Frightening siege of Capitol stirs pleasant memories

 

This post was published in the Wilson Times Jan. 15, 2021

 

            The frightening siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 left me feeling much the same way I did after the 9-11 attack — drained, grieving, angry, eager to punish everyone responsible. I wanted to gather my children — all gone from our home in 2001 and in college or at jobs. I could not pull them together and wrap my arms around them in a senseless effort to keep them safe.

            Last week’s insurrection made me feel the same way, but it also sparked a different reaction. The rioters on Jan. 6 desecrated the Capitol, the temple of American democracy, the globally recognized symbol of American principles and strength. The rioters, calling themselves patriots, did all they could to ruin that building for whom most visitors, including me, felt awe, pride and sacred respect.

            They paraded through the great Rotunda carrying banners and flags like barbarians laying siege to Rome and carrying weapons like a conquering army; they broke windows and doors, ignoring the historic value in the 220-year-old Capitol; they smeared chemicals or other substances on the statues of great national leaders in Statuary Hall; the chemicals they sprayed damaged magnificent, priceless paintings hanging on the Capitol’s walls; like pre-teens reveling in their immaturity, they live-streamed their haughty contempt for a republic that has stood for 240 years.

            Perhaps worst of all, they defecated on stone and marble floors of the Capitol, showing that they have no more respect or manners than wild animals. They laughed at the damage they were doing. The one positive was their insouciance. The videos and photos they took show them parading through a felonious crime scene. Law enforcement agencies are identifying and charging them based on the prideful evidence they left.

            When I worked in Washington 1972-1975, I visited the Capitol several times, took visiting relatives there, telling them it was my favorite building in D.C. I loved the grandeur of the building. In those quieter times, before the rise of international and domestic terrorism, the Capitol was pretty much wide open. You could climb the steps on the East Front or the West Front of the Capitol, go inside, marvel at the beautiful construction of granite and marble, the rotunda soaring to the Capitol dome, the huge paintings of events in the founding of the United States and other historic times.

            It was the most impressive and humbling building in the nation’s capital. The rise of terrorism in the past 40 years forced changes in access to the Capitol; a new underground visitors center made it possible to screen visitors and prohibit suicide bombers or gunmen, but visitors were denied the feeling of walking up those Capitol steps and entering the iconic building.

            The Jan. 6 insurrection and plans of some of the same groups to disrupt Joe Biden’s inauguration made me remember the novel “Guns of the South” by Harry Turtledove. His 1992 book combines historical fiction with science fiction fantasy. The book opens with the 1870 inauguration of Robert E. Lee as president of the Confederacy. The South had won the Civil War because some die-hard slaveholders found a way to time travel to 20^th Century South Africa, where they obtained AK47 rifles and the technology to make more of them. With this advantage, they defeated the United States and assassinated Lee at his inauguration, because he had endorsed freeing all slaves.

            Unless law enforcement does a better job of protecting the Capitol, Congress and the new president, we could have a challenger for Turtledove’s frightening fiction.