There Must Be Consequences

This was always coming. It's not going away unless we act.

Jan 11, 2021

I’m writing to you from my adopted home, the District of Columbia. I was raised in Texas—and very proudly so—but I have called D.C. my home since 2006, when I was first stationed here as a private in the Army after basic training.

My introduction to the U.S. Capitol grounds came through the PT runs my infantry squad would take from Ft. McNair in Southwest D.C. and the winding path we beat to get there: left out of the pedestrian gate, through the Waterfront neighborhood, down The Wharf, through the fish market, zip under 395, a brief turnaround at Jefferson Memorial, then up 14th, and before you know it, you’re at The National Mall.

Take a right, and the Capitol grounds are straight ahead. On longer runs, we’d go all the way around the building to the opposite (east) side of the Capitol, where a very large courtyard beautifully paved in stone lay peacefully before us. Continuing in formation, we’d run across the courtyard, and I would sneak peaks at the gorgeous Capitol Dome.

I grew up worshipping American government. I know how that sounds, believe me, but for a kid growing up in trailer parks in Central Texas in the mid-90s, you had to look for inspiration where you could get it. I took mine mostly from books on famous leaders in American history, the narrative sweep of the United States, good and bad, civil rights heroes, icons of the nation. I loved reading about democracy and the ideals behind it. Yes, I was an insufferable nerd about this. I still am.

I was enthralled with movies set in D.C. — the most basic and banal of aerial shots were so exciting and motivating to me. In those trailers with a small TV set and a broken family struggling to exist in body or spirit, I let myself believe that I could make it to D.C. someday, help change things for the better, make my family proud and give them hope.

The sandstones used to build the U.S. Capitol were quarried from land in Aquia, Virginia that was purchased by one Pierre L’Enfant in 1791 for the materials that would be used to build the new nation’s capital city, which he famously designed. It’s located 40 miles south of D.C. and is literally called Government Island.

When you visit the U.S. Capitol as a tourist, you’ll enter through the Capitol Visitor’s Center, which is under that gorgeously-paved courtyard, and into Emancipation Hall, so named to commemorate the enslaved Black Americans and other laborers who built what has famously been referred to as “the Chapel of Democracy”.

Tucked away in Emancipation Hall, intentionally so to reduce traffic, is a sole sandstone on display with a bronze plaque honoring those human beings whose bodies and labor were stolen and coerced into the realization of a monument to natural rights for a country that would intentionally fail to recognize them as full human beings in The Constitution.

The decisions reached by Congress, speeches given by our presidents and foreign heads of state, treaties signed, wars declared, rights pursued — all have primarily taken place in a house built by human beings the leaders of our own nation deemed unfit for citizenship and agency.

The United States has been, quite literally, built on white supremacy.

I watched this past week’s events from my home, about 1.5 miles from the Capitol Complex and that stone courtyard shown in countless video montages of Trump supporters committing horrific acts of violence and treason. Indeed: terrorism.

I was not scared. I was angry. I was—and I still am—angrier than I’ve been in a very long time. These terrorists—and they are terrorists—wielded pure entitlement and arrogance in an attempt to inflict mass violence and overturn the lawful results of a presidential election, in the process climbing up and crawling over and battering and chipping the very stones hewn and laid by human beings with an actual historic grievance against our government, grievances that their descendants bear to this day in a seemingly endless gauntlet of trauma for no reason other than the color of their skin.

I watched in horror and anger as white men and women were able to assault law enforcement, destroy property, carry around firearms and bombs, and engage in other violent behavior, nearly all of them without consequence in that moment.

One person was shot by law enforcement. I have watched the video, and it is abundantly clear that person presented an immediate threat of violence. She should have been shot. She was a terrorist. That’s what happens when you keep attempting to initiate violence against government officials despite repeated warnings from law enforcement that have their weapons drawn. She didn’t think they would shoot her, a white woman who served in the Air Force. She was wrong.

If you think I’m being too harsh on that point, a viral video of one terrorist summed up this sentiment to the surprise of no one who’s been paying attention to the blatant white supremacy of these people. Throwing out the usual racist dogwhistles for a bullhorn, she said to a reporter while openly weeping:

“This is not America. They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.”

By “they”, she meant the law enforcement that have so consistently been the public benefactors of Trump supporters with “Blue Lives Matters” bumperstickers and shirts and insufferably exploited and shoved as pawns into every anti-BLM rant ever offered to the world. After the death of Officer Brian Sicknick at the hands of these terrorists, the Blue Lives Matter crowd sure has been silent. Kinda makes you wonder if they really ever gave a shit about law enforcement and their families in the first place.

Suddenly, when these white terrorists were confronted with the authority of law enforcement, those same cops transformed from mascots to stormtroopers on behalf of the Deep State.

So, I am not angry or sad that this terrorist was shot. I am more angry that more of these people were not sufficiently engaged, either by arrest or other lawful means, as the terrorists they so clearly were in that moment. Some Capitol Police appeared to open their doors to the crowd, some left their posts despite a duty to never do so, and many more utterly failed to provide meaningful protection.

I am enraged that our government has been warned constantly about these terrorists for many years, and oddly enough, the response has been a sense of “political correctness” deployed to treat the fragile sensibilities of white voters with kid gloves has enabled a glossing over every single time something like this happens with white supremacist terrorists.

I am heartbroken by the brutally honest public remarks of countless people of color, particularly Black Americans, who have spent the past several days—and decades upon decades before that—pointing out how unarmed Black children are in far greater danger literally anywhere in the country when interacting with cops than the white, armed terrorists who sought to take Members of Congress hostage and execute Pence and Speaker Pelosi.

After all, it was only three years ago that four Black teenagers were handcuffed and detained on the National Mall in full view of tens of thousands of tourists—the vast majority of them white—for the crime of selling cold bottles of water to the public on a hot summer day.

There must be consequences. Every single terrorist who participated needs to be charged and convicted for their crimes. Every elected official who has, in any way, supported the actions of this week needs to be expelled from their respective bodies. Those members of the U.S. Capitol Police who were apparently incompetent or complicit in what happened need to be investigated. Trump himself needs to be impeached and convicted and then face criminal charges for this, in addition to all the other illegal bullshit he’s done.

One of the most tired phrases of this era has been “this isn’t America”, but as has been pointed out by countless people of color, this has always been America. Perhaps those of us with white privilege have been unwilling to look hard enough and see that the very same people scaling those stone walls this week are not new, going all the way back to when those stone walls were first built by the hands of the enslaved and long before that.

I am more optimistic than most, and I realize that can come across as annoying to some. I am still in so many ways that kid who never fails to be awestruck by the sight of the gleaming Capitol Dome at night when I take a walk on the Mall. I am admittedly earnest, and I can’t help it. I really do believe we can and will do better. All of us. But not without a lot of tough introspection and a lot more hard work beyond that. Not without the kind of labor from those of us who are white that is needed for true accountability.

Here’s what I like to say: “This isn’t the America we want”.

It has aspiration for a greater society for all people without erasing the myriad and countless injustices inflicted by this very country on marginalized communities, particularly Black Americans.

And part of getting to the America we want is rejecting the idea that pursuing an empty sense of “unity” as a solution to our problems will somehow heal this wound.

It will not. Calling for unity without true accountability is like bandaging a wound without cleaning it.

For the America we want, there must be accountability. There must be consequences.

Hi, I’m Charlotte Clymer, and this is my Substack. It’s completely free to access and read, but if you feel so moved to support my writing, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription: just $7/month or save money with the $70/annual sub. You can also go way above and beyond by becoming a Founding Member at $210.

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