The Shadow

January 6, Five Years On: A Gloomy Anniversary

It's the fifth anniversary of the assault on the Capitol that heralded the transformation of Donald Trump from huckster and buffoon into criminal tyrant. For one brief moment, it seemed that Trump had at last gone too far even for the GOP elite that tolerated his foolishness, corruption, bullying, and contempt for the law in return for ascendancy over the “libs,” the ability to lower taxes at will, and the power to shape the Supreme Court. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, even Mitch McConnell accused Trump of a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” and seemed, for one fleeting moment, prepared to impeach him.

In retrospect, what should have brought the malevolent tyrant down served only to feed his passion for vengeance, the full extent of which has only recently become visible. He has pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists. He has begun the ethnic cleansing of the United States, which is ultimately to be ruled exclusively by “heritage Americans” served by an underclass of helots. He has demonstrated his contempt for all legal restraints on his power, domestic or international. He has institutionalized corruption on an epic scale. He has launched a war of aggression for the purpose of seizing oil reserves within the territory of a sovereign nation. He has threatened to seize and occupy the territory a NATO ally. He pretends to have settled eight wars, but the “Board of Peace” that was to preside over the reconstruction of Gaza remains, if it even exists, indifferent to the fate of millions of that war's survivors. He has sown chaos in world trade while extorting tribute from supplicants frightened by loss of their livelihood. He has retaliated against a senator and naval officer for the “seditious” act of publicly stating the letter of the law. He has undermined scientific research, lashed out with know-nothing ignorance at universities that were once the envy of the world, tainted national institutions with his unspeakable name, and, like a latter-day Ozymandias, King of Kings, constructed monuments to his own glory, whose surviving ruins will serve only to mock him in posterity.

What is to be done? What can be done? As I write, European leaders are scrambling to fend off the looming threat to Greenland. Thus far they have managed only to draft a “sternly worded” note. A few voices are calling for a stronger response, such as stationing a small European force in Greenland, as if such a “trigger contingent” would give pause to a ruthless predator who has already shown that he respects nothing but power and treats any sign of weakness as an occasion to humiliate his adversary. He reserves his respect exclusively for tyrants of his own ilk, whom he welcomes on red carpets and praises as “great leaders” or, in another, more natural, register, “tough hombres.”

I cling to the belief that this cannot go on while knowing that it can and likely will until it culminates in some as yet unforeseeable disaster. But as the poet says, “life is very long.”

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

This January 6 remains very much in the shadow of January 6, 2021.