“This Place Too Damn Democratic”?–Winthrop R. Holder

Reading Time 7 mins

January 6, 2022 (First published January 18, 2021)

“Oh, how we danced to the beat of this lovely lie…
Until a man opened a door and showed us our other side.”
 “Hossay” – David Rudder

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst.
Are full of passionate intensity.”
“The Second Coming” – William B. Yeats

In 1964 the acting Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago was forced to resign for what many civilians viewed as a minor infraction. The testimony of a police corporal at a commission of inquiry was crucial in compelling the official to quit. The swiftness of the resignation in the newly independent nation (1962) prompted the Mighty Sparrow, tongue in cheek, to conclude, “This place too damn democratic.” And Sparrow attuned to the pretense at democracy, what Lord Christo called the “Mock Democracy” of America-“profess[ing] to believe in a democracy, but refus[ing] to recognize racial equality,”-which suggested that U.S. authorities would never have acted in such an ethical manner.

To be sure, the T&T official’s lapse was child’s play when compared to President Trump’s seditious and provocative actions on January 6, “inciting an insurrection” and cheering it on while it was in progress. Where was the attack “with full force” order, which true leaders would have issued when/if the government seat was under attack? Instead, the President turned on his television and, “pleased and… curiously unsurprised,” watched the assault on the Capitol. Yet, almost two weeks later, the President remains in office, legally unscathed.

Since the President was the apparent architect and intended benefactor of the storming of the immaculate U.S. Capitol, which–unlike the Storming of the Bastille or the Attack on the Moncada Barracks–wasn’t about righting historical wrongs, neither impeachment and conviction nor even censure, is a sufficient corrective. After all, since when do seditious actions merit a mere tap on the knuckles? Or, is the President inoculated by the cult(ure) of impunity?

Now is the time to call a spade a spade! Too much media chatter focused on the unprecedented nature of a president impeached twice misses the crux of the matter. In any other state, especially Russia and North Korea– countries for which the President has a soft spot–if someone had engaged in the type of provocative actions as many believe the President did, an immediate arrest was sure to follow. One can’t help but wonder why there wasn’t a Haig-like character ready and bold enough to step forward and “take control” of the government and call for the arrest of the President. One who had in plain sight orchestrated an attempt to overturn and “steal” the election: An action referred to as an autogolpe or “self-coup”–an instance of a legal leader sanctioning illegal acts to try to stay in office/power. Shouldn’t the President have been immediately arrested–for, at a minimum, suspicion of committing a criminal act–and then allow the Justice Department time to ponder if its policy, that a president is “constitutionally immune” from indictment and criminal prosecution, also precludes arrest? No? Instead, it was left to the high-tech monopoly to restrain him in Twitter Jail!

The irony of such fervent backing, for an unelected individual, is that Democrats may not have realized that by going along with Trump’s attempt to thwart an election result in Venezuela, they were tacitly endorsing similar actions, even in the very chamber in which they applauded.

Isn’t it the American way to detain perpetrators if/when they engage in activity that may be deemed ‘illegal’? Since arrests do not always lead to indictments, shouldn’t the President have been arrested just as ‘America’s Mayor,’ Giuliani, should have been on September 16, 1992? After all, he “helped incite a riot involving thousands of mostly white, mostly drunk police officers” who stormed New York’s City Hall while hurling racial slurs at David Dinkins, NY’s first African American mayor. Shouldn’t the President’s lawyers–now under the spell of “America’s Mayor,” who may well have provided the model for  January 6, 2021–assert the right to continue perfecting the art of parsing and contesting even settled legal and political issues by challenging the constitutionality of a presidential arrest?

Primarily white, alcohol-drinking, off-duty NYPD officers with guns, demonstrating against Mayor Dinkins, joined by Rudy Giuliani on top of a car cursing NYC Mayor, Sept. 16, 1992.

If ‘legal’ officials arrest ordinary civilians and citizens, fingerprint, take mug shots, and even outfit them in orange jumpsuits, etc.–and release them if there isn’t compelling evidence to indict-why should it have been different for the President? Why is the ideal of equal justice under the law missing in action at this crucial juncture? When the evidence is so glaring and visceral, as it is in this instance, isn’t there an obligation for the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies to act no differently from how they would if they observe a Black Lives Matter demonstrator desecrating, or defecating on, the flag? Isn’t immediate arrest, even death, meted out to a brother observed selling ‘loosies’ on a Staten Island street or even someone found driving while Black with a broken taillight? If these actions often result in speedy arrest and worse, why is there dithering with the President?

The Banality of Evil?

No other country has engineered as many coups and invasions as America– all in the name of the “Big Lie” of spreading ‘democracy’ and combatting authoritarianism. America has inflicted much pain on countries due to its interventionist policy. Indeed, our region continues to battle with the debilitating aftereffects of American invasions/occupations, engineered coups, and coup attempts. A shortlist includes Haiti (1915-1934 & 2004), Guatemela (1954),  then British Guiana (1964), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989),  among many other instances. Today, even in the last hours of his crippled presidency, the Trump administration has classified Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” which subjects that nation to sanctions. This thinly disguised act is one aimed at destabilizing Cuba.

Still, perhaps the President’s most dastardly action in the region has been the imposition of severe sanctions on Venezuela to further his preoccupation with removing its legally elected President, Nicola Maduro, and imposing Juan Guaido as President. To place the trappings of legitimacy on the would-be President, Trump invited Guaido to the State of The Union address in 2020. Even the Democrats, by their thunderous applause celebrating Guaido’s presence, indicated support for the President’s policy of fomenting a coup in Venezuela. The irony of such fervent backing, for an unelected individual, is that Democrats may not have realized that by going along with Trump’s attempt to thwart an election result in Venezuela, they were tacitly endorsing similar actions, even in the very chamber in which they applauded.

Still, since recent events may have allowed the U.S. to witness a coup-attempt, a self-coup, up close, one wonders if there’s, now, a clear understanding within the Capitol of coup-making/plotting and its dire consequences. Not surprisingly, given the farce of American Exceptionalism, too many people believe America inoculates itself from coups and that they are only engineered and launched overseas but cannot happen in America. Hence, there’s much consternation over how best to describe January 6.

In addition, within large swaths of the country and in Trump’s cabal, there’s a deep-seated disdain for multiracial democracy flowing from hostility to the right to vote. And there’s a full-blown effort at “chipping away at diversity, inclusion, and equity.”  How else can one explain why the ‘coup’ maker and his enablers continue to challenge voting in states where the votes of people of color, especially women, were crucial to his defeat? Put differently, by trying to suppress the Black vote–claiming he won the majority of the (white) vote–Trump is overtly calling for a return of legal discrimination and to the Jim Crow Laws. 

The carnivalesque scene of unmasked mutineers waving the Confederate flag–that vile and visible remnant of America’s embrace of slavery–as a banner of endearment and rampaging through the corridors of Congress as the gallows awaited its first victim, highlighted that “mere anarchy was loosed upon America.” Or, as David Rudder cautions, “tribal war is one dark emotion away.” Indeed, the ragtag band of zombie-like creatures–emerging from the swamp that the President deepened–inflicted both physical harm and even more long-lasting damage to the nation’s brand and psyche. The absurd scene of cult-like adorers, embracing a chiliastic ethos of salvation through martyrdom, seemed more like a reenactment of the Jim Jones’ apocalyptic cult. However, redemption was close at hand for the cultists. There’s no mystery why there were no widespread arrests and insurrectionists walked away. Some high official restrained the nation’s forces of security–reducing them to a paper tiger–thus allowing that non-Black mob to rampage all over the Capitol, defiling the formerly sacred emblem of “democracy and civility.”

Little wonder, then, that seduced by the “lovely lie” of election fraud and making America Great Again, the mutinous band may well have acted more in keeping with the accused in “The Banality of Evil.” His defense was that he did his duty by simply obeying the orders of the Nazi leader. Interestingly, according to N.Y. Times, on January 17, many who took part in the Capitol storming claimed that they were answering the call of their President. To be sure, the same security forces, “dressed in uniforms of brutality,” unleashing weapons of war on Blacks and other peaceful dissenters and demonstrators whenever we demonstrate in numbers, weren’t around on January 6. Still, the storming of the halls of Congress was not just an infantile and pathetic display of white privilege on steroids but a failed putsch by one of the most childish and incompetent would-be coup-plotters in world history.

The nature of justice requires decisive action, especially when there is a present and imminent danger. On Wednesday, January 6, the failure to arrest the President–even though the constitutional process is imprecise–was a travesty. Allowing the President to remain in office with the ‘ability’ to pardon his collaborators and continue fanning the flames of insurrection may well be confirmation of the farce of America’s democracy. This absurdity of patriots defecating in the citadel of ‘democracy,’ with impunity, mirrors the lived realities of People of Color, as encapsulated in Nas’ “My Country Shitted On Me” and Short Pants’ “The Law Is An Ass”!

What Next?

Of Interest: Reset U.S.’s Latin American/Caribbean Policy Now!

W.R. (troppy) Holder, an emancipated NYC public educator, is a founding member of the Caribbean Awareness Committee (N.Y.), co-editor of BigDrumNation, and the author of Classroom Calypso: Giving Voice to the Voiceless.