United States Archives

Everything You Are Feeling Right Now is Valid

Landon Shroder | January 7, 2021

Topics: America, American politics, Coup, Donald Trump, Insurrection, Republican Party, Riot, rioters, United States, Washington DC

Citizens of conscience, everything you are feeling is valid. How can we even begin to process the range of emotions experienced in the past 24 hours? What happened yesterday, January 6, 2021, is a day that will forever be seared into our collective memories. On this day, a rabble of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists attempted a coup against the government of the United States. The images of this mob scaling the walls of Congress, ransacking the offices of our elected officials, and committing violence against the seat of our government was beyond excruciating to watch. Even more so, since it was all done in the name of a white supremacist president whose lies and conspiracies have corrupted so much of our body-politic.

Because of this we are right to feel angry.

In the aftermath of President-Elect Joe Biden’s electoral certification, we cannot forget to hold those accountable who let this happen: corrupt politicians whose only sense of principle originates with naked power, the police who were clearly complicit in letting this siege take place, and a conservative media echo chamber that continues to put their profits above the health and well-being of our democracy. And of course, the president, whose malfeasance and depravities need no explanation.

Because of this we are right to feel betrayed.

There has been a lot of conversation on what to call yesterday — an insurrection, a riot, a mob — but in the end, this was an attempted coup. An attempt by a despotic authoritarian to subvert the will of the people and overthrow our democratic traditions that, however imperfect, provide the foundational bedrock of our society. This did not happen in a vacuum, though. Our president has been enabled by a subversive political class that has betrayed their oath of office and their country. Whatever their intent, they should have known better. They must be held responsible.

Because of this we are right to feel anxious.

Grandstanding on the idea of “my constituents have concerns about the election” is as dangerously ridiculous as it is dangerously provocative. There is only one outcome in this scenario: creating the conditions we saw unfold yesterday. Indeed, the men and women who pushed this narrative are not working class, salt of the earth Americans, fighting against the establishment. They are the epitome of the elite. Ted Cruz went to both Princeton and Harvard, Josh Hawley went to Stanford and Yale. These are seditious men who used their power and platform to wage war on our democratic traditions (however imperfect). They stand beside other giants of sedition: Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Alexander Hamilton Stephens — their visages could line what remains of Richmond’s Monument Ave.

Because of this we are right to feel distressed.

Do you remember this summer, when hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in support of racial justice and police reform after the murder of George Floyd? Do you remember the sheer brutality of the police and their mandate of state-sanctioned violence? The tear gas, pepper spray, armored vehicles, riot police, and mass arrests? Now remember yesterday — when Q-Anon conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and people who were chanting “murder the media” easily overran the Capitol building. Do you remember seeing the videos of cops taking selfies with rioters and insurrectionists, abandoning their posts, and letting the gates open? Does the difference between these two things need further explaining?

Because of this we are right to feel rage.

None of this should surprise us. We can be shocked and filled with emotion, but surprised we cannot be. This is the inevitable outcome of a failed political system; a system that has elevated demagoguery at the expense of conversation and partisanship at the expense of pragmatism. Instead of reconciling our foundational issues, which would lead to a stronger America in terms of racial justice, income equality, healthcare, education, and climate (to name a few); we have let extremism, racialism, and fascism take root — because that was an easier pathway forward. Because it was easier to ferment hate and conspiracy than it was to look within and acknowledge our failures. Yesterday proves this. Throngs of enraged white people who felt entitled enough, who were privileged enough, to wage a coup in the name of a cultist conspiracy speaks to the depravity of what America has become. And no amount of revisionist history and political double-speak will wash away the truth of what we bore witness to yesterday.

Because of this we are right to feel apprehensive.

The only path through this is forward, with an acknowledgment that everything we are feeling is valid: anger, betrayal, anxiety, distress, rage, and apprehension. There is no turning back from what happened yesterday. As we face our family, friends, and colleagues who believe in the Trump conspiracy and cult, we will be faced with the complex reality of who they are, what they believe, and what they have become. The sides have been drawn. There are those who will stand for democracy (however imperfect), and those who will stand for fascism, white supremacy, and the conspiracies of a political faction corrupted by an incurable sickness that has been allowed to spread uncontrollably. No one knows what the coming days will bring, other than a continued range of emotions — all of which will remain valid for some time to come.

*All photos by Quinn Bonney. You can also find Landon Shroder on IG right here.

The Largest Viking Ship in the World is Sailing to Virginia

RVA Staff | September 5, 2018

Topics: Draken Harald Hårfagre, East Coast, Greenland, Leif Eriksson, Norway, Scandinavia, United States, Viking Ship, Vikings

The Draken Harald Harfgre is the world’s largest Viking ship, and it is sailing to Norfolk next week, which is quite possibly the best news the Commonwealth has received all year. Sigurd Aase, the owner and captain of this scourge of the seas has one simple mission: “The aim of the Draken Harald Hårfagre project is to explore the world and embrace the Viking spirit – to look beyond the horizon and seek adventure and to inspire people to take on challenges.” Aase, a Norwegian entrepreneur took his vision to the best ship builders and historians in Scandinavia to bring the ship to life, the Draken Harald Harfgre is the largest Viking ship currently at sea and is twice the size of ships unearthed archaeologically.

WTKR has reported that the ship will sail into Norfolk on Sept. 13 – 16, and in partnership with Nauticus and Sail Nauticus, will dock at Hampton Roads Naval Museum on its Expedition America: East Coast Tour 2018. During the tour, the ship will port at 14 harbors across the U.S. from Maine to South Carolina, including stops in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

The ship, named after legendary Viking Harald Hårfagre, the first king of Norway (who is a featured character on the show “Vikings”), was assembled in the town of Haugesund in Western Norway. Interestingly, the Vikings did not record their process for building ships or how they were sailed and navigated. According to Aase, the Draken Harald Hårfagre is a model of what would be referred to as a “great ship” and was re-created based on archaeological evidence and supplemented with evidence gained from the old Norse legends and sagas.

In the U.S., most school children are taught about Columbus’ discovery of North American in 1492, yet new evidence suggests that the Vikings beat him to the continent by around 500 years. The Viking explorer who discovered the continent, Leif Eriksson, was born in Iceland, but raised in Greenland. His exploits in North America eventually took him to present day Newfoundland and were turned into sagas around the 11th century before being written in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Dragon’s Head on the Draken Harald Hårfagre

Erikkson would have traveled on the same kind of boat as the Draken Harald Hårfagre, which is 115 feet long – stern to stern – 26 feet wide, with 260 square meters (311 yards) of silk sail that raises up on a mast that is 79 feet tall. “At a hundred and fourteen feet of crafted oak, twenty-seven feet on the beam, displacing eighty tons, and with a thirty-two hundred square foot sail, this magnificent ship is indeed worthy of a king,” claims the project’s website. The ship is adorned with a traditional dragon’s head and adorned by patterns and figures from Viking ships found in Norway.”

The Viking ship set sail for the first time since 2012 with sea-trials being held off the Norwegian coast between 2012-2013. Her first voyage was from Norway to England in 2014. The schedule for the ship’s events in Norfolk can be found here.

And for those looking to set sail on a Viking ship of their own, well you’re in luck, because there’s one for sale right here in Richmond.

All photos from the Draken Harald Harfgre’s Facebook page.

Opinion: Trump’s Nuclear Summit with North Korea was the Definition of Foreign Policy ‘Meh’

Landon Shroder | June 12, 2018

Topics: Denuclearization, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, Nuclear Summit, Nuclear Weapons, President Trump, United States

I am a foreign policy pragmatist after spending years abroad in various regions that have experienced war and conflict. All foreign policy practitioners know that sometimes you just luck into things; other times, best laid strategic plans fall apart due to an ever-present complexity that becomes unmanageable.

The nuclear summit in Singapore with North Korea was a net-neutral in this regard: nothing really gained, nothing really lost, a lot of photos taken. In the foreign policy age defined by President Trump, this can probably be summed up as a success, more so given the potentially disastrous consequences of the G-7 meeting that proceeded the summit.

For the sake of drama and juxtaposition, there is nothing more awkwardly gut-wrenching than seeing the President of the United States refer to the Canadian Prime Minister as “meek and mild”, while embracing Kim Jong Un, the brutal dictator of North Korea, as “honorable”.

Nonetheless, what just happened and what does it all mean?

Trump and Kim both won, at least optically. Kim almost certainly won more than Trump (in this foreign policy age let’s keep with the zero-sum term of “winning”). He got the propaganda coup of being elevated to the same stature as the President of the United States by having at least six public photo opportunities with Trump along with having lavish praise heaped upon him. Unfortunately, this will only reinforce the dictatorial control over his own people who are starved, enslaved, tortured, and isolated from the rest of the world – more than 120,000 people are currently languishing in state-run gulags.

There were no pre-conditions for this summit on human rights, something that is used tirelessly by the administration to admonish Iran, but was used as a pretext for Trump to pull out of that nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – #interestingthat.

Trump also announced an ending of joint US and South Korean military exercises, something he admonished as “very provocative”. These military exercises are a way for the US to project strategic depth throughout the region, ensure military preparedness, and are a signal (even a weak one) to the Chinese, who as of this morning have already praised this move.

It does not appear this was agreed upon with the South Koreans or strategized around with the Pentagon or Joint Chiefs; a classic Trump move, making military policy on the fly. A US military spokeswoman in Korea said this only a few hours ago, “USFK has received no updated guidance on execution or cessation of training exercises – to include this fall’s schedule Ulchi Freedom Guardian.”

As a workaround, the president framed it as a cost-saving measure saying, “Number one, we save money. A lot. And number two, it really is something I think [North Korea] very much appreciated.”

In terms of denuclearization, an agreement was signed, true, but the language lacked a robust framework for moving forward. The US traded “security guarantees” (a nice way of saying we will not engage in regime change, so don’t count on Korean unification any time soon) for broad language indicating Kim will denuclearize – there was no pathway to indicate how this would actually happen. The North Koreans have been playing this same game with the US since a failed framework was negotiated by Bill Clinton in 1994.

There was no language in the agreement that signaled “verification” was on the table; the same process the Iranians have successfully been held to, even though we are pulling out of that nuclear arrangement – #interestingthat.

When you stack all of that up, winning does not come to mind, least of all for the president who ostensibly claimed that he might, “…stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong,’” which he followed with, “I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that.”

So what does Trump get and how does he win? Optics! Lots of optics! All the optics, leading into the mid-term elections! While there is a genuine desire by astute foreign policy practitioners like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton to get the job done, Trump understands the symbolic value of this summit to his main support bases.

His intransigence at the G-7 was a perfect lead into the nuclear summit and was executed flawlessly to engage his base. He has succeeded where other presidents have failed; he is strong, they are weak.

He also knows that this boxes the Democrats into a tight corner when it comes to foreign policy. No one is going to argue against denuclearization, so as a Democrat you either have to tacitly support this “win” or be one of those shrill politicians who gets labeled a do-nothing as the US boasts a diplomatic victory decades in the making.

Either outcome for the president is a win. The actual particulars of denuclearization or the long-term impact on regional foreign policy in the Pacific are entirely inconsequential to Trump, nor does his base actually care. The perception of “winning” is better than any actual “win”.

This also moves attention away from the Russia investigation at a time when six out of ten Americans believe the investigation needs to continue, and Democrats maintain a seven percent lead going into mid-terms.

The media can only focus on so many issues at once and every issue nowadays is a moving target. By the time the buzz and news hangover surrounding this summit finally dies down the Russian investigation will have skipped three beats ahead. All of which works in Trump’s favor, giving the administration time and space to shape a new narrative for the American people – something he has proven incredibly adroit at.

In the end, this summit was the very definition of foreign policy ‘meh’. No gains were made, no losses tallied, and a lot of photos were taken. Should North Korea decide to denuclearize that will be a tremendous boon to global stability and the president should get credit for that, even begrudgingly. But before the bells start ringing and Nobel Peace Prizes issued, there are about a hundred and one steps that will need to be taken to ensure that denuclearization actually happens.

Should there ever be a time when we need to focus on the signal and tune out the noise this is it…because there are things happening in the background that will shape our understanding of foreign policy for years to come.

Cover Photo by Radio Free Europe