Notes from an American Abroad: January 7, 2021
by D. Lamont Callier
January 7, 2021
The world woke today to headlines covering the “United States in chaos,” Biden’s electoral victory certification amidst “insurrection,” and questions about the instability and violence directed towards the seat of the federal government’s legislative branch, some written as questions as plain as “Has the US Capitol Hill Been Attacked Before?”
Former US President Barack Obama, joined both by his predecessor and former rival for the 2012 presidential election, Senator Mitt Romney, in decrying the “baseless lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonour and shame for our nation,” adding “that this was not a particularly close election.” And, in a signal perhaps intended for both domestic and international audiences, the former president continued by assuaging “that President-elect Biden will be inaugurated on January 20th.”
But for the finalized certification of the Biden-Harris victory by a Congress reconvened in both houses, this certainty from the former president could have seemed unjoined to the violent disruptions on Capitol Hill, which for moments across January 6th seemed to only portend more instability.
Many foreign capitals, as they have throughout the Trump presidency, walked a tightrope between attributing the events of January 6th as a central characteristic either of the US system of political governance or of the Trump presidency, choosing instead to support US democratic processes and expressing hope for the incoming Biden administration in their public statements. Although, by yesterday’s end multiple US-based news outlets were confirming chatter about processes for Trump’s immediate removal from power through the US constitution’s 25th Amendment and impeachment provisions. Indeed, domestic racial minorities, racial democracy movement activists, and their political allies also protested, in word if not also deed, the differentiated treatment in policing, particularly in contrast to the apparent armed guarding of multiple Washington, D.C. sites during the previous summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
Longtime followers of US politics, and particularly those attending to the developments of the Trump presidency, will recall that the US Congress and voting public have twice rendered attempts to end Trump’s (inappropriately branded) “Law and Order” presidency. In December 2019 the US’s lower congressional house rendered him impeached, and, in fair and relatively straightforward elections, chose an alternative to Trump in former Vice President and now-President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden.
Radical supporters of the president, paramilitary and elected officials alike, have, however, mounted strong and nearly unprecedented obstruction to each of these orderly removal processes, leaving the stability of the US political system in question. Multiple leaders across both the Democratic and Republican caucuses, were left calling for accountability and more immediate means of removal for the president whose term ends in less than two weeks from today.
In national security terms, the instability and chaos of the past week likely welcomes further interference by the US’s foreign adversaries, which already typically seek to exploit vulnerabilities in the democratic system, and especially during periods of presidential transition.
This attempted coup d’ etat adds complexity to the already tenuous transition additionally burdened by the twin economic and public health emergencies stemming from the country’s raging third or fourth wave of a novel coronavirus. Most starkly, the attempted coup increasingly appears to have been aided and abetted by potentially deliberate delays in the deployment of D.C.’s national guard to augment Capitol Hill security.
Ultimately, yesterday’s developments and the ensuing instability will be welcomed and contorted further by authoritarians in their own efforts to suppress domestic social movements, opposition factions, and electoral processes in support of democracy.
The hours and days ahead will be especially tenuous across the United States’s capital city, where residents and entrants will remain under curfew until the transition of power is consolidated and finalized with the inauguration of Joe Biden as president and Kamala Harris as vice president.
With regards to the country’s other affairs, the pandemic deepens its lethal toll with new daily records while geopolitics continues to turn on its head from news on Washington, D.C. On Wednesday, a record 3,963 deaths were recorded across the entirety of the country’s geography.
Adding a final line of anguish was the news that Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian West, both supporters and allies of the current president, had confirmed their intention to divorce.
Additionally, the nation anticipated a further political alignment as candidates Reverend Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were both prevailing in their contests for open Senate seats in the US’ 117th Congress.
