30 years ago today, Tim McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City

We did not learn the lesson then, and we are paying for it now

For me, this is personal. The 30^th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City brings back terrible memories. Back then I was at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. I had colleagues in that building.

What started as a normal Wednesday became one of those horrible days you can never forget. Images of the devastation were all over television. The nine-story building was ripped apart. Today we would say the building looked like an image from Gaza. But 1995 was a more innocent time. We had no context for this kind of destruction. A member of my staff said through her tears that it looked like a giant axe had cleaved down through the building’s center. 168 people were murdered, 35 were my colleagues. The murderers targeted the US government. But the building housed a day care center too. The bomb killed 19 children. In all 850 people were injured. 219 children lost at least one parent.

Initially, many Americans thought this was the work of foreign terrorists. Here in Chicago. our most celebrated columnist, Mike Royko, wrote that we should pick country and retaliate by bombing “oil fields, refineries, bridges, highways, industrial complexes… anything else that is of great value but doesn’t shelter innocent civilians.” He wasn’t alone. Americans were furious and wanted revenge.

Then we learned this was a homegrown attack, the work of a right-wing Christian nationalist. It was a military-style attack carried out by a former soldier and his accomplices. How could someone do this? How could an American do this?

Scholars have traced the growth of the modern American militia movement to two standoffs with law enforcement-- one in Waco with the Branch Davidian cult, and another in Ruby Ridge with a white separatist, Randy Weaver. Both ended in tragedy. Both tragedies were further compounded by right wing lies, all aimed at growing membership for anti-government militias. Militia propaganda claimed the government was abusing its powers and depriving citizens of their rights and attempting to suppress any who refused to conform.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, radicalized by these lies, went to work on retribution. My colleagues, those children in day care, and so many others are dead as a result. McVeigh was found guilty and executed. Nichols was found guilty and is still in prison. In the aftermath, the government expanded its focus on domestic terrorism. But that expansion resulted in warnings rather than action.

I gave the keynote address at the memorial held for all the federal employees in Chicago. I talked about our powerful diversity, our resilient spirit, and our broken hearts. We would heal, I knew, but we would not forget. That was 1995.

The same ideology of hate, the same culture of extra-legal military force, the same racist political ideology lives on in the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. If McVeigh were alive and out of jail he surely would have been among the insurrectionists on January 6^th.

After the attack on the capitol America once again redoubled its effort to prevent domestic terrorism. Then Donald Trump returned to the White House.

He used his first day as President to pardon or commute the sentences of over 1,500 of the January 6^th domestic terrorists. He sent seditious conspirators Stuart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio, the leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, back onto our streets. Almost immediately they started to talk about retribution and more political violence.

In an instant, Trump made America less safe. He emboldened extremist militias across the country and stamped the presidential seal on right-wing political vigilantism. In the months since those pardons, political violence and intimidation are on the rise in America. Judges are threatened. A governor was attacked in his own home, and the house burned down.

For me, Trump’s pardons carried another message. It was as if he stood on the graves of my murdered colleagues and shouted, “suckers, you died in vain.”

In many ways, Mr. Trump is attempting to complete Tim McVeigh’s project. His embrace of right-wing and vigilante violence, his effort to steal an election then to pardon his foot soldiers for their violent attack on the Capitol cannot but remind us of the horror of that April day 30 years ago when right wing hate took so many American lives. It isn’t even hard to imagine Trump appointing a guy like McVeigh to a major post in the military. In fact, he has appointed men who share the same conspiratorial world view.

Thirty years ago, I swore to help our country overcome its wounds. And I swore to remember those victims of American right-wing violence who gave their lives that Wednesday. I have not wavered from that course.

And for most a growing number of Americans who want, peacefully, to save our country, Mr. Trump’s efforts to destroy our democracy are as motivating as Waco and Ruby Ridge were to the militia movement that seeks lawlessly to break us apart.