Amerikanski journalisturin Matthew Workman avmyndaður á ólavsøku í 2015. Hann stjórnar The Faroe Islands Podcast, sum fyri jól sendi podcast nummar 335, ið var um føroyskan fótbólt.
Nýliga hevur Matthew givið út í bók "Driver diaries", ið er savn við upplivingum sum hýruvognssjaførur hjá Uber í Portland, Oregon, har hann býr.
Í fjør summar skrivaði Matthew "Renegotiating the Social Contract" eftir at George Floyd varð myrdur, og uppreistur fór um alt landið undir heitinum "Black Lives Matter".
Í dag skrivar Matthew Workman "Riot diary, January 6" til blogglesarar í Føroyum. Enski dagbókateksturin er um hendingarnar, tá mótmælisfólk hertóku Senatstbygningin í Washington.
January 6
By now you’ve seen the images: crowds of people storming the US Capitol building in Washington, windows being smashed, guns drawn at the entrance to the House of Representatives chamber, a man in a fur hat and Viking horns standing atop the dais in the US Senate, the US flag flying over the Capitol being taken down and replaced with a Trump flag, people looting the Speaker of the House’s office, a man walking through the Capitol rotunda with a Confederate battle flag. These are images that have been transmitted around the world, both to our allies and enemies.
As shocking as these images may have been to you, they’re even more shocking to most Americans. We’ve seen this thing before, mostly in far-off countries that a lot of us couldn’t find on a map. When those images come across our airwaves, the most callous viewer might think, “Sucks to be those guys.” More sensitive views might think, “That truly is a shame. Thank heavens that sort of thing can’t happen here. Our institutions are too strong.”
It can’t happen here. That’s what we like to say. But on Wednesday, January 6th, it happened here. It happened here and we don’t even have the language to talk about it. Was it a coup? A riot? An insurrection? An act of sedition? A revolution? A protest? Most media outlets have settled on “insurrection” as the most accurate description, but there’s very little the public at large has settled on as common facts in this incident. More on that later.
We should probably back up a bit and talk about what was happening in the Capitol before the attack. The House of Representatives and Senate were meeting in a joint session to certify the results of the Electoral College vote that had happened in December… and those votes reflected the results of the general election in November. (The US electoral system, especially as it applies to presidential contests, is hopelessly complex and desperately in need of reform, but a discussion of that will have to wait for another day.)
This certification is purely ceremonial and is almost never covered in the media, except at the very end of a newscast with something like, “Finally tonight, remember that election we had two months ago? Well, Congress finally certified those votes and the new president will be sworn into office in two weeks.” And that’s it. The vote typically isn’t a big deal and usually passes unnoticed.
I could write several more paragraphs offering the details of what it takes to make it to that certification date. In fact, I did, but then I deleted them because they’re boring and unnecessary. But suffice it to say, there are multiple regulations, and deadlines, and opportunities to ask for recounts and file lawsuits if anything was amiss. More than sixty such lawsuits were filed, all but one relatively minor suit failed.
That’s why the January 6th vote was essentially ceremonial. During the count, the Vice President pulls envelopes out of two wooden boxes, breaks the seals on the envelopes, reads some legal language regarding the envelopes, and then hands them, one by one, to the people tasked with tabulating the Electoral College vote. Normally, this process will take about an hour. In some years, a lawmaker or two will raise objections to some state’s vote. Those objections are typically overruled in a few moments and the count continues.
This year’s count was due to be more controversial than most, because several Senators and more than 100 Representatives, all Republicans, announced they would object to the counting of votes from several states. This would trigger several extra hours of debate that meant the counting process could literally last for days.
The votes from the states are counted alphabetically, and the House and Senate had gone into separate sessions to debate whether Arizona’s votes would count. That’s when the mob came.
They arrived at the Capitol at the direction of the President of the United States, who told them to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and “show strength” to lawmakers who were preparing to certify Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election. During the President’s speech he repeated debunked claims about stolen election results, claimed he won by a landslide, said there was massive fraud. He lied.
As Americans, especially Americans who work in media, we don’t like to say “lie.” Instead, we use expressions like “claimed without evidence,” or “repeated a debunked story.” But the truth is much more simple: he lied. He went in front of thousands of people, and told them things he knew weren’t true. He lied. He lied to the American people like he has more than 30,000 times since the entered office four years ago. Source: Washington Post:
And the people at that rally heard those lies, and the direction to march to the Capitol building, and they did what they were told. Hours later, four members of that mob were dead. One Capitol Police officer was also killed, beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by a mob that included people carrying “Blue Lives Matter” flags. A second Capitol Police officer took his own life after the insurrection.
In the aftermath, explosive devices were found around the Capitol building and a car with Molotov cocktails and a stockpile of ammunition was also discovered nearby. Rioters left broken glass, threatening notes to members of congress, garbage, and smeared human waste in the halls of Congress before they left. A gallows had been constructed at the east entrance to the Capitol. A noose had been installed.
While I have the ability to describe the events of last Wednesday, I’m unable to describe the pain I felt while watching them. It hurt to see the symbols of my country desecrated like that. It hurt to see all the lies, all the norm-breaking, all the ugliness of the last four years take physical form and cost people their lives. It is a wound to our country that I doubt will heal in my lifetime.
And then there’s the shock. Since the September 11th attacks, Washington had become a fortress. Government buildings, including the Capitol, had been renovated with new security features designed to keep intruders out. Some roads were closed to keep vehicles away. This was supposed to be one of the most secure buildings in the world. The last time it had been breached like that was by the British during the War of 1812. We’d spent years trying to keep foreigners and terrorists out of that building. But when they arrived, they were white, they were middle aged, and they were American.
This is our history now. As much as we like to say, “It can’t happen here,” it did happen here. We will never be able to claim we’re as “exceptional” as we thought. It did happen here, and it can’t un-happen.
The problem with living through history is you don’t know how it’s going to end. There are many ways this could go, and by the time you read this, the story might have changed several times. To some, Wednesday’s insurrection was an initially horrifying, but ultimately laughably inept attempt at a coup that was always going to fail. But to many of the participants, this was Lexington and Concord. In other words, just the first battles of the long Revolutionary War that has started. Because we’re in the middle of it, we don’t know which is true. We don’t know how it’s going to end.
Late Wednesday night, I was still glued to my TV. The rioters had been expelled from the Capitol building, curfew had been imposed on Washington, and the House and Senate had reconvened to continue counting Electoral College votes. Even after the events of the day, Representatives were still objecting to votes from certain states being counted. This dragged the final vote to the wee hours of the morning.
But still I kept watching. I wanted to hear the words. I wanted to hear Mike Pence say them. A little after 4 in the morning on the East Coast, he said them. He said that Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election by a vote of 306-232. He said Biden’s term would start on January 20th, and noon, Eastern Standard Time. He said it in front of his peers in the Senate. He said it on national television, with most channels carrying it live. He said it. I had no idea how much I needed to hear him say that until he actually did. Only then could I get to sleep and put an end to the terrible day that was January 6, 2021.
It was a fitful night’s rest. And with the possibility of disturbances like this happening again this weekend in Washington and in statehouses across America, there are likely many more fitful nights to come.
