Inequality, racism and polarisation ravaged US democracy. Then came Trump
In the film Mr Smith Goes to Washington, James Stewart’s eponymous hero gazes with reverence and awe at the dome of the US Capitol, the near sacred citadel of American democracy.
In the eight decades since there have been multiple reasons to question or scorn Jefferson Smith’s idealism. But none so brutally jarring as last Wednesday when that same Capitol was desecrated by a pro-Trump mob who fought police, ransacked offices, brandished the Confederate flag and occupied the vice-president’s chair on the Senate dais.
Five people lost their lives in the violence. As the mob gathered, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, warned that overturning Trump’s election defeat would send democracy into “a death spiral”. Hours later the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, evoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by describing it as a “day of infamy”.
On one level it was the of Trump’s war on Washington. Casting himself as the barbarian at the gate, his years stoking the furies
