This article from the Atlantics is really good. The author said, in his own words, “To say that the attack on the U.S. Capitol is not who we are is to say that this is not part of us, not part of our politics, not part of our history.” He is not happy with the American culture of denials both in history and today. Although he set himself up in a negative and critical tone, his point is good and teaches us one important lesson: The US is a multifaceted entity and to claim any single side and to use that to gloss over all other sides does not serve the purpose of fully describing the country.
The Capitol Riot Was Not an Anomaly
To say that the Capitol riot is not a part of America is to say that the riot is an anomaly, an accident that happens once in a lifetime, or an outlier in the historical sample of events. But none of those is true. We have witnessed numerous riots since 2020, enough to claim that riots, which differ from protests, have become something not exactly a norm but also not exactly a rarity, especially in the urban areas.
We can tell whether riots and violence are anomaly from people’s expectations. In air travel, we all know sometimes aircrafts can go down and people die, but we also know most of the time our trips are fine and we can arrive in our destinations on time. What people do with such an expectation? They keep booking flights year around.
By the same token, if people hold the same expectation for riots and violence, after the Capitol riot people would work and live almost as if nothing had happened. But look at the Capitol now: Nancy Pelosi had ordered metal detectors outside the Congress, and according to this report of USA Today, “Peter Meijer, Republican who voted for impeachment, says he’s buying body armor due to threats.” Again, this Senator is not exactly treating it as an accident.
Not Glossing Over, Fighting Over
In my opinion, we don’t have to gloss it over by denying the frequent incidences of violence and riots. A country can be great even with those ugly sides. It is how the nation deals with its weaknesses and problems that defines the nation. Glossing it over is to ignore it, which is a sign of low confidence and weakness, fighting it over is the right way because it shows the positive side has sufficient power, resources and confidence to beat the ugly side.
I watched the speech of Trump yesterday in its entirety, and I must say I was happy to hear the words from his mouth — words that he has never given to the nation before. “I want to be very clear, I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week. Violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country and no place in our movement.” “Making America Great Again has always been about defending the rule of law, supporting the men and women of law enforcement and upholding our nation’s most sacred traditions and values.” “No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence. No true supporter of mine could ever disrespect law enforcement or our great American flag. No true supporter of mine could ever threaten or harass their fellow Americans. If you do any of these things, you are not supporting our movement, you are attacking it and you are attacking our country. We can not tolerate it.”
Apparently he was reading from the script written by his staff, and apparently Trump was mindful of the pending impeachment trial in the Senate, although he never mentioned it. But still, the important change is that even the most narcissist and most stubborn guys like Donald Trump have yield to public pressure for no violence. This is already a victory of the country, a victory of the principles and a victory of the coordinated power of citizens, businessmen, media and social media, military and politicians, even from his own party. It is the clearly and strongly revealed public anger, disgust, intolerance and accusations that forced Trump to bend.
The Nation’s Hybrid Strength
Importantly, a nation is strong not necessarily — or better yet, not completely — because of the moral value and integrity of the citizens, although the latter certainly helps. Instead, the US holds a hybrid or mixed strength generated from its diverse resources and people with diverse preferences. In other words, “Strength from diversity”, this has been the US model of success. China on the other hand, is exactly the opposite with a “Strength from singularity” model.
Strength from diversity means the outcomes are diverse and somewhat unpredictable. Why do we frequently ended up seeing the right responses to the events, like no violence and accusation of the riot in the Capitol? One reason is exactly years of denials, saying violence is not America is. Insisting on those statements does have a silent, and positive, effect on the public. Another deeper reason is parenting: We have been told by our parents that violence is bad, debating and reasoning are good. The third reason is that it is easy and low cost to have a stated, rather than revealed, preference. Saying things is one thing, doing things is quite another. When we ask people what they think of something, be it words or deeds of others, everyone can easily state the first thing coming to his /her mind. It costs little effort and nothing substantial. Reason #4 is that groups competing and fighting with each other, which creates a value of scarcity for people who are not in either group. These people do not care about the causes of either side, but only look out against whoever goes to extremes, like the Capitol rioters did this time.