When Donald Trump was elected, I knew it would be bad, but I never thought I’d be trying to learn about Oscar Wilde in AP Lit while an actual terrorist attack occurred at our capitol. However, when it happened, it wasn’t a surprise (let’s be real, the lead up to this has been the entire four years of his presidency). For those of you who somehow missed it, on Wednesday, January 6th, 2021, an angry Trump mob consisting of white supremacists, Nazis, and an old woman who looked like she had no idea how she got there stormed and attempted to take control of the US capitol (it’s come to my attention that Meemaw was not actually at the capital, but rather at another protest in Kansas, but she still deserves recognition). The capitol police, woefully underprepared and undermanned, were unable to prevent the rioters from entering the building. After watching the footage myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that Paul Blart could have done a better job at security than they did. While their long-term goals were unclear (probably even to them), their primary motivation was to disrupt the counting and certification of the electoral college votes in both the Senate and the House. 

The rioters were not without political support, however, and were egged on by our president at a rally earlier that day. Trump, enraged that Georgia wouldn’t “find” him 11,780 votes to help him overturn the election results, told his supporters, “and after this, we’re going to walk down there, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down … to the Capitol…. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.” And if that wasn’t clear enough, he also told them: “We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We’re not going to take it anymore.” Fighting words, to be sure. His rally, at his very clear directions, then moved to the capitol to attempt to prevent the democratic process on which our country rests from being performed, as he gleefully watched, safe behind the screen of his television. 

Now, you might be asking: how was it possible for this angry mob to take their temper tantrum into one of the most secure buildings in the entire country? The news initially stated that the capitol police were outnumbered and unprepared for a riot of this scale. However, that doesn’t check out, considering it was planned online for anyone to see. According to the former Washington Police Chief, Steven Sund, he asked for reinforcements six times before and during the riots, but was largely ignored. Reportedly, when Sund requested for the National Guard to be deployed, which Trump refused to do,  Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt said, “I don’t like the visual of the National Guard standing in a police line with the Capitol in the background.”

This response was a sharp contrast to the police reaction to BLM protests over the summer. While Lt. Gen Piatt didn’t want the National Guard deployed for the Trump rioters, officials didn’t seem to have an issue with a line of police when it came to a peaceful BLM protest. Throughout the summer, BLM protestors, most peaceful, were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, riot gear, and arrests. Rioters, committing a terrorist attack on our capitol, walked freely through the halls of Congress, taking souvenirs and pictures.                  

It has been said over and over that this situation “isn’t America”. On the contrary, this is a very clear example of what America has historically been and continues to be. America was built on a system of racism and oppression, and that system continues to thrive to this day. People of color live with the legacy of slavery, of Jim Crow, of police brutality, of systematic oppression, and have to constantly fight to be seen as equal. White people have done everything they can to hang on to their power, from sharecropping, to prison labor, to Jim Crow laws, to redlining neighborhoods, and much, much, much more. Violence directed towards people of color was common in the South until the 1980s, and anger at advancements in equality have always been there. Equality for people of color is seen as a threat by white people. So yes, what happened at the capitol really was America, its dirty laundry on display for the whole world to see. 

While flipping through news channels on Wednesday, horrified, I came across Fox News. Even though I only watched for 10 minutes, I still gathered some very disturbing information. Somehow, I had thought that a violent attempted coup by the radical supporters of our current president might be enough to shake the faith of the remaining members of what once was the Republican party. Needless to say, I was wrong. The reporter for Fox had two guests on when I started watching, and the first immediately jumped into speculations that Antifa was in the crowd, and that no Trump supporters actually broke into the capitol building. The second guest took a different strategy, and blamed BLM for “normalizing violence recently,” basically stating that if the African American population had just passively watched racism and brutality in the police force, and not protested to remind the government of their basic human rights, then none of this would have happened. These desperate attempts to rationalize what happened through pulling out the ol’ reliable scapegoats are classic examples of how far-right conservatives and their news providers have behaved for Trump’s entire presidency. 

News sites are being allowed to spread lies and misinformation advertised as journalism and truth to their followers, and social media companies are feeding insane conspiracy theories to an audience that they know wants to hear it. The gaping divide between different platforms and news sites and the information they provide is caused by the echo chamber that the media has provided. The controversy around Twitter, YouTube, and other sites starting to “censor free speech” through flagging and taking down false information comes from the group that was producing and consuming it. The truth is, these are private companies that can make decisions regarding their sites as they want, and considering that they can be held accountable for the violence and hate crimes caused by the content they include, they are going to want to start monitoring these posts more. 

Trump may now be out of office, but the actions of his followers on January 6th will have long-lasting impacts. In fact, they already have. They have forced many in this country to confront things previously ignored, such as the blatant differences in how police treat white people and how they treat people of color, and the issues with allowing alt-right groups to have platforms with which to spread hate and conspiracy theories. The terrorist attack on our capital showcased the racism and tension ingrained in our system in such a glaring way that it could not be ignored. Trump may no longer be our president, but these issues remain and are not going anywhere soon. Getting rid of them will not be an easy task; disinformation is rampant, and the media that people consume only reinforces their beliefs. It seems as though our country is at a tipping point. When a sizable amount of the population believes the election was stolen and storming the capital was justified, how can we find a middle ground? The task that our new president and congress have ahead of them is not an easy one. Though Trump may be gone, the influence his rhetoric has had on America will continue for years to come.