‘You just damned your cause’

In light of the riot Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol Building by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump, I was reminded of a rant that Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald wrote in response to the terrorist attacks that took place on Sept. 11, 2001. Reading it again today, I noticed just how similar Pitts’ reactions were to how we should perhaps react to Wednesday’s actions.

They were those of, not to put too fine a point on it, terrorists inflamed by the president himself, who for the last two months complained, with no evidence, that the election, which he lost, was “stolen.”

And this isn’t new by any stretch. Trump has always been a violent man, threatening physical violence numerous times during his 2016 campaign. Nor should this come as any surprise, since probably the majority of his supporters are absolutely intolerant of anyone who disagrees — and have been for decades. It thus didn’t surprise me that they tried to hang President-elect Joe Biden with the pejorative “socialist.” That is, at best, an exaggeration — they simply want to exert power and control.

Not wanting to take responsibility for their role in Wednesday’s riot, following their infamous and fearful leader, they’ve taken to blaming it on left-wing “antifa” forces that supposedly infiltrated their ranks — again, without proof.

It will thus be interesting to see just how pro-Trump Christian leadership reacts to this. Many were ready to condemn Black Lives Matter for its alleged Marxist leanings, which they were likely convinced led to the riots — which, to be fair, took place in only a handful of cities and were fed by pro-Trump groups itching to fight.

But as I heard New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman say some years back, “Terrorists always overplay their hand.” That is to say, they’re so focused on the righteousness of their goals that to their mindset the means to achieve them was irrelevant. Numerous folks as disparate as Martin Luther King Jr. and the late Chicago Sun-Times columnist Sydney Harris have written that not only do the ends not justify the means but that the means can corrupt the ends, and I think they’ve done so in this case.

As Pitts wrote then, “Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.” We’re seeing that today, as GOP leadership that had previously supported Trump is now deserting him, numerous Cabinet secretaries are turning in their resignations and Democratic members of the House have asked Vice-President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to have Trump removed or, barring that, have drawn up more articles of impeachment.

I do believe that the healing has already begun, though it will take at least a generation to be fully reconciled because Trump supporters will continue to nurse their grievance and thus allow their bitterness full flower. But their cause has now been shown to the world as unjust — which is why, in describing 9/11, Pitts referred to it as “damned.”