Capitol Riot: The (Possible) Upside of Powerlessness

 Capitol Riot, Psychology, Power, Psychoanalysis

The Capitol building holds a special place in my heart.  Twice I was one of those schoolchildren roaming its halls who thankfully weren’t there last week because of COVID restrictions so that they did not get caught up in the melee.  

My first school trip was when I was in sixth grade and travelled to DC with every other member of the safety patrol in Palm Beach County, Florida.  We travelled overnight by train and we wandered the halls of Congress, though frankly the manual cutting of $100 bills at the treasury made a bigger impact than watching congress govern. 

In High School, I returned with a group of students studying the processes of government and, in addition to meeting with lobbyists across the political spectrum, we met with our representative in his office and we also toured Jimmy Carter’s White House.  Because he was not there that day, we were actually able to stand on the edge of the oval office.  Later that night, we returned to the Capitol building and we were able to make lovely sounds that echoed in the rotunda.

But the mob attack on the Capitol building did not have the same visceral impact on me that the attacks of 9/11 did, though I think the intended effect was similar.  Now, when I say intended effect, I am reducing a lot of different intended effects into one.  Certainly some of the people in the crowd were intending to peacefully show their support for the President’s unfounded concerns about the legitimacy of the election.  Some people intended to harm individuals that they believed had harmed them or the republic, and some people were simply intent on mayhem (as far as I can tell from the pictures and accounts of what happened).

But the central intent of the attack was, I think, to communicate feeling states.  I think the President feels wounded and therefore powerless in the wake of his failure to be reelected.  If I were to think analytically, I think it is possible that he is warding off responsibility for his own failures – failures to manage the COVID situation (among many other very public failures that drove away many traditional Republican voters) and the failure of his plan to govern to his base, ignoring as best he could those who did not agree with him. 

Similarly, I think he has been supporting the feeling state of his base, particular those who feel most powerless; promising that he will make America great again and, in the process of doing that, empower them.  When the election is “stolen” from him, he feels powerless, so does his base, and, when he directs them to, they try to wrest that power back.  Or is that really what they were doing? 

First of all, the President is far from powerless.  He is, for a few more days, the most powerful person on the planet.  I am reminded of a recent Provost at our University who announced that he was having regular walks with other “disempowered” people at the University.  Poor, poor Provost.  Second in command and he has no power.  But, on another level the President (and our Provost) don't have power.  Universities are slow to change.  So are countries like ours.  In so far as Trump’s agenda was to dismantle the Federal Government, he failed to do that – the momentum of the state (not the deep state – just the state – with its manifold needs and abilities) overwhelmed his efforts to dismantle it.

Similarly, some might argue that his base – especially those who were at the spear point of the attack on Wednesday – are not disempowered people.  But they, and the President, feel disempowered.  He and his base were powerless to re-elect their man.  And one reason that the character of the President is so important is that we count on the President not to act immediately on his feelings.  We expect that the President will think tactically and strategically to effect change – not act impulsively to communicate feelings.

But, he did act impulsively.  And I think it was to communicate to congress and to his Vice President just how powerless he felt by sending a mob to induce feelings of powerlessness in them. 

How are to make lemonade from these lemons?  I think this is a tremendous opportunity for the members of Congress to have an empathic moment not just with the President, or even necessarily with the President – and perhaps not with his base – but with the people in this country who feel and are disempowered.  On some level, that is all of us.  Ultimately we are all powerless to prevent out own death.  And James Cone maintains that we are better off being connected with the disempowered than those who are in power.  And I think that Congress could use a dose of this.

Powerful entities are constantly appealing to the power of those in office.  This should lead them to feel powerful as representatives, so they can act on behalf of their constituents, but how can they also not feel powerful as people?  One the sirens of my own profession that is so dangerous is when we confuse the power of our methods with our personal power – and we don’t have slick lobbyists sucking up to us!

Wouldn’t it be nice if this led Congress to be more, not less, open to their constituents?  Wouldn’t it be nice if this led them to realize that if people had access to them and realized that their representatives were people just like themselves they wouldn’t be tempted to take up arms against them?  What if every congressman asked for every constituent to write three sentences to them about what was most important to that constituent for them to be working on in the next congress and every constituent who wrote received some sort of reply?  Maybe it would be a tabulation?  I don’t know.

When I lived in Kansas, I was on a flight from Kansas City to Topeka, the state capital.  Kansas is a huge state – 13 times the size of Massachusetts if I recall correctly – but it only has a million people in it.  There on the plane was our Senator.  It was a little puddle jumper plane, and she started talking with the people on the plane.  What a delightful moment.

And, of course, it would be important for the halls of Congress to continue to be open.  Yes, we need to have metal detectors at all the gates to the Capitol.  Yes, we need to continue to use standard safety measures all the time and we need to be prepared to pull more extraordinary resources in when there is a threat of violence, but building a wall between the people and their representatives will only invite greater efforts to breach it.

But I have to admit that this is unlikely to happen.  I think that one reason this did not affect me the way that 9/11 did is that it did not come in out of the blue.  I saw this coming.  Or at least in hindsight I did.  I’m on top of this.  Or that is what I imagine.  It is a subtle form of defense. 

When congress was under siege – when they were cowering in the gallery as hooligans were banging on doors around them and their lives were imminently in danger – the Democrats were calling on the Republicans to call Trump to bring an end to the madness and the Republicans were blaming the Democrats for their efforts to defund the police.

My point here is not that either of these positions were either right or wrong, but that, even when we are most scared – or maybe especially in those moments – we are likely to revert to the kind of impulsive defensive functioning that we don’t want in our President – or in our representatives.  We want people to be thinking strategically about how important it is to address the underlying concerns that the people are expressing.  And these concerns are being expressed across the political spectrum.  We don’t want them blaming each other in a pointless back and forth that doesn’t accomplish anything. 

Crises present an opportunity to rethink our positions, but rob us of the ability to think as clearly as we might.  After people have been traumatized, one of the things that we as treaters want to do is to help them regain a sense of control.  Unfortunately this can too easily become a sense of command and control when we are dealing with a government that is interested in issues of power.  If our representatives can just remember that their power comes not from their might but from the sense that we are self-governed, they might be able to remind themselves that governing with integrity will be their best defense.

So, in addition to being more open to the needs and concerns of the people they represent, our leaders need to lead us.  They need to clarify that we are the wealthiest country in the world because we have invested heavily in our physical and mental infrastructure.  If we want to continue to be a leader in the world, we need to continue to invest in that infrastructure – and those who most benefit from that need to pay more.  (Now my own political leanings are beginning to show.  It is not that I intend for everyone to get on board with my ideas – would that I had that kind of power – but that we should know why it is that what is being done is being done)

I am hopeful that we will have a government that gets back to work after all of this chaos.  I hope that the people who make this government run can realize that they are necessary to our collective functioning and that they can make that clear to us – and solicit from us what would help them be better governors.  This is the promise of our, to this point, great Republic.

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