š± An insurrection in our image
Misinformation manifested the Capitol attack. Not decrying misinformation ignores the problem.
January 8, 2021 | Letter No.Ā 20
Following out-going President Donald Trump's promise to "never concede" and hisĀ remarks that the peaceful transfer of power amounted to "the country being destroyed," a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Wednesday afternoon.
Hundreds of miles away, Iowans watched as updates trickled in: the legion, the breech, the gunshot. Many witnessed through their TVs as rioters committed what President-elect Joe Biden calledĀ "an assault on the citadel of liberty." We kept watching as Congress returned to their chambersĀ to make officialĀ what we had known for weeks: that Biden would be the next president of the United States, evenĀ with damage in the House and Senate's chambers could still be seen on CSPAN's late-night live feeds.
Four people died storming our nationās Capitol. I had other plans for this letter, but I canāt stop reading. Here some links on the attack in D.C.:
ā«ļø Thereās some part of the shock from Wednesday thatās about bodies, about space. In one piece of footage, a Black Capitol Police cop was chased by the mob to the Senate chamber. Hereās a space weāre familiar with. And here it is repositioned as the setting of an assault on Congress. Watching the video at every line the Black cop draws, I keep thinking, Surely this white mob will stop. But they wonāt.
š Rather than speak truth to the unevidenced challenges to the election, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds defended them. Hereās a write up of Thursdayās press conference as Reynolds urges us to āmove forwardā while not acknowledging how her support of conspiracy theories helped get our country to this point.
š¤” Meanwhile in Des Moinesā¦ MAGA hats marched into the Iowa State Capitol. Repeating falsehoods propagated by the President of the United States, they showed their support for the mob in D.C. This from the Des Moines Register:
"I'm a Christian, and I believe Trump was picked by God many years ago. He's groomed by God. And God has a hand in thisĀ ā he's not done yet.ā
š³ļø And how did our new U.S. Rep in Iowaās 2nd do? In an emergency press conference Wednesday afternoon, she thrice pointed reporters to the āsocial unrestā of the summer falsely claiming Democrats were not blamed and held accountable for the violence associated with the protests this summer. Tom Barton at the Quad-City Times had an excellent write up of the press call her attempt to dodge the culpability squarely at her, her party, and her presidentās feet.
šøļø And one to chew on. This oneās a little more thinky. Iāve been following Siva Vaidhyanathan for a while now, and I am constantly challenged by his work to think not just about messages but the platform that allow/disallow them. In the aftermath of Wednesday, I keep returning to his piece for New Republic:
āRegardless, democracy is not about one side winning. Democracy is about one side losing and supporters of that side trusting the result, being satisfied with the process, and remaining willing to play the game again under similar rules.ā
Your friendly neighborhood reporter,
Zachary Oren Smith
P.S., if you arenāt sure how to process all of this, if youāre feeling empty, you arenāt alone. I had some people write in about how they were processing Wednesday. I collected those here.
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Zachary Oren Smith writes about government, growth and development for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Reach him atĀ zsmith@press-citizen.com,Ā at 319 -339-7354 or onĀ Twitter via @Zacharyos.