The Trump Blow

Nobody should have any doubts about it: the one that occurred in the Washington Capitol on the afternoon and night of January 6, 2021, was a coup, instigated by Donald Trump, president of the United States of America. The event falls into the same category that led, under the inspiration of Generals Milans del Bosch and Armada, Lieutenant Colonel of the Civil Guard Antonio Tejero to occupy the Congress of Deputies in Madrid on February 23, 1981 and that which was promoted on 27 October 2017 by the Catalan separatists Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras when they submitted the region's declaration of independence to the Catalan Parliament. All three attempts were directed against the existing constitutional order in the democratic framework within which the respective societies are governed, all three involved varying degrees of intimidation and violence, and all three failed due to the strong response of the institutions elected by the citizens: the United States Congress itself in the case of Trump, King Juan Carlos I in his capacity as Head of State in the case of the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, and the government presided over by Mariano Rajoy in the case of the Catalan Parliament. The Spanish cases left deep positive and negative marks on our society, many of which are not exempt from essential lessons to be learned and practised, and it is more than likely that the same will occur in American society: never, since British troops invaded Washington at the beginning of the 19th century, had anything like this occurred in the US capital. And it had never been the case that a US president had dared to induce the use of force to assume a continuation of his mandate when the presidential elections held according to the canons and safeguards offered by the system had elected someone else as president. Joe Biden in this case.

There will always be the doubt as to how American voters, even bearing in mind the peculiar system by which they elect their presidents through the Electoral College, could have placed their trust in Trump, a well-known businessman whose public and private conduct in all fields of human activity was notorious. His behaviour from his first days in the White House was marked by the unpredictability of his decisions, his lack of intellectual capacity, the corruption that prevailed in his environment and the populist grandiloquence of his proposals, which were well known for the isolationism of "America First" and the useless falsehood of "Make America Great Again". But his populist tirades against emigrants, racial minorities, neighbours and allies, which are basically directed at the white population in the interior of the country, who are suffering from deindustrialisation, lack sufficient economic means and consequently fasting from minimal access to education, have laid the foundations for the existence and relative growth of a base of demands that do not rule out the use of violence to achieve what the boss wants. It is this base, turned into a violent herd and encouraged a few moments earlier by Trump himself, which has invaded the Capitol, interrupting the constitutional process of proclaiming the election results and suspending for a few hours the ordinary functioning of what has hitherto been an exemplary and untainted democratic power.

Trump is a megalomaniac who may never have had a reasonable mental balance and has certainly lost, through a terminal frenzy, the few elements he still retained in touch with reality. He never wanted to admit that he had been defeated in the elections and from the moment they were held he has not ceased to try by all means at his disposal to reverse the will of the electorate with legal arguments that have been systematically rejected by the courts and the corresponding lies about the supposed and unrealistic fragility of the electoral system. The latest manifestation of the ranting was precisely the coup perpetrated against the Capitol, when Trump hoped that the interruption of the debate would lead to a vote by states of the union which he hoped to obtain, as each of them in this extreme case has only one vote, which the ballot boxes had denied him. In his madness, which here takes on a clinical and not necessarily insulting quality, Trump has shown that he is willing to destroy the system as long as in his delusions it can prevail. And those who now demand the urgency of implementing the 25th amendment, in the paragraph that provides for the vice president's decision to declare the president incompetent in the event that he is no longer presumed to be in a position to properly perform his duties, are right. Some of the decisions he has taken after the elections, thereby conditioning the scope for action of his successor-such as, for example, the recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara-lead to fear that in the few days remaining until 20 January, the day on which, according to the Constitution, the new president must be sworn in, anything could happen. It should be remembered that the use of the nuclear button continues to be at the president's disposal.

The political leaders-Vice President Pence, Speaker of the House Pelosi, and Senate Republican and Democratic leaders McConnell and Schummer-strictly complied with the urgent need of the moment by resuming the session to proclaim the election results as soon as the new security forces sent to the Capitol were able to clear the coup-plotting filth. All of it, incidentally, white. And both the Department of Defense and the Governors of Maryland and Virginia, who border on Washington, were able to cope with the emergencies of the time by sending in National Guard troops and moving armed personnel of their own police to the capital. And Pence's interventions were impeccable, as were those of Pence, McConnell and Schummer in condemning what happened in unequivocally constitutionalist terms. All three were painfully aware that the pitiful spectacle had been watched by the whole inhabitable world and thus aware of the impact of doubt it had on America's hitherto impeccable democracy.

That in order to continue to be so, it will have to answer certain undeferrable questions. For example, how is it possible that the Republican Party has allowed itself to be blindly drawn into the deadly adventures of a disturbed populist? Will its silent guardians know how to recover their sense of duty and abandon the dangerous path of collaborationism that has kept them in the alliance with a potential and ultimately real enemy of democracy in the United States? Have the American citizens reached a level of polarisation between left and right that has no return or solution? Will the Democratic Party, which now holds the presidency of the country and the majorities in both legislative chambers, be able to offer the citizens a pact of peace and understanding within the plurality? And with reference to the situation created by the coup mob on January 6 in the Capitol, how is it possible that the police deployment that was still a few weeks ago effectively prevented the demonstration against police brutality organised by Black Lives Matter from crossing the outer limits of the Capitol while in practice there was no similar action that prevented the occupation of Congress by the bands of Trump supporters? Was it chance, improvidence or complicity? Is there a different yardstick for whites versus blacks? And among many other questions that spring to mind, will the American democratic institutions let Trump get out of his delinquent rut as if nothing had happened, even allowing him, as he is claiming, to "forgive himself" for his misdeeds? Is there room for a pardon for the coup plotters?

As expected, the scandal of the occupation of the American capital by a coup plotters' mass has had and is having universal repercussions, not without considerations of exemplarity or similarity. In Spain, for example, the political forces have attempted to condemn the event in more or less fiery tones and then immediately set the scene for the corresponding sardine. Thus, socialists with a certain moderation and shameless podemites have tried to make it clear how close Trump is to the other right-wingers, namely the domestic ones. The PP has been forceful in its condemnation, without forgetting that socialists, Catalan separatists and podemites have at various times used the slogan "surround Congress" to intimidate legislators. And seeing the retrospective photos, one can always ask what would have happened if the legislators' premises had not been adequately protected by the public forces. VOX, for its part, takes this last aspect to its ultimate and dramatic consequences without daring to condemn the trumpet bombing, without realizing the support it loses for this stubborn mania of sympathizing with the coup-plotting president of the United States.

Interestingly, none of them have remembered the obvious: that there is nothing more similar to January 6, 2021 in the American Congress than February 23, 1981 in the Spanish Congress of Deputies. Perhaps the corresponding spokesmen and leaders had not yet been born. Perhaps they were not up to their usual domestic task. Perhaps they had not read enough to know or remember it. And yet there is nothing more like a coup than another coup and both deserve the same level of condemnation and remembrance, in order to know their scope and avoid their temptations to repeat. And also to avoid the errors of their appreciation. The American secretary of state at the time of February 23 was Alexander Haig and had no better idea, when asked about the incident, than to state that it was "an internal Spanish affair", as if nothing would matter to him. Today, however, those of us who were there and felt the horror of powerlessness know that what happened in Washington on 6 January affects all of us who think and live in a democracy and feel the same urgency to combat its instigators and participants without any kind of contemplation. Even if it is the president of the United States of America. Any other type of analysis or consideration is largely unnecessary. This is not an "American internal affair". And in order not to be mistaken, it is convenient to call things by his name. Trump has tried to stage a coup.