The saddest night of American democracy
Many enemies of the United States are inside the country, and they call themselves defenders of their homeland. Hundreds of them have today entered the Congress building, a temple of world democracy, a mirror for any country that claims to be modern and balanced. The scenes we have seen on the night of this January 6, 2021, are unimaginable in a country that has amazed the world with its respect for the democratic system and institutions.
They are regular photographs in Venezuela, but not in the United States. There have been firearms inside the House of Representatives, tear gas in the hands of the protesters who have broken into the Capitol. Those who have assaulted the U.S. Parliament were carrying South American flags, a cause that has become fashionable again after the invective launched, two centuries and a half later, by anti-racist demonstrations.
They wore skins over their half-naked bodies, a primitive image of what the original American ancestors were in the prairies of Virginia, Florida, in the mountains of Minnesota. Do they represent them? A monster has been fed and today it has exploded on the famous staircase of the oaths. The sequence of events between Trump's harangue at the White House and the march of his supporters to occupy Congress is now history and unquestionable.
It is the saddest day in the recent history of the first world power. But it is perhaps only the first chapter in what will happen in the next two weeks. The chaos in the federal capital raises the question of whether Trump will leave power peacefully, and whether his followers will continue to use violence not only in Washington but in the rest of the nation's states. The tools that the Constitution provides for things like this do not ensure a resolution to this political crisis caused by a president who refuses to accept defeat.
An impeachment against Trump would be implausible given the short time remaining before Biden's inauguration, but in the state of affairs in which the country finds itself anything is possible. The process could begin and be interrupted by the arrival of the new president, or a Mike Pence interim presidency could be forced for just a few days. The figure of the still-vice president is key in this whole lamentable crossroads of the United States: if he continues to support Trump without disassociating himself from him, he will be judged by history almost more ruthlessly than his boss, because he can bring about the fall of the president only by disassociating himself from his undemocratic follies.
His letter published on Twitter announcing that he would fulfill his constitutional duty has unleashed Trump's wrath. But he can force the application of the 25th amendment that implies the removal of the president, by establishing a mechanism that allows the vice president and the government to declare that the president is not capable of performing the functions and duties of his office, with the immediate substitution of his number two.