Fort Worth professor links the Capitol attack to 2020 stress, COVID-19 isolation
The Capitol attackers didn’t stay in D.C.
Some escaped back here.
They’re home in cities like Colleyville or Grapevine or Saginaw, obsessing over QAnon conspiracy fantasies or scheming for another apocalyptic event.
They’re a next-door neighbor, a high school classmate, a friend or fellow churchgoer. They went to D.C. for a rally, and maybe they wound up in a deadly extremist-fringe overthrow attempt where the chants went from “Fight for [President Donald] Trump” to “Hang Mike Pence.”
The damage is not only in the Capitol.
We know now that we have friends and neighbors who are so disconnected from reality — or so bored — that they believe extremist talk about global conspiracies, Satan-worshipers or a Rapture-like “Storm” of cataclysmic events returning Trump to power.
Blame that on those who promote this showbiz baloney, including Trump.
But also blame it on the isolation of 2020.
“People may feel traumatized after the last 10 months because of COVID-19, and those feelings may drive them to make a statement,” said Linda Metcalf, who has a doctorate in marriage and family therapy and leads the graduate counseling program at Texas Wesleyan University.
I asked Metcalf how anyone could fantasize about making Congress overturn an election upheld by Republican judges.
Protesting “may help them to feel part of something when the world feels like it is falling apart,” she wrote by email.
“... People also seek normalcy, familiarity and control when things are out of control in their lives. I think many people went because they were grappling for something familiar. There are so many changes right now in practically every aspect of our lives...how we learn, work, eat, shop and talk to each other. That sort of stress can lead people to act out impulsively.”
Here’s part of the problem:
From the beginning, almost everybody inside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday knew the whole day was going to be preordained.
Neither Pence nor Sen. Ted Cruz would be able to reverse the election.
Yet Cruz and other members of Congress still insisted on fake-staging a debate before Pence certified Joe Biden as president-elect.
But outside the Capitol, the patriot militias and overamped zealots in the crowd did not come just for roleplay.
Some came in riot gear to stage a violent attack on democracy. Many thought it was part of the QAnon “Storm.”
Now, hundreds have come home to our streets.
For those who simply went to the peaceful rally outside the Capitol, we should “see those persons ... as passionate Americans, to think of them as needing a voice in a time of turmoil,” Metcalf wrote.
For those who injured a police officer, damaged the Capitol or took anything, their 2021 will be even worse than 2020.
This story was originally published January 9, 2021 at 12:00 AM.
