Breaching the Capitol
Let’s grant one thing from the outset: The vast majority of people who are at this very moment demonstrating at the Capitol, while Congress is counting was trying to count the Electoral College vote, believe they are there to prevent a vast injustice. The inappropriate and lawless behavior in which they are engaging arises from the best motives: preserving the democratic system of the United States of America.
Peaceful gathering in their right. Violence is not. Yet I think that even the fact that they are taking the law into their own hands … the fact that they have brought metal flagpoles and likely weapons into the Capitol building while Congress is in session … the fact that they are breaking windows in the Capitol and carousing through the Senate chamber… largely stems from an honest belief that the system has been corrupted, from the Vice President on down. (Vice President Pence today has refused President Trump’s demand that he overturn the election of Senators Biden and Harris as incoming President and Vice President. Kudos and yasher koach to the Vice President for standing up for the rule of law. UPDATE: And for telling protesters to leave the Capitol.)
The protesters have been lied to and manipulated for other people’s gain. By the current President, and behind them by people who are mostly nowhere near Washington DC today. By people who don’t regularly make the news. People who have a lot of money and power, who were in power before President Trump was elected and who will still be in power when he’s gone.
Even the Fox News reporter is being heckled for attempting to report what’s actually going on.
How could this happen? For one thing, look up the Fairness Doctrine (thank you Greg Pattenaude @GregNugget for pointing this out). The Fairness Doctrine was an FCC policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the FCC’s view—honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the policy in 1987. Fox News debuted 9 years later. The repeal of this doctrine has contributed terribly to the manipulation of the masses.
Rabbi Chanina, the Vice High Priest, said:
Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the reverence/fear/awe it inspires, everyone would swallow their neighbor alive. (Pirkey Avot 3:2)
This is a pretty pessimistic view of human nature, and one to which I do not subscribe. I’ve been reading Humankind: A Hopeful History, which brings a lot of examples to demonstrate what I believe: That most people, most of the time, are motivated by positive energy. That it takes a lot of manipulation to cause large groups of people (whether societies or mobs) to go off the rails.
But once they go off the rails, pray for the welfare of the government!
This is sedition and a coup attempt, and I pray that no one dies. It’s shortly before 3pm eastern time on Electoral Vote-counting day 2021. We have never seen anything like this: an assault on the Capitol Building by citizens intent on disrupting and overturning the legal functioning of government. Congress has been given a “shelter in place” order. Capitol police are not in control of the interior of the building, and the people walking around inside have not passed through a metal detector.
So: Pray for the welfare of the government, especially the legally-sanctioned forces which will have to act to bring this attack to an end. Pray that no one uses a firearm. Pray that the protestors come out of the fugue state into which they have been hypnotized for the last many years. Update: Pray for the woman who is now reported as being in critical condition after being shot in the chest, and for the officer who was taken to the hospital, and for the other handful of people who have been harmed.
We will get through this. This is not Germany in the 1930s. Why do I believe that? Because Germany only became a united empire in 1871, at which point it was a conglomeration of kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and a few miscellaneous others. Not until 1917 did Germany become a Federal Republic. Democracy (and national unity) was not layered very deeply when Hitler came to power. And young democracies are notoriously corrupt.
The United States, by contrast, became a republic over 200 years ago. We have held 59 elections, with peaceful transfers of power. Our democracy is robust and well-established. I do not believe we are beholding the end of it.
However, moments like this one fuel change, and clearly there’s legal and societal change needed.
And lest you believe that racism is ended, just ask yourself: If this almost entirely White mob that has breached the Capitol were Black folk, wouldn’t shots have been fired by now?? What do you think would have happened to the people that I see right now who are breaking windows and climbing in?! If Black Lives Matter protesters were seen looting and vandalizing like the violent minority has at the Capitol today, what would today’s protestors have said about them?!
But also please notice. The vast majority of people at this rally are staying outside. Many are walking away. Most people are not there for violence. It is terribly important that you recognize this. As horrible as this is, only a tiny minority have turned into an ungovernable mob. And those rioters have pretty much all been captured on video (many by themselves!)
Reinforcement law enforcement have arrived.
I have one more shofar blower to share with you — 
Reflections on the Storming of the Capitol Yesterday
January 7, 2021 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • 1 Comment
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) wrote in his poem Let America Be America Again:
This was one of the poems and prayers that was read last night at our “Vigil for peace, justice, and democracy.” That’s just a name I could come up with on an hour’s notice. What we did was “open” the sanctuary (via Zoom) so that people could come in and find comfort and perspective and maybe make a little sense of the day. As one congregant reminded us, the last time we did this was 9/11.
Langston Hughes drives home the stark contrast between not only the responses to but the preparations in advance for the gathering of Black Lives Matter demonstrators last summer, versus Trump/MAGA demonstrators yesterday. A huge gathering of Black people and their allies was reflexively viewed as a threat. National Guard troops were deployed and ready. But thousands of White people were not seen as a threat. Preparation was totally inadequate, even though the planning to instigate violence had taken place in very public places on the internet. Few rioters were arrested; instead they were “squeezed” out of the Capitol into the Rotunda and escorted out. Escorted out! If you don’t recognize that as White Privilege in action, then please check your biases, because that’s exactly what it was. Here, CNN shows some of the stark contrasts between the Washington DC response to BLM in June and to MAGA in January.
The fact that Washington DC policing and National Guard are both under federal control means that responses to both gatherings were under the control of people, mostly white men, allied with the President. (It may also be relevant that he appears to have been systematically gutting the leadership of federal agencies in the past few weeks, including that of the Pentagon, which had to sign off on the deployment of the National Guard.) I am sure that this too fed into the utterly ineffective response to the violent assault on the Capitol. Too little, too late.
Perhaps responding to yesterday with words and music seems minimal. But words shape our world. The President of the United States and his allies fomented rebellion (sedition) yesterday. Unbelievable. But the words that have manipulated such a large proportion of the US population into being willing followers have been flowing across the airwaves and cable and internet for decades. In a similar way, the systematic demonization of Yitzchak Rabin by some Israeli Orthodox rabbis paved the way for Yigal Amir to murder Mr. Rabin and feel he was entirely justified in doing so.
In small part, the rise of partisan rhetoric in the US is due to the demise of the “Fairness Doctrine,” well-described on Snopes.com:
In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a report that recommended what came to be known as the “Fairness Doctrine.” As explained by the Congressional Research Service, the doctrine “consisted of two basic requirements” for anyone given a TV or radio broadcast license:
It had additional provisions:
The personal attack rule stated that when personal attacks were made on individuals involved in public issues, the broadcaster had to, within one week of the broadcast, notify the person attacked, provide him with a copy of the broadcast (either script or tape), and allow him an opportunity to respond over the broadcaster’s facilities.
The political editorial rule required that when a broadcaster endorsed a particular political candidate, the broadcaster was required to provide the other qualified candidates for the same office (or their representatives) the opportunity to respond over the broadcaster’s facilities. (Snopes.com)
Unfortunately, the Fairness Doctrine never applied to cable, only the airwaves. It could in theory have been expanded. Instead, an attempt to codify the existing doctrine into law was vetoed by President Reagan in early 1987, and the FCC abolished the doctrine later that year. But the rise of cable and then the internet would have made it irrelevant anyway.
For over thirty years, there has been very little legal oversight to rein in the words which flood our minds from outside, disguised as news. A generation or two has grown up in a media ecosystem in which lies and hate speech have been twisting and manipulating the beliefs of large chunks of the citizenry. Until finally, we have a President who was swept to power on the basis of these false beliefs, and who is trying to avoid relinquishing power by repeating lies that stoke those false beliefs. And his words led directly to yesterday’s seditious riot.
Of all the private prayers of early rabbis which could have been added at the end of the Amidah (the Standing Prayer which is part of each Jewish service), this is the prayer codified in our prayerbook:
Elohai, n’stor l’shoni mey-rah…
My God, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking deceit.
Toward those who slander (or curse) me, may my soul remain still
And may my soul be like dust to all.*
Open my heart to Your Teaching/Torah,
And may my soul pursue Your mitzvot.
As for all who think evil of me,
Quickly cancel their designs and frustrate their schemes.
Act for Your own sake, act for the sake of Your right hand,
Act for the sake of Your holiness, act for the sake of Your Torah.
So that Your beloved will be rescued,
May Your right hand deliver, may You answer me. (my translation)
*This tends to be a problematic instruction for women in our society, who have been taught too much self-effacement.
A powerful prayer, mostly about words. It asks: Help me speak the good, and do it honestly! Don’t let the taunts of others set my personal agenda. Help me to pay attention to meaningful and life-giving words. And may other people’s evil plans, over which I have no control, not come to fruition.
We also sang or listened to Oseh Shalom, a prayer for peace, and words of Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav: Kol ha-olam kulo gesher tsar m’od… All the world is a very narrow bridge, and the essential thing is not to be afraid. At all.
Though it actually is ok to be afraid. Just not to let fear or despair rule you. Because despair is not an option. And fear and worry are only useful if they motivate you to action.
I asked folks last night what actions they were taking, to comfort themselves and to make a difference. Responses included being with community and finding concrete actions to support what’s right. One pointed us to the blog of Heather Cox Richardson, “Letters from an American.” (You can read it without signing up.) One said that just seeing me in the sanctuary was what they needed. There’s a reason “sanctuary” means a place of safety and refuge.
We can also take comfort from knowing history better. I have heard fellow Jews numerous times over the past 4-5 years comparing the US now to Germany in the 1930s. There are certainly parts of the manipulative rhetoric which echo that which brought the Nazis to power. The ascendency of a demagogue is reminiscent. But there is one difference that I believe is meaningful:
When Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, the German Republic was 16 years old.
Prior to that it had been ruled by an emperor, after the 1871 consolidation of numerous formerly-independent duchies, grand duchies, principalities, kingdoms, and a few free states. Not until 1917 did Germany become a democracy.
Whereas we, in the United States, are living in a democracy — imperfect as it is — that has been established for nearly 250 years. (2026, folks. 5 years away.) Our traditions run deep and our governmental and military structures are robust.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin today said that the rhetoric and feeling in the US right now remind her most of the time just after the election of President Lincoln, when many Southern states declared that they had dissolved their ties with the federal government of the United States and were creating their own confederation of states. (I can’t give you a citation because my wife told me about it after seeing her on TV. Sorry.) This makes so much sense to me. White Southerners believed that their way of life was under attack (it was) and that they had a right to take any actions necessary for its preservation. Sound familiar?
I am positive that most of the people who went to Washington yesterday truly believed that they were there to defend democracy and the United States. By observation, only a small minority (and overwhelmingly male, I’m sorry but it’s true) perpetrated violence and broke into the Capitol, though there was also violence and vandalism outside. There is no excuse for their violent and destructive actions, none whatsoever. But as for the people who truly believe that the election was fraudulent and stolen — well, if you truly believed that, wouldn’t you feel compelled to act?
It is people’s minds and hearts that have to be won back to reality, and that will require a lot of work to rein in the manipulators. In the meantime we also have to shut down the violence-mongers and their brazen communications.
At Troy’s annual interfaith service for the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (which will be held on Zoom this year with a fantastic speaker, Kathleen McLean of Albany) (and I’m sorry, TAUM doesn’t seem to have this year’s PR on the website yet. The service will be at 3pm on Sunday of MLK weekend) … anyway, toward the end of the service we always stand and hold hands and sing “We Shall Overcome.” We sing “We are not afraid.” We sing “We’ll walk hand in hand.” And we sing “Black and White together.”
We sang “We Shall Overcome” last night. And I said to the folks who had gathered, “We need to sing ‘Red and Blue together.'”
And we did. It sounds corny, but it is a deeply heartfelt prayer on my part. Someone said on TV in the last day, I forget who and I paraphrase, “peace is not the absence of disagreement, it’s the absence of violence used to settle disagreement.” That’s also my interpretation of this justly famous depiction of a better future:
And it shall come to pass in the end of days, That the mountain of the Eternal’s house shall be established as the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. and many peoples shall go and say: ‘Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Eternal, To the house of the God of Jacob; and God will teach us God’s ways, And we will walk in God’s paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the Eternal from Jerusalem. And God shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:2-4)
“And God shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks.” There will still be need for judgement and decision, for discernment and mediation. But rather than solving these problems with swords and spears, nations (and, we hope, individuals) will have learned to manage their disputes in a non-violent manner.
May that day come soon!