The ‘Virtue’ of the New Totalitarians
Later ages are always surprised by the casual brutality of totalitarian regimes. What they neglect is the unshakeable (though misguided) conviction of virtue that animates the totalitarians.
By Roger Kimball
January 9, 2021
What was the most disturbing thing to happen in the last few days?
Some say it was the horrifying spectacle of the mob besieging and breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
That was indeed disturbing, especially the pageant of wonton assaults on property in the seat of our government and, most of all, the images of Ashli Babbitt, the young woman who was shot and killed, apparently by law enforcement.
There is much we do not know about what happened that afternoon. But I think Tucker Carlson was right about two essential things.
One, that President Trump bears some responsibility for what happened. He “recklessly encouraged,†as Carlson put it, his distraught supporters. I should note, by the way, that I believe that the president’s supporters are right to be distraught—and not just because their guy lost. That’s the nature of elections. One candidate wins, the other loses. So long as the election is fair, and is seen to be fair, all is well. The loser, and the loser’s supporters, may mutter, but they accept the result and go home.
But in the 2020 election there were huge and, in my view, determinative irregularities. Had the votes been fairly counted, I believe, Trump would have won. But they weren’t.
Hence the anger among his supporters. The president should have appreciated their anger and acted accordingly. He ought also to have appreciated that by January 6, the game was over. There was nothing Vice President Mike Pence could have done that would have changed the outcome of the election. When Trump concluded his remarks to the crowd by encouraging them to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue†and go “to the Capitol,†he was playing with fire. He ought to have discerned as much.
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