to those to whom this applies) who do read nearly every post we put out there and might therefore be wondering why we’re handling today the way we’re handling it.
First off, college basketball plays on, and while we don’t think there’s any validity in the idea that any of us deserve distractions right now, we are, most significantly, an NIT blog, and we’re going to blog about the NIT when NIT-relevant things are happening. Following from that—given it’s the guidepost on the irreverent end of our content spectrum—there isn’t much sense in holding other things back.
But beyond college basketball, there’s the reality that this increasingly bloody soap opera may well continue. Donald Trump is still the president of the United States. A large portion of the populace wrongly believes he was the legitimate winner of this fall’s presidential election, an election Joe Biden legitimately won. We don’t know what’s going to happen the day of Biden’s inauguration, or what will precede it, or what will follow it. One of many sad truths about yesterday is that for as awful as yesterday was, it might not be the last piece of awfulness at this sociopolitical nadir. We pray that it is. We know it might not be.
So, holding all of yesterday in our thoughts—reckoning with it, reacting to it—we continue with this little slice of our lives and yours. Please be good today, especially in the spots where that’s hard. And may we do our best to match your goodness.
