These are the two points made by two of several guest
speakers on NPR’s Here and Now today. These are two of my very, very, very
favorite academics ever.
·
Zeynep Tufekci: Yesterday was an attempted coup. It
failed. Will they try again? That depends on what each of us do next.
· Ibram Kendi: Is American exceptional? Was yesterday exceptional? No. If you think so, you don’t know American
history very well.
Today on NPR, Ibram Kendi and Zeynep Tufekci were interviewed
about their reactions to yesterday’s demonstration and invasion of the capitol.
I have written on FB already about my
irritation with Biden who keeps speaking of “we” and “our” as if American is
one nation, one people with one soul – it is not. I had a partner once who always interrupted
me when I started a sentence with “we”.
She would say abruptly, “who’s, ‘we’ white woman?” Kendi addresses this issue in reference to yesterday’s
events.
I also wrote yesterday about my irritation with the CNN
coverage of the attempted coup that happened yesterday. I always HEARD the criticism of 24-hour news
stations. They turn serious events into
entertainment, however morbid or frightening the nature of the entertainment
was. I had never watched them do this. They did that yesterday by blowing the coup
attempt out of proportion. Tufekci
argues that the key take away yesterday was that 138 Republicans voted to
overturn the PA election. This was lost in the mayhem of reporting yesterday.
Of course, this doesn’t make for compelling TV. Compelling TV distracts most viewers from
what is really serious (Tufekc might say, “mistaking the ridiculous for the serious).
I was pleasantly surprised to hear a lot
of commentary about the double standard on clear display between how police
treat white people v people of color. But even that tended to get buried by the
looping video of protesters breaking windows and wandering around the House and
Senate floor as well as by the competition among the pundits to say the scariest
thing. But that is what the audience
wants. If a car seems like it is going to
crash (and fortunately, it didn’t yesterday), then we definitely want to be
there to see it happen live, yes? And while we are watching for hours-on-end to
see if it happens, we need to be entertained, an unenviable job.
From HERE AND NOW, January
7, 2021
Interviewer: Comparing the storming of the capitol with what
happens in Third world countries – we are better, we are above devolving into
chaos? What are you thoughts on this?
Ibram Kendi: It’s ahistorical. To read American history, to
remember American history, is to remember coup attempt after coup attempt,
whether political or economic. I am
thinking, of course, about Tulsa, Oklahoma, or about all sorts of attempted or
actual coups during the Reconstruction era, or even the Civil War itself. Or,
even in the last year, what happened at the US capitol, has happened at state
capitols. And as a result, particularly of people violently opposing shutdowns
in their states as a result of Covid 19, or even plotting to assassinate sitting
governors. This is America. People need to recognize that. [when people argue that] This is not a third
world country [they are not acknowledging
this history].
Interviewer: is this
chaos a sign of progress against the yearning for regression? Is this a by-product of what happens during great
progress or is this just truly a devolvement of our democracy?
Kendi: I think it is a fundamental clash, and I
wrote about this recently the Atlantic.
Historically, American has had two forces -- the force of justice and the force of
injustice. And certainly when the forces
of justice have advanced, the force of injustice has tried to stop that
advance. Often times, violently.
Americans need to recognize that both forces are inherent, have existed
historically in this country.
--------------------------------------------------
Interviewer: what did you see yesterday? Was it a coup?
Zeynep Tufecki:
It was an attempt to steal an election….maybe not very competently, but
an attempt…so it was some sort of coup attempt.
Interviewer: [given that you grew up in Turkey and
experience many kinds of coups], did this feel familiar?
Tufecki: absolutely, and, in fact, when you see that
picture of the insurrectionists sitting at the Senate and the House…..and
basically yelling “Trump won!”, it is intimately familiar…..the President of
the United States was attempting to steal the election by falsely asserting
that he won it, and trying to mobilize all the extra-legal forces he could
muster from his office to try to get them to overturn the election in his
favor.
Interviewer: and you were making it clear (in your article a
while ago) that this was happening long before yesterday…what role you think Republicans
and Trump’s allies had in helping him get to this point?
Tufecki: of course, the key thing here is, is that
people are mistaking ridiculous with not serious. There are a lot of things going on that are
kind of ridiculous, for example the President tweets with all sorts of
punctuation errors. Some people yesterday
wearing hats with horns. It looks ridiculous, but it is not unserious. It’s important to realize that even after the
mob disrupted the certification process, The majority of the GOP caucus in the
House, 138 representatives voted to overturn the results of the Pennsylvania
election. Even the PA representative who was just elected with those votes
voted against that election. These are
not normal hiccups of a transition.
These are attempts to steal the election. There are a lot of ridiculous coup attempts
around the world too! A lot fail the
first, second or even third time and then they succeed. I have to say that the vote in the House and
the Senate, trying to throw out perfectly legitimate votes, that should scare
us. Even the armed men and women
breaking into the capitol did not alarm
the Republican legislators enough for them to say, fine, this is it, we’re
stopping this.
Interviewer: You said in
your December article “what often starts as a farce may end in a tragedy”
Do you still think that after yesterday?
Tufekci: it depends on how we react. A line has been crossed….it’s how we react
that determines if they try again. ….next
time it might be more competent…. This is an alarm for a potential 5 alarm fire. …we need to focus on the crucial need to
unite as a country and react. This is
not a partisan issue.