As a Colonel in the United States Army and a
trauma surgeon on duty at the Howard University Hospital
Level I Trauma Center in Washington, D. C. on that dreadful
day, I have deeply reflected on the occurrences and have
concluded that there exist three great ironies of the Trump
Insurrection. These ironies are centered on the leader of
the insurrection, the location of the insurrection and the
loyalists to Trump.
The leader is the first great irony. The leader
of the insurrectionist was former President Donald J.
Trump. He would not accept the fact that he lost the 2020
Presidential Election to Joseph Biden. He has given great
effort to contest this fact and to proffer a different
reality to his followers such that they believe the election
has been stolen. No court of law has upheld these
accusations.
But Presidential elections aside, by every
determination Donald J. Trump has had an extraordinary
American life. Both he and his businesses have benefitted
in an enormous way from both the free markets and freedom
that this nation’s democracy offers.
Six bankruptcies have allowed Trump
organizations to financially reorganize and remain in
business while dissolving debts. Trump has enjoyed a
tremendous amount of financial success and received a $72.9
million tax refund from the Internal Revenue Service in
2010.
The Trump organization defines its real estate
portfolio as the finest properties in the world. And yet it
is ironic that the former president would lead a cause that
would destroy the very foundations that enabled his
astronomical success, American democracy.
Even for those who would empathize with the
former president’s belief of a fraudulent election, they
surely would also agree that Trump and his family have
enjoyed a wealth of opportunities in America and there can
simply be no reasonable explanation for his actions on
January 6, 2021. For Trump to attempt to destroy or
overthrow a system of government that has allowed him to
both accumulate tremendous wealth and consistently recover
from financial failure seems to be quite contrary to what we
should all expect.
We might therefore ask the question, “For Donald
J. Trump, when was America not great? Even after not winning
a presidential election, when was American not worthy of his
loyalty, his decency, his patriotism?”
The location of the insurrection is the second
great irony. Washington, D. C. is the ancestral home of the
Nacotchtank people who were violently driven off of their
land by British colonists. We must always have the
intellectual courage to appropriately begin the discussion
with the first injustice.
The Residence Act of July 16, 1790 establishes
the capital of the United States in the District of Columbia
replacing Philadelphia, PA. Some viewed the rationale for
this decision to be based in part on the appeasement of
southerners who feared a capital city based in the North
would be sympathetic to abolitionists.
But clearly the attributed major impetus for
the movement of the nation’s capital to the District of
Columbia was another insurrection, the Pennsylvania Mutiny
of 1783. During a session of the Continental Congress,
unpaid former Revolutionary War soldiers marched on
Independence Hall and blocked the doors and demanded their
wages. Because these soldiers were state residents the
interests of the newly-created weak federal government were
in conflict with the state of Pennsylvania.
John Dickinson, the head of the government in
Pennsylvania refused to use state troops to protect the
United States Congress. It is because of this
insurrection, resolved by Alexander Hamilton, that it was
decided in the United States Constitution (Article I Section
8) to situate the capital in a federal district controlled
by Congress and not a state. So the events of Wednesday
January 6, 2021 occurred in a city created with the intent
of securing the nation’s government against insurrection by
the citizenry.
It would be intellectually insufficient to
completely illustrate the irony of the location of the Trump
insurrection only in terms of the founding of Washington, D.
C. The United States Capitol Building was invaded on
January 6, 2021 and there is great irony in this
architectural desecration.
The Capitol Building was built in part by the
labor of enslave African Americans. Owners leased their
slaves to the federal government for a fee. These patriotic
inhabitants of the new nation cannot be called Americans
because legislatively they were more property than person.
However, there is no historical record of their
revolt against a nation that declared its independence in a
historic document whose second paragraph reads, “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights…”
These slaves literally built the foundations of
the federal government and patiently waited for the
perfection of the union. But even more ironic is the fact
that the insurrectionist, Secretary of War and, later,
President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, presided over
the building of the Capitol. And it is his prerogatives
that have been historically preserved unfortunately both in
the stone and spirit of the building.
Secretary Davis rejected architectural design
features that spoke to a brighter future including freed
slaves in America. The original design of the Stature of
Freedom atop the Capitol Building included a knitted liberty
cap symbolizing the token given to freed slaves in the Roman
tradition. This was changed at Davis’ request to a crested
helmet with a circle of stars. More substantially, the
inhabitants of the Capitol’s hall persisted for over 100
years to deny or limit the right of representation and local
governmental control to the citizens of America’s first
black city. So insurrectionists carrying the Confederate
Flag vehemently marched and desecrated a monument built by
slave labor to the specification of the former President of
the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis was one of their own.
The third and final great irony are the
loyalists to former President Donald J. Trump. There are
many but, without doubt, the greatest loyalist has been the
former Vice President Michael R. Pence. This life-long
evangelical joined the Republican Presidential ticket to
bring bona fide conservative credentials.
As a governor of Indiana he signed into law
pro-religious and antiabortion policies that were extremely
popular among conservatives. He never differed or distanced
himself from the president no matter the circumstance. He
faithfully defended President Trump and his policies until
the final day of his term, even after being denied access to
his office in the White House after the insurrection.
On January 6, 2021 a roaring riotous crowd first
erected gallows and hanged a noose on the west lawn of the
Capitol. The same crowd shouted for the hanging of Mike
Pence. And for likely the first time in Pence’s life, he
fearfully ran from his seat of power for the safety of
himself and his personal family. Who chased him? The
insurrectionists directed the frightful symbol of a noose
not toward a black person but the vice president of the
United States. These were supporters of Trump,
conservatives whose policies he had championed throughout
his career.
A larger group of Republican loyalists have traded the
principles of their party in the hopes that they will be
able to stay in power. They have lost the presidential
elections and majority control of the United States Senate.
But most importantly, they have lost the confidence of the
majority of America. Donald J. Trump has left these
loyalists with neither power nor their party. How ironic.
Dr. Mallory Williams, MD, MPH, Toledo resident, is a
Professor of Surgery at Howard University. He is the Chief
of the Howard University Hospital Level I Trauma Center. He
is an expert on public policy surrounding violence
prevention in urban disadvantaged communities. He is a
former Harvard University Presidential Scholar. |