A scene from Godfather Part II keeps playing over and over in my head. Corleone family boss Michael is considering doing business with the Cuban government in the 1950’s. He travels to Havana and en route to his hotel his taxi gets stuck in traffic. From a distance Michael can see the delay, it looks like a routine traffic stop but then there’s yelling and a scuffle as police are detaining a man. The man suddenly breaks away, throws himself into a police car with policemen inside and blows himself up. The car explodes, killing the policemen.
Later, at a meeting with well-heeled government officials, business leaders Michael describes what he saw to an elder statesman of organized crime. “What does this tell you about the revolutionaries?” The old man asks.
Michael replies, “They can win.”
The first time that scene popped into my head was right after D.J. Trump won the 2016 election. A Clinton win had seemed inevitable, especially for residents of solid blue states. But my wife and I saw interesting scenes one day on a busy six lane shopping boulevard. It was a week or so before the election and people in groups of four or six were scattered on either side of the roadway, waving Trump flags, blowing whistles, pumping signs up and down over their heads, a few banging on pots with wooden spoons. From the sidewalk they shouted Trump’s name and “lock her up!”, yelling directly at the vehicles waiting at red lights. At the time, what they were doing had more joy than menace. They were laughing and having a good time being party crashers. The idea they could win didn’t occur to any of the occupants of all those Subarus on their way home from Whole Foods.
Back then not too many people really felt passionate enough about the Democratic Party or Hillary Clinton to assemble sporadic parades on sidewalks. Visible enthusiasm for Clinton was harder to find. Yard signs, bumper stickers here and there, sure. The sense of inevitability, that norms would be preserved, this was the overriding feeling in the heads and homes of people unmoved by the vein of anger Trump tapped into. We didn’t love Clinton, but she was obviously qualified and of course she would win because, well, obviously, come on now, Trump is nuts and completely unqualified, who would really vote for him!? Ha ha ha, we laughed.
Oh boy did we ever laugh! Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon on SNL that year? Even better than Tina Fey as Palin amiright LOL!! We laughed at all those New Yorker covers. Barry Blitt, genius! Stephen Colbert is killing me! We laughed and laughed until Election Night 2016, when Trump won. Then most of us stopped laughing for three years, got our shit together and fought hard to get mostly sane people back to the White House.
It was close, but we could sigh relief for a couple of weeks and when we were comfortable, we started laughing again. The Four Seasons press conference, Rudy Giuliani sweating the shoe polish hair color, sad but hilarious and they deserved it! Hell, we deserved it. We deserved some relief at their expense amiright omg!! Of course the norms will be preserved ha ha. The Biden/Harris victory would be certified, the norms would be preserved, due process would proceed like before. All is well again. Whew.
It wasn’t just me and you on Twitter thinking this, clearly groups of professionals who protect government buildings also assumed all was well. There would be some protesting, sure, but it would be routine, like handling a traffic stop. Not like anyone is going to blow up a police car or anything.
Luckily, most the horde that ran over the US Capitol didn’t have much of an agenda beyond disruption. More than anything, they are still the people on the side of the road banging on pots with spoons, they want to be seen. They are easily corrupted by supremacists with larger agendas who may be asking around for volunteers willing to blow themselves up.
Do we see them yet? Sure we do. Ha ha ha omg look at the guy in the animal pelts and horns! And those Duck Dynasty-looking dudes? So funny! Almost immediately, we’re laughing again. If the animal pelt guy hasn’t been parodied on SNL yet, he will be soon, as soon as we feel comfortable again.
They’re Americans. They’ve been fired, unemployed, addicted, fed a lot of misinformation by rich men content on controlling things. Do we hear them yet? When you have a group of people so committed to a cause that they are wiling to take up arms and die for a cause, give their lives for a movement, anything is possible. They can win.
