February 15, 2021
Saturday, in a result that surprised no one, the Senate failed to muster the 67 votes necessary to convict Donald Trump of the high crime of inciting an insurrection against a co-equal branch of government. Despite having been directly attacked by a marauding mob of racist anti-Semites who defiled the Capitol and endangered their lives, only 7 Republican Senators voted to convict Trump. Despite spending four days hearing the House Managers’ searing prosecution, which detailed the grievous injuries suffered by the police officers Republicans profess to love, 43 Republicans voted that Trump was not guilty. Despite watching newly revealed footage showing how close they all came to danger, along with a timeline of Trump tweets showing that he directly endangered the life of his loyal Vice President, dead-eyed Puritan, Mike Pence, and that Trump delayed calling off the mob for hours, only 7 Republican Senators with nothing to lose voted to convict him, (Source: “Quick end to Trump trial leaves unanswered questions,” by Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post, 2/13/21).
Republicans refused to convict Trump because they are his unimpeached co-conspirators. After all, the day of the attack, six Senators and 121 House members voted against certifying the Electoral College results. They gladly perpetuated the Big Lie that the election was stolen and that the votes of the Black, Brown and Indigenous people who powered Biden’s victory were illegitimate per se. The acquittal is a signal from those at the highest echelons of the Republican Party that they don’t believe in democracy.
With Saturday’s verdict, the rest of America is learning what Black Americans have always known, that white supremacists have long deployed murderous violence to maintain power. There is a straight line from the acquittal of the murderers of Emmett Till by an all-white jury, to the acquittal of Donald Trump. In fact, America’s commitment to maintaining a racial caste system has gone beyond merely exculpating extrajudicial murder. Our government has not hesitated to resort to state sponsored violence to maintain the status quo, as films like Judas and The Black Messiah make chillingly clear.
Their ability to do so has depended on the willingness of a majority of Americans, to extol the myth of American exceptionalism despite such atrocities. Belief in the jerry-built fantasy of American democracy required that Americans treat the subjugation of Black people as a footnote, rather than a foundational contradiction. As Vann Newkirk details in The Atlantic, it was Black civil rights activists that finally made this country a democracy with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. As Saturday’s acquittal demonstrates, it is “hanging by a thread.” The only way forward is to disarm domestic terrorists, nuke the filibuster to pass HR 1 and the For The People Act, and most importantly, follow the lead of Black people. We are this fragile republic’s only hope. We always have been.
Not to be overlooked is the ironic fact that Eugene Goodman, a black man, saved the legislative branch of government.