Siege of the U.S. Capitol is an ominous sign of things to come

National Post, 07 January 2021

The poison spilled on Wednesday in Washington will leach out across the land.

“This is not who we are as Americans,” said U.S. president-elect Joe Biden during the siege of the Capitol on Wednesday.

But the sinking feeling among many people who were watching the events unfold from abroad and who love the United States — including myself — was that, yes, in part this is what America has become.

After order was restored, the questions began about the spectacularly inadequate security response. Were the authorities somehow oblivious that violence was haunting the land?

American cities burned all summer. On election day, merchants — small shop owners and major retail chains — boarded up their buildings, expecting the worst. They got the time and place wrong that day, but they knew what was lurking in the streets.

Watching some of the coverage on ABC, I was struck by one commentator who said, “I was getting texts from inside the Capitol that we normally see during a mass shooting.”

Normally? In what kind of country are journalists accustomed to what is routine during mass shootings? Wednesday brought into the Capitol what actually took place elsewhere in Washington last year. But the Capitol is different, and so the gravity of this invasion was unique.

The invasion of the Capitol by a rampaging mob, set on using violence as a means to achieve their ends, was met by the most solemn words in the political lexicon: sedition and insurrection.

As the awful day dragged on and a semblance of order was restored, another word emerged, given the need to acknowledge the distinctiveness of the site: desecration.

“Our temple of democracy has been desecrated,” said Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

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