One of my comforting thoughts on the morning of Nov. 9, 2016, as I tried coming to grips with Donald Trump’s election, was my memory of Republican senators who had shown courage and independence in the past. I thought, for example, of Sens. Susan Collins and Jim Jeffords, who voted against the conviction of President Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial. And there were those Republican senators who pressed President Richard Nixon to resign.
Such acts of brave resistance among the upper ranks of Republicans, as it turned out, were rare in the years of Trump’s domination, and I’ve looked for comfort in Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times. In it, author Eyal Press says the acts we considered courageous in the time of the Holocaust often grew not from grand gestures based on a principle but from “small, modest actions” of people we now call heroic. Their actions often resulted from personal encounters with people threatened by obvious injustice, suffering and death.
Authentic courage might be more complicated than it seems. Take, for example, the fact that Black Capitol Police officers recently had to help control a mob that included people shouting racial epithets and wearing outfits linked to white supremacy. One Black officer, Eugene Goodman, diverted some who were seeking the Senate chamber, giving the lawmakers inside time to be safely locked down. Even though some of the people trying to take over the Capitol were carrying “Defend the Police” signs, it would be surprising if Black officers didn’t see them as a potential lynch mob.
Or consider those protesters inspired by President Trump to march down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Ellipse near the White House to the Capitol, accompanied by people in Nazi gear. Few of them could have known for sure they would not be met with the kind of force protesters have faced before in the District of Columbia and other cities. One of them, a woman, was shot by police. But even if they believed President Trump would be with them, as he said, they surely knew there would be physical risk when their insurrection turned violent.
The courage that led Eugene Goodman to lure the mob away from the Senate chamber probably requires a motive quite different from that needed to join in a fight intended to keep in power a president who has convinced you his electoral defeat was a fraud.
Goodman appears to have been moved by a sense of the solemn duty he accepted as part of his job, and he may well have imagined the violence likely to ensue if the mob entered the Senate chamber while Democratic senators were still there. But judging by threats members of the mob were shouting, it seems likely they were driven by hatred of their perceived enemies and unquestioning belief in their “leader.”
While I’m considering different sources of courage, I notice this: Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who cheered on the mob without joining them, have not been widely acclaimed as heroes. But if what drove them to follow the mob’s violent attempt to overthrow our government with their own rhetorical efforts to overthrow our national election was fear and cowardice, it was joined with great ambition and their trust in the short memories of American voters.
Nearly everything I’ve written since Nov. 9, 2016, has assumed the importance of finding common ground in a democratic society that turned out to be more divided and vulnerable than most of us knew. It was a comforting thought, but what I learned on Jan. 6 I should have known: Common ground firm enough on which to rebuild our damaged, flawed democracy should not depend too heavily on good manners or forgetting. We need accountability, too.
We need to pass judgment on the leaders who have broken laws meant to protect our democracy, and on followers who have been misled to break those laws, as well. Somehow, we must also help the new administration overcome the pandemic, address climate change, and build economic and racial justice. It will require courage, imagination, much hard work — and our memory of Jan. 6.
Bill Nichols lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at Nichols@Denison.edu.