The seal of the U.S. Senate includes a scroll inscribed with “E Pluribus Unum” emblazoned on the wall above the desk at the center of the chamber.
The inscription, which translates to “Out of many, one,” formed one of the most striking images to emerge from Wednesday’s assault on the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-fueled mob. In it, a member of the mob can be seen seated at the desk, the Latin on the wall behind him.
Throughout four years that will finally end on January 20, Trump has embodied a sentiment of his own design; in his America, one matters more than many. The president’s baseless claims of election fraud are the latest manifestation of that belief.
American democracy counts on coordination. The storming of the Capitol highlights the vulnerability of our federal system to those who aim to get their way by exploiting its gaps.
As the rioters forced lawmakers to suspend the counting of electoral votes that marks a mandate of our constitutional democracy, the federal and state lines that delineate it showed amid a scramble to summon reinforcements for police who guard the building.
Trump refused to call on the rioters to retreat. The District of Columbia endures without sovereignty of its own and a governor who can summon help. If fell to the city’s mayor and the governor of Virginia to call in the national guard.
The lack of federal leadership paralleled Trump’s abdication during the pandemic, throughout which he has forced the states to fend for themselves. The president has left the states to procure their own protective equipment, to develop their own tests and tracing, to carry out (or not) their own campaigns to promote wearing of masks and other non-pharmaceutical measures, and, most recently, to vaccinate people.
By refusing to call on Americans to cover their faces (not to mention refusing to wear a mask himself), Trump ensured that many more Americans would be sickened by COVID-19 and die. Universal use of masks in the U.S. might have saved as many as 130,000 lives, according to researchers at the University of Washington.
The pandemic and the protests converged on Wednesday. As the rioters overran the Capitol, news emerged that a luxury nursing home in Florida offered scarce doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to its donors and board members. Even as elderly people at risk from the virus camp out across the state in the hope of receiving a vaccine.
It’s not as if we didn’t see it coming. Trump defended violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville when he remarked there “were very fine people, on both sides.” He tried to coerce the leader of Ukraine to dig for dirt on Trump’s opponent. On Saturday, Trump asked the top election official in Georgia to find votes that would swing the state to Trump and overturn the outcome of the election.
With his attack on our democracy, Trump has pushed federalism to the breaking point. The Capitol houses not only a coequal branch of government but the first among equals according to the Constitution.
“Show me what democracy looks like,” chant protestors who call on America to right its racial and other injustices. The rioters who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday showed what an assault on democracy looks like when fueled by malevolence and a motive to weaken the nation.