COMMENT

high time for a reckoning with the unsightly.

Fania Davis, “healer and warrior,” restorative justice practitioner and civil rights attorney, summarizes exquisitely: “Our nation was born in the horrific traumas of genocide and slavery. Because we have neither fully acknowledged nor reckoned with these twin traumas, much less worked to heal them, they perpetually re-enact themselves transgenerationally.”

Our genesis, our roots, our foundation — from which the present most-assuredly does spring — lies within these truths.

They made Jan. 6 possible. They made de facto and de jure segregation possible. Erasure, mass incarceration, blood quantums, lynching, the 3/5th Compromise, redlining, family separation, internment camps and disenfranchisement are all fruit of those poisonous trees, individual and state-sanctioned stains on this nation.

But please do not misunderstand or misalign my purpose. My call for attention to the unappealing should not be seen as a means to disparage but as an invitation to love and acceptance of ourselves more fully. By inertia and by design, we have arrived at this moment, but it is the choices we make moving forward, informed by our levels of accurate accounting, that will determine our future and the response to Dr. King’s question, “Where do we go from here?”

America, I believe that one day you’ll be stunning. You should know that there’s nothing unbecoming about being a work in progress.

We always have a choice. After WWII and a period dubbed “the big silence” — when people were not yet ready to address the collective grief and shame for the Holocaust — Germans united to grapple with their role in the genocide. Wiedergutmachung, which means “to make good again,” was a movement that created museums and memorials, sites of memory to preserve a harsh but shared reality. Atrocities were publicly acknowledged and confronted ubiquitously. The government pays reparations, and history classes on National Socialism and the Holocaust are mandated in all public schools.

In South Africa, post-apartheid, the country staged public hearings where people testified to violence both perpetrated and received. Some requested amnesty — others forgiveness. Some demanded accountability, wanting those who had done wrong to acknowledge the harm and provide restitution.

These processes, though imperfect, provided pathways. We could make the choice to learn from and improve them. We could recognize that “telling the truth is a beautiful act even if the truth itself is ugly.”

America, I believe that one day you’ll be stunning. You should know that there’s nothing unbecoming about being a work in progress. There’s absolutely no shame in being unfinished. The travesty is in never trying. The “magnificent struggle” to be something better is one that I swear will make you sparkle and shine. Girl, you’ve got some good bones on you — those “unalienable rights” “with liberty and justice for all” where “all … are created equal” sure are somethin’ to behold. I can just tell you’ll be a sight for sore eyes. My oh my, how will you glow — radiating such warmth and light — when those laudable tenets of this land are lived, brought into alignment with collaborative action. Simply gorgeous.

America, your beauty does not reside in your past but in your promise. n

Inga N. Laurent is a local legal educator and a Fulbright scholar. She is deeply curious about the world and its constructs and delights in uncovering common points of connection that unite our shared but unique human experiences.

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Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ office didn’t respond to an interview request from the Inlander. GAGE SKIDMORE PHOTO

POLITICS The Last Trumptation of McMorris Rodgers

After the Capitol riot and another impeachment, U.S. Rep. McMorris Rodgers calls for turning down the heat of political rhetoric while critics say she stoked the flames

The congresswoman, considered a rock-ribbed Republican, comes from a reliably conservative district while serving as the party’s third-ranking leader in the House.

But despite all that, in the wake of a siege on the Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn the election, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, voted to impeach the president last week.

So there were brief moments when some political observers speculated that the person who previously held Cheney’s duties as the House Republican Conference chair — Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers — might follow suit. The two other Republican members of Washington state had voted to impeach, including Jaime Herrera Beutler, McMorris Rodgers’ former legislative aide and senior adviser.

But not McMorris Rodgers.

8 INLANDER JANUARY 21, 2021

BY DANIEL WALTERS

While she wrote in a statement that “President Trump showed a complete lack of leadership in the face of an attack on the U.S. government,” she concluded that his words were still constitutionally protected speech and questioned whether the swift impeachment process was motivated by “nothing more than politics.”

Yet unlike most defenses of Donald Trump issued by Republicans last week, it included something unique: a personal confession. McMorris Rodgers suggested that she had played some part in the “crisis of contempt in America” that led to “the destruction and violence we saw last week and throughout the last year.”

While she accused the left of trying to “silence” conservatives, she acknowledged that Republicans like her had “excused and defended” Trump’s behavior.

“For Trump supporters like me, it meant turning a blind eye to arrogant, prideful, and bullying behavior,” McMorris Rodgers wrote. “We all need to take some responsibility, tone down the rhetoric, stop silencing anyone and everyone who might disagree with us, and do better.”

McMorris Rodgers’ office didn’t respond to an interview request from the Inlander. But to her supporters like former Spokane County GOP state committeewoman Beva Miles, the statement was a testament to the congresswoman’s humility and introspection.

“I see her acknowledging that she stands with the rest of us,” Miles says. “She’s standing equal and taking equal blame.”

To Democrats, like Washington state House Majority Whip Marcus Riccelli, however, McMorris Rodgers’ halfapology rang hollow set against her record of supporting Trump. ...continued on page 10