Four years ago this week, Victoria wool stores ran short of pink yarn. Knitters had emptied the shelves to fashion “pussy hats” — tuques with little ears — in protest against the incoming U.S. president’s misogyny. The day after Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, thousands rallied in Centennial Square.
Yet even they, as pessimistic as they were, couldn’t have foreseen how bizarre, divisive and destructive reality would be.
“I didn’t think it would get this bad,” Dr. Keith Martin now says. He had predicted Trump’s presidency would be the worst ever, but never dreamed the man would undermine the institutions that keep government functioning, that it would lead to an armed mob attacking the Capitol.
Martin was the member of Parliament for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca from 1993 through 2011, elected first under the Reform Party banner and then as a Liberal. He has spent most of the time since then heading the Consortium of Universities for Global Health in Washington, D.C.
That’s where he was Tuesday as the capital braced for Joe Biden’s inauguration today. Note that word: braced. How strange to use it on a day that’s supposed to be about celebration.
Trying to travel anywhere in Washington has been an ordeal this week, Martin said. “Every day it’s more difficult.” Between his office and the White House a kilometre away are concentric rings of steel fencing. Concrete barriers defend against car bombs in streets patrolled by 20,000 National Guard troops. Businesses are boarded up. “D.C. is now a fortified city.”
Martin leaves no doubt about whom he blames.
“The assault on Capitol Hill was the ultimate assault on democracy in U.S. history,” he says. “President Trump incited, abetted and encouraged a mob to commit that assault. President Trump committed sedition.”
This isn’t the first time Martin has spoken so bluntly. In March, with the president musing about lifting pandemic restrictions prematurely, the New York Times quoted the Canadian as warning: “President Trump will have blood on his hands.” That was when the number of U.S. COVID fatalities had yet to reach 3,000. The total has now topped 400,000.
So, it wasn’t really surprising Tuesday to hear Martin declare: “Donald Trump committed the greatest crime of any president in U.S. history.”
Nor is that statement likely to draw much backlash in Canada, where Trump has few fans. Just before November’s election, a 338 Canada/Leger poll found that 84 per cent of decided Canadian voters surveyed favoured Biden. The Democrat was backed by most supporters of every major Canadian party, including the Conservatives. Canadians judge Trump less by where he sits on the political spectrum than how he comports himself as a human being. It’s a different story in the U.S., much to the surprise of those who assumed that after enduring four years of chaos, Americans would come to their senses, landslide Trump out of office, and everything would get back to normal.
Instead, 74 million voters stuck with Trump — not enough to win, but still the second-highest total ever. Did they do so out of blind loyalty to the party, or because they actually believe in what Trump was selling?
Martin worries about many of those in the latter group. Fact-free extremism was on the rise well before Trump, but it wasn’t until he began fuelling people’s fears and insecurities with whatever they wanted to hear, voicing what they felt afraid to say out loud, that they got “a shot of adrenaline.” And when Trump deliberately undermined their faith in America’s public institutions, he undermined what holds their democracy together.
“Donald Trump left a legacy of a country fighting itself, which will only further weaken it as time goes by,” he says.
“The democratic institutions of this country have to be repaired. Have to stop the unchecked lies. Have to clamp down on domestic hate groups. Have to bring Americans together again.
Yet, even after being slapped awake by the Capitol Hill debacle, even after seeing the mob erect a gallows while chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” more than 140 Republicans in the House and Senate voted against certifying the election results, cementing the beliefs of those who were convinced the vote had been stolen.
This is what Biden faces. Trump might be gone, but Trumpism remains.
