But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?!

Conversations with loved ones about the coup and insurrection, lessons from a middle-aged amateur historian, and the wisdom of Miracle Max

Where were you when Trump attempted a coup by sending an insurrectionist mob to storm the Capital?

Those who witnessed this horrible day in America’s history will be asked this question for the rest of our lives.

I was at my desk, setting up meetings with my ghostwriting clients for the following week, working on a marketing plan for my upcoming novel, and tinkering with a story about meeting the president of the Philip K. Dick fan club that I hoped would be a springboard into a larger, belated piece about the best books I read in 2020. But those are topics for another day. We have bigger fish to fry, as they say.

“Are you going to write about this fucking mess?” my mom asked when I called to check on her.

“Yes, and I may even quote you.”

“Go right ahead,” she said. “It’s a fucking mess. You can quote me on that.”

Mom’s right. It is a fucking mess.

It is also an attempted coup.

And an insurrection.

Talking heads will bicker over the “appropriate” use of these terms until their lungs run out of hot air, but their bickering depends on a false assumption. The events of January 6, the talking heads insist, must be one or the other. But the realities of the attack on our democracy are too complex for a single label. What happened in America on January 6, 2021 was both an attempted coup and an insurrection.

A coup is when a group of people seize power illegally, usually by force. In this case, the group was the President of the United States and his co-conspirators. Donald Trump and his team organized a rally in our nation’s capital to coincide with the precise moment that Congress was, under our Constitution, carrying out its duty to certify a free and fair election. He promoted this rally for weeks, promising a “wild time” to those who had feasted on his lies for four years. Then, when the moment was right, Trump directed the crowd—a confederation of white nationalists, anti-government extremists, right-wing militias, proud chauvinists, right-wing death squads determined to hunt elected officials, conspiracy theorists, conservative social media celebrities who do what they do for fun and profit, and yes, everyday folks—to overturn the election he lost.

An insurrection is a violent uprising against a government or authority. Trump’s mob became insurrectionists when they stormed the Capital, forcing Congress to halt its Constitutional duty to certify a free and fair election. In the process, the insurrectionists murdered a Capital police officer, vandalized the people’s House, stole government property, and terrorized lawmakers.

Trump’s coup. The mob’s insurrection. Our national shame.

Of course, those who plotted the coup and carried out the insurrection were not alone. Many of the President’s political allies in Congress encouraged his actions by voicing explicit support for his lie, or remaining silent as that lie spread like wildfire.

After the insurrectionists who chased lawmakers from the seat of power had left, many of the President’s political allies in Congress continued their support for the coup and the insurrectionists by objecting to the certification of a free and fair election—an election, it must be noted, that also legitimizes their own power, an election it must also be noted that 60 courts of law reviewed and affirmed.

Elsewhere in America, like-minded mobs that had spent weeks organizing in plain sight online threatened state capitals in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington. Here in Los Angeles, on a sunny day, a pro-Trump crowd nearly murdered a Black woman. She escaped, thanks to the help of some good Samaritans, but the police who were on the scene failed to intervene or investigate.

But we saw this coming, didn’t we? As one engaged British subject put it, “that escalated steadily for four years.” Future historians will spend their careers chronicling and explaining the madness of these years. The most astute future historians will contextualize Trump’s coup and his insurrectionist mob as a feature, rather than a bug, of the American system.

After all, this is our story—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because just as we own the mythology of liberty and self-government that flowed out of 1776, so too do we own the consequences of our sins—genocide against the native peoples of the land that is home to our democracy, the enslavement of Africans forced to build this nation, the scapegoating, oppression, and marginalization of anyone who, by their very identity, doesn’t exist inside the originalist conception of a democracy that belongs only to white male property owners who call themselves Christians.

What we witnessed this week is as American as Andrew Jackson, as Bleeding Kansas, as the caning of abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner, as Father Coughlin and the thousands of pro-Nazi Americans he mobilized for a rally at Madison Square Garden, as the Tulsa race massacre, as a century of unchecked KKK terrorism, as the Oklahoma City bombing, as tiki torch marchers in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” as interment camps for Japanese Americans, as Fox News talking heads selling Islamophobia, as Ammon Bundy taking up arms to occupy public land, as the murders at the Tree of Life Synagogue, as the fury of the white state unleashed at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, as the armed mobs Trump summoned to “liberate Michigan,” as the right-wing militias who heard the dog whistle and set out to kidnap Michigan’s governor, as the conservative movement’s Southern Strategy, as the Lost Cause lie that runs like a river of hate from Appomattox Courthouse to the Confederate monuments still standing in 2021.

We are at a moral crossroads—familiar territory for America. Either we double-down on the experiment of a multicultural democracy—and make it work, or we surrender to the politics of hate and descend into the lawless abyss that has swallowed republics throughout history. To trust that we will “get it right” is to fail in this moment. We are called to make it right and to teach our children how and why we did so. That is our project, to fulfill the promise of America by creating a more perfect union that endures because it is multicultural democracy.

My family history intersects with America around the turn of the last century, when my maternal ancestors fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe for a better life in America. A few decades later, my paternal grandfather, whose family fled the pogroms of Czarist Russia and the totalitarianism that followed in the wake of that country’s revolution, also found a better life in America. My father, the son of an immigrant, oversaw the sound for seven Presidential inaugurations. My mother, the granddaughter of immigrants and a school teacher, saw to it that her children understood the significance of their father’s small contribution to this country’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.

“I just keep thinking about that fight we had in front of the Constitution,” Allison told me the afternoon of Trump’s coup. “I just keep thinking about the Capital police officer who pulled us apart and gave us a civics lesson. Where were the police? How could this happen?”

Four years ago, I wrote about that epic childhood fight and our family’s quadrennial tradition of bearing witness to the peaceful transfer of power. Then Christina and I flew to Washington D.C. to join Allison and millions of peaceful protesters for the Women’s March. I can’t speak for the motives of those who marched in the Capital and around the country, but I marched because I saw “this fucking mess” coming.

I saw it the moment a con man, who had made his political mark by spreading the lie of birtherism, descended from his golden tower to announce his candidacy for President by scapegoating Mexican immigrants. Millions of Americans saw it too.

Perhaps we saw this moment coming because our parents and teachers taught us the lessons of history. Perhaps we saw it coming because the stories of our families are intertwined with those lessons, the scars imprinted on our psyches. Or, perhaps we saw this moment coming because we took Trump seriously and literally when he told us precisely who he was and what he would do.

“I can’t think of a moment like this in our lifetime, can you?” Allison asked. “September 11th comes close, but that feels different.”

We talked about Allison’s view of history that day. She bore witness from her apartment, a few miles from where we grew up. She wept, worried about her brother, her country, the world. By her side was a woman named Taylor she kind-of-sort-of-knew from college. They have been best friends ever since. Soon after I returned from the Women’s March, I joined Taylor’s husband, Sam, in co-creating a project called The Newest Americans. We documented the stories of immigrants becoming American citizens. Their words filled us with hope that the American project would continue. I turned to their stories again and again in the years that followed. They fueled my work to elect leaders who would check the politics of hate and violence in America.

“September eleventh was more of a tragedy, in a sense, because so many people were killed,” I said, “but less of an existential threat to the Republic.”

I explain my concerns to my sister. They boil down to this: we came very close to witnessing insurrectionists murder public officials in the Capital, live on Facebook. That would’ve been the ballgame on the American project. I know it in bones, in my heart, and in my head.

“Civil society is just a bunch of rules we agree to follow,” I said, “but when the mob is in control, the only thing standing between the rule of law and the kind of violence that precedes all genocides is force. That force failed in significant ways.”

Our call ends with a few dark, personal recollections about the force that’s supposed to secure the rule of law. I tell Allison what a friend who is a homicide detective told me. Basically, there are the dozen or so people with badges and guns he trusts with his life, and then there’s everyone else. Scary. Allison reminds me about the cop who was Dad’s driver in New York, when Dad did the sound for the Pope. If anything happens to your daughter, Larry, you call me—not the police—me. We finish by reminiscing about Bill, Dad’s wildest best friend from high school. He was reserve LAPD. Bill stories were legendary. As a teenager, he stood down a biker gang with a blow torch, or so the legend goes. He served two tour in Vietnam, I know that much. When I passed the bar, Bill told me I should flash by law license to get out of speeding tickets. I wasn’t sure if that would land me in jail, or send me on my way. Bill was a prankster.

“Dad told me Bill’s mom was murdered,” I said. “Burglary, I think. Dad said Bill swore it was the cops. That I believed, Dad was just too upset for it to be one of Bill’s wild stories. Something about a burglary ring that was connected to the cops. I don’t think they ever brought the killers to justice.”

“Well, that went dark.”

“Yeah, all I’m saying is, some cops show up for justice every day, and too many don’t.”

We say we love each other, but before I let my sister off the line, I warn her to stay home. She doesn’t need the warning, but she appreciates it. She knows the violence isn’t over.

This is about the rule of law.

I was a second-year law student in New York on September 11th. I had skipped class to go to a job interview a few blocks from the The World Trade Center, but at the last minute I had decided to cancel the interview because I was lukewarm about the idea of a part-time job at a commercial litigation firm. A few days later, with the smell of burnt bodies still present in the air, classes resumed. With tears in his eyes, my criminal procedure professor spoke about civil liberties. My corporations professor gave an equally powerful talk about tolerance and multiculturalism. My bankruptcy professor led us in a discussion about democracy. But it was my professional responsibility professor whose words went to the true heart of the matter.

“This is about the rule of law,” he said. “Either we govern ourselves according to the rule of law, or we are subject to the rule of man. Living under the rule of law is among the most difficult things a society must do, but it’s a picnic compared to the rule of man.”

I’ve carried my professor’s words with me for two decades. At first, I took him to mean that a foreign threat would cause us to sacrifice the rule of law on the alter of security. There’s certainly truth to that. But from the present vantage point of history, the stakes of his lesson loom even larger than an unlawful war set in motion by a lie and a security state built on fear. The stakes are the Republic. The stakes are our democracy. The stakes are us.

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“So, what happens now?”

That’s the question on everyone’s mind, but two days after Trump’s coup, two days after a right-wing insurrection, two days after Congress certified a free and fair election over the objections of eight Republican Senators and 139 Republican members of the House, two days after the right-wing media launched its latest campaign to brand America’s domestic enemies as patriots, and two days after the world’s most powerful social media companies equivocated in the face of tyranny, I found myself talking to my brother-in-law, Zach.

We are brothers by marriage, but the way we see it, we are brothers. Simply brothers. Never mind that we are from different families, that his ancestors on his mother’s side may have terrorized my ancestors in the old country, and that his ancestors on his father’s side likely weren’t too keen about families like mine becoming Americans. Never mind that some in Zach’s family voted for Trump, even though, as Christina put it, “Some of the assholes in that mob wanted to murder people like my husband because he’s a Jew, and others wanted to murder our Black nephews, or take away Zach’s rights because he is gay.” Never mind that some in that mob would murder my wife for marrying a Jew, and my sister-in-law for loving a Black man and raising three Black boys. Never mind any of that for a moment. Zach and I are brothers. He saw “this fucking mess” coming too, and like millions of Americans, he worked his ass off to stop it.

I am 15 years older than Zach, and I suppose he thinks I have all the answers. I’d like to tell him that everything is going to be OK. But I can’t lie to my brother.

“I don’t know what happens next,” I said. “These are dangerous days. Ideally, we remove Trump from office, either through impeachment, the 25th Amendment, or he resigns. But there’s nothing ideal about this situation, and so we’ll probably have to hold our collective breath and white-knuckle it to inauguration day.”

“And then?”

“Well, we’ve had this conversation before,” I told Zach, recalling the years of long talks we’ve had about history and politics in our weekly calls—our informal civic book club. “Buckle up for a generation of progress and pushback. It’s messy and it’s scary, but it’s the story of America. We know this story, bro, and we have to write a better draft.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say. But has an election ever gotten this fucked up?”

I reminded Zach that the 1876 election was also a “fucking mess,” and that the deal that was struck to save the Union back then was one that gave up on the project of Reconstruction and ushered in the era of Jim Crow.

“Jesus,” Zach said. “That’s disgusting.”

“I’ll tell you something else that’s going to sound eerily familiar. The Republicans of that era, who were the ones pushing for progress on race, defending democracy, and trying to uphold the rule of law, didn’t just give up on their ideals, they lost control because the greed of the Gilded Age allowed corruption to flourish, which in turn undermined the political power and will to do justice.”

“You don’t say.”

“Corruption beats political ideology.”

“So… are we fucked?”

I reminded Zach that while I can spot a demagogue, I’m not Nostradamus. Then I gave my brother my honest opinion.

“I don’t think so. Here are a few proof points that give me hope.”

To begin, both Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell immediately described the mob’s action as an insurrection.

“That’s important because it means the leaders of both political parties, the people who sit right at the nexus of our democracy, agree on reality, the basic facts. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when that happened. It’s not so much a start as a moment when you take a big step back from the abyss.”

“But what about the coup?”

“That’s a legal matter for Trump and his co-conspirators,” I said. “We don’t have to resolve that politically, and the fact is we probably won’t. If it gets resolved—and it should get resolved—it’s a matter for the Justice Department, the courts, and the prisons.”

“OK.”

“Which brings me to reason for hope number two. Did you catch Joe Biden’s announcement for Attorney General?”

“Yeah…”

I pointed out to Zach that while many on social media perceived Biden’s selection of Merrick Garland as an epic troll—payback for McConnell’s refusal to give Obama’s Supreme Court nominee a hearing, let alone a vote—Biden’s words were straightforward and right on the money.

“He told the American people, in very clear language, that the Attorney General does not work for the President or the Vice President,” I said. “He made it clear that the Attorney General leads the Justice Department and that he serves the American people.”

Those are words, of course, but Zach got my gist. The words leaders use matter. Their words tell you who that leader is and what they intend to do. By telling us that the Attorney General is not the President’s lawyer, the President-elect has told the American people that he is not above the law, and that it is the Attorney General who makes that call. I take it as a good sign that the next Attorney General will be a widely respect lawyer with experience prosecuting domestic terrorists.

“But it’s still really bad, right?”

“Very bad.”

But I can’t leave the call on a negative note. We have too much work to despair.

“One final thing to note,” I said. “You’ve seen the Princess Bride, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Remember Miracle Max, how the vengeful Spaniard and his jolly giant brought Westley to Miracle Max for a resurrection?”

“You’re saying we need a miracle?” Zach asked.

“Absolutely not. We can’t count on miracles from a curmudgeon, or super heroes, or any of that nonsense to save our democracy. I mention Miracle Max because what he said about life and death is applicable to democracy.”

“OK?”

“A lot of my friends talk about our democracy like its a binary state, like it’s either living or dead. But they’re wrong. Democracy is actually more like a continuum. It’s a very big enterprise that lives inside so many aspects of American life. Democracy is bigger than us, and if we do our job, it’ll be here after we’re gone. Are you with me?”

“Yeah, I’m just waiting for the Miracle Max part.”

“Our democracy is mostly dead, which means it’s slightly alive. Some systems are rotten, I’m talking gangrene-rotten. But other systems are alive and kicking.”

“It’s an imperfect analogy, but I’m picking up what you’re putting down.”

“It’s an imperfect analogy,” I agreed. “Our democracy may not be as dead as Westley, but unlike the hero of that fairytale, our democracy is also under attack at this very moment.”

“So, we aren’t fucked and we don’t need a miracle?”

“We aren’t fucked, and we don’t need a miracle, but we do need to keep working, brother.”

“Off to storm the castle, eh?”

“Yes, metaphorically.”

We said we loved each other, then said our goodbyes, until next time. I might have added that Zach be prepared for more violence. And by prepared I mean, able to remain calm and insist of rule of law. But Zach already knows this, and I hope you do too.

Prepare for more violence. Remain calm. Insist on the rule of law.

Thank you for reading! I’ll be back next Sunday with book news, a story about Tommy Lasorda (RIP), and some more thoughts on what we can do to repair our democracy and teach our children the lessons of history. Until then, be well. And if you would be so kind, please share this post with your friends and families. ❤️🇺🇸