January 6: Giving Insurrection a Bad Name

Steven Johnston is Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Service, University of Utah and is the author of, most recently, Wonder and Cruelty: Ontological War in 'It's a Wonderful Life' and Lincoln: The Ambiguous Icon.

Democracy in America may be dead. Yes, it continues to show signs of life (some competitive elections continue, for now anyway), but this does not mean that it has not been effectively killed (already). One party and one party alone—the Republican Party—in this country believes it has the sole right to rule. Anything done to prevent Democrats from governing is thus, by definition, permissible. Since democracy cannot reliably deliver the results Republicans desire, they are prepared to dispense with it.

 

There are some who recognize, at least to some extent, the danger American democracy faces, but most of them are incapable of considering, let alone doing, what might be necessary to save it from its domestic enemies. And make no mistake, America is beset by enemies of democracy. This is not a question of demonizing opponents. It is a matter of recognizing them—and their agenda—for what they are. This combination makes the threat to democracy twofold: its enemies will gladly destroy it; its friends will sit by and watch it happen, paralyzed by (liberal procedural) formalities.

Former President Donald Trump is the generalissimo of the American campaign to subvert American democracy. His credentials are impeccable. Trump weathered conspiring with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election and then successfully covered it up by obstructing the official investigation into it. The Muller probe provided Trump and his treason, in the end, with an official pass. Trump tried to enlist a foreign power to subvert the 2020 election and then did his best to cover it up, too. The subsequent impeachment process, thanks to Republicans, gave him a second pass. Trump (then) orchestrated a failed coup attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost, the most legitimate national contest in American history. The impeachment process, again thanks to Republicans, gave him a third pass for his treasonous conduct.

 

The failed efforts to hold Trump accountable no doubt emboldened him and the Republican Party, both at the national and state levels. Though they have not yet eradicated it, they are working diligently, tirelessly, relentlessly to render American democracy’s meaningful exercise null and void. (This meaningful exercise revolves around the acceptance of political defeat and the peaceful transfer of power.) They do so not just to ensure that Trump, the purveyor and beneficiary of a cult of personality, will be returned to the White House in 2024 regardless of how the nation votes. They do so in service to a radical right-wing, anti-democratic ideology that is rooted in, among other things, white supremacy, white Christian minority rule, neoliberal capitalism, an extraction-based economy, indifference to catastrophic environmental crises, the elimination of workers’ rights, a war on scientific (and other forms of) expertise,  the worship of guns, a celebration of violence, contempt for opposition of any kind, antagonism to government and the common good, unthinking patriotism, toxic masculinity, and the control of women’s bodies: in short, the ugliest version of American exceptionalism.

Trump and his Republican minions wage their fascist campaign not behind the scenes with stealth maneuvers designed to keep the public in the dark, but out in the open for everyone to witness. Pace The Washington Post, democracy does not die in darkness. Their machinations, featuring various schemes to overturn adverse electoral results in the next presidential election, are meeting with little, if any, opposition. This means that what failed in 2020 could well succeed the next time around.

 

Meanwhile, many of the foot soldiers who participated in the January 6 insurrection are now receiving harsh sentences for their involvement in the violent coup to keep Trump in power. The claim that they were operating on his orders and doing his bidding has not protected them from serious jail time. Rightly so, but the man who has done (and continues to do) so much damage to American democracy pursues his campaign to destroy American democracy unhindered. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which includes Liz Cheney, has made it clear that Trump committed crimes on January 6. He could thus find himself in legal jeopardy, however improbable that seems given the cowardice of the current Attorney General, who would be highly unlikely to make even a preliminary investigative move against Trump for the crime of treason absent pressure from a mass mobilization. For one thing, Garland would not have Biden’s backing. Biden, after all, said nothing when it was recently revealed that Trump went to the first debate having tested positive for Covid-19, a reckless act that could be construed as an assassination attempt of a would-be president.

 Trump’s January 6 crimes are specified in federal law (18 U.S.C. 1852 and 18 U.S.C. 2383): 1) “Whoever corruptly…obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” Official proceedings include “a proceeding before the Congress”; 2) “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” Not all official proceedings are alike, of course, but Congressional ratification of the official transfer of power following a free and fair election for president is the first among equals, and its subversion tantamount to rebellion or insurrection.

Trump’s guilt is beyond reasonable doubt. He summoned and demanded that his myrmidons “stop the steal,” and the only way to stop the so-called steal was to stop the procedure confirming Biden’s presidential election victory on January 6. Since Mike Pence declined to participate, there were no options other than mob violence to implement Trump’s will to power. The mob did not disappoint him (lynching Nancy Pelosi would have been a bonus for Trump’s marauders), and Trump refused to call them off when  they stormed the Capitol.

 

At long last, what is to be done with Trump? Admittedly, no law, given its generality, is likely to fit perfectly all the cases it might cover. The laws applicable to Congress’ official proceeding on January 6 imagine fines and imprisonment as adequate responses (with rebellion or insurrection actually carrying lesser penalties). Yet Trump’s continual crimes against American democracy could be considered capital in character. After all, they entail the destruction of a people’s free way of life and the instantiation of permanent one-party domination. This country was founded on a violent rejection of tyranny (at least on one side but with the sanctification of slavery on the other.) Trump and the Republican Party want to resurrect tyranny and re-sanctify white triumphalism. It could be argued that Trump should have been dealt with years ago and the nation’s failure to protect itself from him (especially given his hold over the Republican Party, which is birthing more and more Trumps) reveals a country incapable of defending itself. Ultimately, it seems America’s democratic defenders would sooner sit by and watch their democracy destroyed than destroy, by whatever means contemporary politics might indicate and republican history might dictate, those who would destroy it.

 

What this means is that January 6, 2021, embodies a dress rehearsal for 2024. It was rightly condemned because Trump lost the election. The election was not in fact stolen. No amount of insistence to the contrary can alter this fact. No amount of fabricated evidence can alter this fact. The Big Lie may succeed, but this cannot make it true. Truth, however, can also be irrelevant. Lies can create their own reality. Trump may not be Hitler, but he is a pupil. The Big Lie thus may lead to an illegitimately overturned election in 2024. If so, what will democratic forces do then? Are they prepared to disrupt Republican-controlled statehouses hellbent on naming their own slates of electors to the Electoral College? Are they prepared to prevent a Republican-controlled Congress from installing as president someone who did not legitimately win the office? If so, how exactly? The John Roberts Supreme Court will be a partner in its crime. These are not fantastical scenarios. Republicans across the country are arranging them as I write. It’s one thing to condemn January 6 as a failed coup. It’s another thing to fail to prepare to take action to prevent a Republican-dominated Congress from initiating or ratifying a real coup that might take place on a future January 6. In other words, there’s potential danger in letting January 6, 2021, give insurrection a bad name. More than likely, it’s going to take democratic bodies bravely putting themselves in harm’s way in and around both state and national legislatures to save American democracy from its self-declared enemies, for those who falsely shouted “stop the steal” in 2020 and 2021 are now conspiring to execute the greatest heist in American political history. Get ready to Occupy the 2024 Election. 

America's Obituary

 

 

 

Steven Johnston is Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Service, University of Utah and is the author of, most recently, Wonder and Cruelty: Ontological War in 'It's a Wonderful Life' and Lincoln: The Ambiguous Icon.

Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in a close election. While he won a record number of votes, the electoral college results were not clear until four days after the voting stopped. Biden will win, eventually, by roughly six million, but Trump garnered over 70 million votes himself, adding over 10 million to his 2016 total—despite a manifestly failed presidency, except in terms of white supremacy, that is.

The polls predicting a decisive Biden victory were wrong. Badly wrong. The Senate is likely to stay in Republican hands, where Mitch McConnell can obstruct Biden’s initiatives, and Supreme Court conservatives, activist Republicans all, hold a 6 to 3 majority. Democrats flipped zero statehouses, which bodes ill for redistricting. Trump has been defeated, but Trumpism lives, and the lame duck president may well run again as a victim of the greatest fraud in American political history in 2024. In the meantime, there is no reason to believe he will disappear from the political scene and preside over his (failing) businesses. Rather, he is likely to wage a running war against Biden and the Democrats from his Twitter account, and may even continue to hold periodic rallies given how dependent he is on the adulation of crowds for validation. He will also need to nurture the wounds he is forging now as he refuses to face the reality of defeat. 

After being declared the winner, Joe Biden delivered the kind of speech everyone knew he would: an Obamaesque call for reconciliation and unity. Biden insisted it is time to end the demonization characteristic of American politics and insisted that our opponents are not enemies but fellow Americans. Biden believes that he can work with Republicans to get things done, and given the dire circumstances the country faces (lethal pandemic, economic collapse, climate change, etc.), there is no shortage of things that need to get done. Biden will start his first day in office with a blitz of executive orders, but this tactic can achieve only so much. 

What do the nation’s prospects look like? Stalemate is one likely outcome. When Barack Obama assumed office in 2013, Republicans made it their mission to destroy his presidency and make him a one-term president. He never seemed to figure out that he could not rise above the partisan fray and bring Republicans along with him in a joint patriotic commitment to the nation. Remember, America was also in crisis when he took office. Republicans did not care. They do not show any evidence of caring now. Trump and Trumpism, despite the jubilant nationwide parties in the streets following Biden’s official victory, have not been defeated, let alone repudiated. They are both alive and well. America’s polarized division will be with us for years, perhaps decades, to come. The country’s electoral system exaggerates and empowers their otherwise minority status. 

Is this the indefinite reality with which America’s democratic citizens have to live? Can we reasonably be expected to live in a polity in which tyrannical minority rule embodied by Donald Trump, his GOP allies in the House and Senate, much of the federal judiciary, and a majority of Republican statehouses and governorships routinely prevails—or even enjoys the possibility of prevailing. Or is there an alternative, a long-term alternative, that it would be wise to start discussing? What if we were to put Trump and Trumpism on notice?

Regardless of November 3’s results, then, given the damage Trump and Republicans have inflicted on this country over the last 50 years, given, furthermore, their very identity as a political party committed to white supremacy and racial resentment, what if the United States took the first steps in a process of self-dissolution? This is an idea with roots in the founding of the country when (some) anti-Federalists preferred to form several small republics in the aftermath of independence from Great Britain. Hamilton’s dreams of national power and global empire defeated democratic aspirations then. The latter can be recovered and redeemed now in the name of a multiracial America that already exists on the east and west coasts and many parts of the American interior, including several large cities in the sunbelt. 

Remember, we already live in a country broken geographically by two oceans (yes, I am counting Puerto Rico) and Canada. Is there any reason we cannot (try to) become a more perfect non-contiguous union? And largely leave the red states to themselves? Imagine a long blue and purple arc starting in the Midwest with Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois extending east to Pennsylvania, New York and New England. Trace it down the east coast from the Mid-Atlantic states to Florida (South Carolina will have a decision to make) and then jump to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Finish it off with the west coast of the continental United States, and then Nevada, Colorado, and Hawai’i. The deep red states, concentrated largely in the continent’s interior but including the rural parts of much of coastal America, would be “liberated.”

When Trump was elected president in 2016 he lacked democratic legitimacy. Hillary Clinton, despite a deeply flawed campaign in which she somehow decided not to appear in key battleground states, secured nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, who averted well-deserved defeat thanks to the democratically indefensible electoral college. Three years later, following acquittal by the Senate after House impeachment, Trump ran for reelection lacking constitutional legitimacy as well. After all, Mitch McConnell announced prior to Trump’s trial that the president would be acquitted no matter the evidence, an act not only of institutional betrayal but arguably of treason. America’s vaunted and much-celebrated system of check and balances seemed officially dead. From a democratic perspective, Donald Trump should never have assumed office. From a Constitutional perspective, Donald Trump should never have remained in office. Each points to the failure of America’s purportedly democratic system of government to sustain itself and keep faith with its values. How long do democratic citizen owe allegiance to such a system? 

For nearly four years, Donald Trump has posed a variety of existential threats to the country. Is this overstating the case? To answer the question, let’s take a quick inventory of Trump’s presidency (and thus Trumpism), which might then point to a new way forward.

Donald Trump conspired and attempted to conspire with foreign governments, first with Russia and then with Ukraine, to subvert America’s democratic system and obstruct any and all efforts to uncover these schemes. He has also called on China to interfere in America’s electoral process and come to his aid. Trump’s lawlessness pertains not just to his efforts to secure and maintain his position of power, which is critical to his family’s financial fortunes. It relates to all areas of government: Trump refuses to recognize the very idea of Congressional oversight of his administration. He believes that he is accountable to no one and no thing. The Constitution, on his “reading,” allows him to do whatever he wants to do. This is the definition of tyranny. Athens and Rome, our spiritual and practical forebears, knew how to handle tyrants. America’s founders thought they could learn from and improve on their ancient predecessors and lessen violence in politics. They appear to have been wrong. Only one Republican Senator, Mitt Romney, voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial. Lawlessness is not just a Trump problem. It is a Republican Party value (at least when they have power). 

Donald Trump presided—and continues to preside even as I write this—over Republican efforts, which have included the federal judiciary and state and local governments, to suppress the vote on a massive scale and disqualify Democratic votes after they have been cast, especially of people of color. Republicans long ago concluded that they cannot win elections without rigging their outcome, as Brain Kemp did in Georgia in 2018. This electoral violence is consonant with Trump’s refusal to renounce White supremacy when given the opportunity during the first presidential debate. He refused for one simple reason: he is a White supremacist and it is the key to his electoral and Republican Party fortunes. Race and racism account for the deep devotion of his base, even as he poses a threat to their livelihoods and their lives by ignoring a lethal pandemic and its economic fallout. 

Donald Trump refused, when asked repeatedly, to say whether he would respect the results of the 2020 election, and thus the will of the American people, and commit to the peaceful transfer of power, a tradition that traces back to the origins of the country and George Washington. Rather, insisting that he cannot by definition lose, Trump believes that any defeat is inherently illegitimate, which is one reason he won’t concede the election now, despite the threat to national, including health, security. Combine these assaults on American democracy with voter suppression efforts and Trump and the GOP have effectively placed themselves in harm’s way should the need arise to remove him from office. This should be unthinkable in American democracy. It is no longer. 

Biden is not worried. His campaign reassured the country that “the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.” Trump’s supporters, in and out of government, might not be as sanguine about removal. Here it is worth noting that when British colonists revolted in the 1770s and pursued a course of violent revolution to establish an independent nation-state, they did so with much weaker cause and provocation than America’s democratic citizens possess today.

Donald Trump, despite the known dangers, has lied over and over (again) about the Covid-19 global pandemic, making an effective national response impossible. He has refused to advocate the most basic precautions to stop the spread of the virus and protect American citizens, instead encouraging his base to believe, wrongly, that their freedom was at stake if they wore a mask. In an all out effort to secure s second term, through reelection or otherwise, Trump has insisted on reopening the economy without adequate precautions and sponsored superspreader events at the White House and in numerous states on the campaign trail, resulting in the dissemination of the virus. It can be argued that his boundless narcissism, breathtaking incompetence, and criminal neglect of this deadly disease have needlessly cost tens of thousands of Americans, perhaps more, their lives, rendering Trump a uniquely political serial killer. Can any democratic citizen can be expected to subject themselves to his rule? 

Donald Trump has told nearly twenty-five thousand lies, tracked by The Washington Post, while in office. These lies, from inauguration crowds to Covid-19 to his defeat by Joe Biden, make democratic politics nearly impossible by deliberately confusing an alternative fictional reality with truth. Trump’s lies serve a number of political purposes. Perhaps the primary effect is to render accountability impossible and obscure the threat that Trump and Trumpism’s far right agenda poses to American democracy. Insofar as the media try to hold him accountable, which is one of their critical functions, he labels them the “enemy of the people.” Trump’s ambition is to undermine trust in the media, to disempower it, enabling him to pursue the party’s right wing program with as little effective opposition as possible. The media are not Trump’s only enemy, of course. Trump and Trump’s America are defined by their enemies, which they constantly and endlessly create, all of whom are actual or would-be targets of violence, both state and state-solicited.

It is evident that Trump and the Republican Party aspire to create what amounts to a second Confederacy, as reactionary and racist as the first. Through their actions and rhetoric they have made it clear they do not believe in democracy and will not—they cannot—share a polity with those unlike and opposed to them. How, then, can democratic citizens be reasonably expected to live alongside them, let alone allow them to impose minority rule over them? Democracy itself, I would argue, is not and should not be a legitimate subject of American elections. But that is what the latter, in part, have become, which is tantamount to asking the country’s democratic citizens, should they lose, to acquiesce in their own political domination. The next round of this dynamic is now scheduled for 2024.

Perhaps the United States of America, thanks to would-be destruction of its basic institutions, practices, and norms from one side of the political divide marking it, is an idea whose time has cone and gone. But from the ashes of Trump’s America, a new nation might be born. Fortunately, it already exists, if inchoately. Among other things, this new nation needs to divorce its revanchist other half and redraw its boundaries. Given how the two Americas feel about each other, why can’t such a separation proceed amicably? Or, if this proposal, projecting the loss of the country they claim to love, were to serve as a shocking wake-up call to so-called Red State America(ns), perhaps, as Biden hopes, their better angels might prevail over their darker impulses. Either way, Biden is right about one thing: democracy has to defend itself.

November 15, 2020

Rethinking White Supremacy on the Mall

 

 Steven Johnston is Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Service, University of Utah and is the author of, most recently, Wonder and Cruelty: Ontological War in 'It's a Wonderful Life' and Lincoln: The Ambiguous Icon.

Donald Trump is running for reelection on a fear campaign. He has concluded that he cannot secure a second term unless he stokes racial fears and animosities in both his base and certain undecided groups of voters. Trump’s conclusion is no surprise given that his record of “accomplishments” amounts to wasteful, destructive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, inflating by tens of billions of dollars an already bloated defense budget, and deliberately reckless deregulatory schemes many of which are animated by racial hatred of Barack Obama. The latter, among other things, pose grave threats to not just the country’s environment but also to the planet. In more ways than one, then, Trump constitutes a global menace.

 

There are multiple dimensions to Trump’s fear-driven stratagems. One involves dispatching federal storm troopers to American cities to attack racial justice activists and foment violent conflict between citizens and the state. He exacerbates scenes of disruption that he then insists only he can stabilize.

Another involves suggesting to white suburban housewives that their safe, comfortable racial enclaves will soon be overrun by poor people in low cost housing (Trump’s racist code), a threat only he can preempt.

 

A third involves the celebration and protection of reactionary relics in civic space, more specifically, racially-charged public monuments and memorials that work to efface ugly memories of the American past. Trump deplores the removal or destruction of Confederate statuary. Not only does he object to removing  tributes to notorious racists and traitors such as Robert E. Lee. He also insinuates that those “radicals” who target this aspect of American history (or “heritage,” now another racist code word) will set their sights next on the beloved Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial. Trump’s fear peddling even provoked Joe Biden into defending them, however weak the defense.

While there is no threat to either structure, Trump’s mock hysteria provides a timely opportunity to rethink the Mall in Washington, D.C, the nation’s most sacred symbolic ground, especially its contributions to and celebrations of white supremacy. Let’s assume, then, that Trump’s reaction was warranted, pretending that these iconic structures are in danger. What, if anything, is problematic about eliminating the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial from the Mall in Washington, D.C.?

Historians often object to the removal of civic architecture from public space. Washington and Jefferson, we are told, played significant roles in the nation’s founding, suggesting that it is better to contextualize their historical contributions than deny them, which removal would supposedly represent. Locate an informational plaque in the vicinity of their memorials, explaining America’s fraught origins and the morally compromised lives of these towering figures. In this self-critical way, new generations of citizens can learn more about the country’s birth and its founders. The same purpose could be achieved by building counter-memorials, if space allows, alongside those already in place, pointing to the modes of supremacy they efface and thereby subjecting them to monumental contestation.

If maintaining a statue in place is deemed unacceptable, as with Confederate memorials, which are nothing more than brazen symbols of white supremacy erected well after the Civil War to express the triumphal return of white power in the South, the next best option is to relocate them to a remote destination or museum. Under no circumstances, however, should they be destroyed. This would be tantamount to erasing history, an act purportedly antithetical to the open spirit of democracy.

But is this actually the case? What if we think along more democratic political lines? What if we think of the space of a monument or memorial as site of democratic contestation? In this regard, we might take a lesson, however inadvertently, from Jefferson himself, who late in his life insisted that each generation was sovereign and had the right to institute its own constitution and government. Contrary to much popular belief, Jefferson wrote, nothing that comes before is “too sacred to be to touched.” It would be optimal, he argued, if some kind of democratic reconstitution took place about every 19 or 20 years.

Why not treat public monuments and memorials in the same fashion? When a democracy proposes and builds a monument or memorial, why should it be automatically assumed that the resultant structure must live in perpetuity? Following the inspirational lead of (West) Germany’s counter-monument movement, why not fold a preset time limit into any national monument or memorial? If Jefferson’s 20 years seems too short, why not 30 or 40?

After all, we build monuments and memorials mostly for ourselves, not those they ostensibly honor. They are more political than historical artifacts. They commemorate, but the character of the commemoration exceeds the past it also recovers. Architectural subjects and designs reflect contemporary values, purposes, and understandings. If we no longer find the Washington or Jefferson reflective of those values, contributive to those purposes, or in harmony with those understandings, why not remove them? In their case, the replacement process itself would necessarily occasion a vibrant democratic conversation, even struggle, over the nature of the country’s founding creed and its basic ideals, perhaps contributing to a democratic revival as the country seeks desperately to realize and sometimes recreate those ideals.

Let it be remembered: Washington died in 1799; construction of the monument bearing his name did not begin until 1848; private funds had to be raised and there were never enough; the monument was not dedicated until 1885, a schedule that betrays little sense of urgency. What’s more, there was opposition to it from the beginning, along republican lines (among others). How, then, did this edifice acquire the near-sacred status it now seems to enjoy? How did it become “too sacred to be touched”?

The Washington Monument is an obelisk. Egyptian in origin, an obelisk stands for life, a ray of sunlight. On the Mall, however, the founding it represents came at horrific cost, especially along racial lines—actualities Trump’s demand for right-wing, know-nothing educational indoctrination cannot alter. Given the dispossession, enslavement, and destruction it entailed, the founding was an inherently ambiguous achievement, which the Washington Monument elides, in large part because the founding started well before the late eighteenth century. For that reason alone, a new memorial to the founding is apt. Otherwise, we continue to live—proudly, publicly—in denial rather than truth. If you want another reason, reducing anything as complex as a founding to one grandiose white father figure, whatever his prominence, is a historical, even childish absurdity unbefitting a self-governing democratic people.

While there’s plenty of room around the Washington Monument for informational supplements or even a counter-memorial, the former would lack the drama and excitement of a new memorial, and the latter might be rendered effectively invisible by the gargantuan obelisk. A new memorial could breathe life into a stale, pedestrian space, as it would be conceived and built by a multiracial coalition and could draw for inspiration on more recent architectural innovations that engage America’s terrible histories (such as Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama).

The same is true of the Jefferson Memorial, designed as a glorious testament to freedom and a vehement broadside against tyranny. While its inscriptions complicate the third president’s vexed relationship to slavery (the sentences on the northeast portico condemn the relationship between master and slave as despotism), they can’t overcome, for one, the ugly reality that Jefferson theorized plans to remove every Black person from the United States until the end of his life. This is hardly a figure to be enshrined on the Mall. Besides, Jefferson built two lasting monuments to himself, Monticello and the University of Virginia, which should more than suffice.

Why not a memorial to abolition(ists) and emancipation? Across the Tidal Basin from the Martin Luther King Memorial, a tribute to Frederick Douglass, author of arguably America’s greatest patriotic oration, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” might well replace Jefferson. Douglass’s famous July 5^th, 1852, oration in Rochester, New York, models what it means to be a democratic citizen (to others, a critical patriot) committed to his country and shows that commitment by holding it to account and trying to compel it to realize its basic ideals. He is a forerunner of the Black Lives Matter movement and a monument to his life, work, and legacy would encompass America’s founding, the present rebellious moment, and beyond. It’s just one, rather traditional, architectural possibility.

Once the Washington and Jefferson were replaced with worthy “successors,” would anyone actually miss them? Whether the answer is yes or no, in another 30 or 40 years we would start this dynamic democratic process all over again. In the meantime, tearing them down could be the occasion for a bacchanalian celebration of (commemorative) democratic possibility. Think of the outpouring of joy that accompanied the fall—the destruction—of the Berlin wall. It signaled a new day, a new birth of freedom in Eastern Europe. To the extent that we might find such a reference, if not comparison, inappropriate and even insulting is the extent to which white supremacy reigns supreme on the Mall.

September 18, 2020