One of those unspoken social rules I’ve never been very good at observing is that new years are supposed to be greeted with optimism, and this year is no different. Here we are at the beginning of 2022, one year after a violent right-wing insurrection aimed at overturning the legitimate results of the US presidential election, and I just don’t see much reason to be optimistic about the immediate future of American democracy.
As Religion Dispatches recently concluded: “Whether the first anniversary of [the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol] will bring further violence is unknown, but what is knowable is that, without accountability, there will be no peace.” As the article explains, contrasting the charges and sentences handed out to individual rioters with the lack of consequences for the architects of the insurrection – not least Donald Trump himself – shows how the US is failing on the issue of accountability.
But it’s not just that we’re failing to hold wealthy, powerful and politically well-connected criminals (such as Trump, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone) accountable for inciting a mob to disrupt what should have been a routine peaceful transfer of power. As a society, we are also failing to fully investigate and confront the root causes of the epidemic of both political and religious violence, of which the 6 January insurrection is the most disturbing expression to date.
