Mud and Power

Puddles are to kids what magnets are to metal. Odd thing to think of on this anniversary of infamy, but the subconscious does what it will. Maybe it’s some kind of defense mechanism, deflection rather than reflection. Or perhaps it’s a metaphor. After all, how children are drawn to mud is pretty much what grown-ups are like with power.

I remember watching on television four years ago as events were unfolding at the U.S. Capitol and getting a strange sense of déjà vu. You see, I witnessed a coup d’état once before—in 1991 in the West African country of Mali—and what I was seeing on TV on this day in 2021 felt eerily familiar.

I always assumed that overthrowing a government must take methodical planning and meticulous execution. I also assumed coups must be the byproduct of widespread social upheaval, the culminating whistle from the spout of a kettle slowly brought to a raging boil.

What I saw with my own eyes in 1991 seemed far more random than I expected, convulsive, almost coincidental…