"The demonstrators who
infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American
democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and
destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who
broke the law, you will pay."
~ Donald John Trump, January 7, 2021
It's done: Vice
President/Should-Have-Been-President-Elect Kamala Harris
performed her Constitutionally-defined duties with dignity and
grace, certifying the most tragic and disgraceful presidential
election in modern American history.
And she did it on the fourth anniversary of America's national
day of shame, the 2021 Trump-incited Capitol riot/insurrection.
January 6, 2021 was a day of atrocities, and to
state otherwise is either idiocy, willful blindness, or
gaslighting. Most of us recall that in its immediate wake, J6 was
widely acknowledged not only by the news media but also by both
political parties for the horror it was. Even Trump himself condemned the Capitol Hill violence
the day after it happened, although he
did so only after intense pressure, delivering his message in
that robotic, completely TelePrompter-dependent style utilized
when he's mouthing words he doesn't actually believe, and he
completely avoided mentioning his own role in inciting the mob.
(Here is a link to his (falsehood-imbued) statement.)
Of course we also know how quickly the J6 Trumpublican narrative
changed, with Trump aggressively plowing forward with the Big Lie
(which he has never abandoned) and ultimately praising his
violent mob as heroes and patriots, and with most republicans of
any note falling on the side of J6 whitewash and denialism. As William Kristol and Andrew Egger wrote on The
Bulwark today, the shock of what
happened four years ago has been replaced by the shock of how
that day has become accepted by so many.
...The January 6th truther-in-chief will be our next commander-in-chief. And his administration will be staffed by individuals who range from January 6th apologists to January 6th celebrators.
Meanwhile, the ranks of Trump’s party are full of such people, as is suggested by the fact that the leadership of the Republican House has refused to install a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers for their brave actions on January 6th, as required by a federal law signed in March 2023.
It is in a way fitting that one of the first acts of the new Trump administration will be presidential pardons or commutations for many of the January 6th felons. Why not? Their leader will be president. Why should they languish in prison?
Jonathan V. Last, also writing on The Bulwark, observed that all of this adds up to a tragedy worthy of Euripides. Last framed his opinion piece around a comparison of the roles of then-Vice President Mike Pence in 2021 and President Joe Biden in the intervening years.
Now maybe no president could have subdued Trumpism. I’m open to that possibility. But we don’t get to run the counterfactuals. We can only judge based on the results. And the result is that President Biden succeeded in nearly every aspect of job—except in the one that mattered most.
Mike Pence enabled authoritarianism. But succeeded in stopping Trump’s coup.
Joe Biden returned normalcy to political life and governed wisely. But he presided over the resurgence and total victory of the forces of Trumpism.
It’s a uniquely American tragedy.
Last is no fan of Pence and in fact is an
admirer of and advocate for Biden, so this was undoubtedly
difficult for him to write. He does make some valid points,
however, and lists a few things that Biden could have or should
have done that might have prevented Trump's victory. But
we'll never know if even those strategies would have been enough
to stem the toxic tide of Trumpism. In my more cynical moments I
tend to doubt it.
Forgive and forget?
It remains to be seen whether or not Trump will in fact pardon
and/or commute the sentences of January 6 insurrectionists on his
much-touted "Day One." To do so would be a profoundly
disgraceful act, and anyone who supports it cannot truthfully
claim to be a backer of law and order or of those who risk their
lives to preserve law and order. In a January 6, 2025 opinion piece published on The Hill, former Capitol Police Officer Aquilino Gonell, who was
seriously injured by J6 rioters, wrote:
My colleagues and I who protected the Capitol that day don’t have the privilege of forgetting the Jan. 6 riot. To me, it still feels like it was yesterday.
I served in the U.S. Army and witnessed violence in combat, but I never thought I would see similar brutality inside the U.S. Capitol. I was assaulted by rioters for five hours. I was barricading the tunnels with my body, receiving blow after blow from rioters using makeshift weapons and stolen police gear. By the end, I was covered in my own blood. Exhausted, overwhelmed and trampled, I did not know whether I would make it home to see my wife and child. Those horrible memories are seared into my brain. I will never forget that feeling.
Like many other officers who served that day, I’ve spent years in mental and physical therapy — and have undergone two surgeries to heal from those wounds — but that feeling has never truly left me. It has altered the trajectory of my career and my life. Trump and his rioters not only stole my health but also the livelihoods of me and my fellow officers.
According to Trump and MAGA Republicans, Jan. 6, 2021, was a “day of love.” If being beaten and trampled by a violent mob is love, then Trump and the insurrectionists who attacked me under his banner nearly loved me to death. While serving that day, I wasn’t focused on the implications of the attack. I was simply doing my job.
Let me be very clear: Republicans in Congress do not support law enforcement if they support the pardons of those who attacked police officers and attempted to overthrow our government — the antithesis of law and order.
Rewriting history can't change what
actually happened
What is clear now is that there is an enormous cultural divide
between those who see J6 for what it truly was, and those who
think it was no big deal.
Some go beyond thinking it's NBD and apparently even find it
cause for hilarity. The reich-wing satire outlet Babylon Bee
recently produced a mockumentary, The Most Deadliest Day,
which conveys the message that J6 coverage was driven by leftist
hysteria and that the event itself was indeed NBD. I get that
this is satire and that satire can be offensive, but this
particular satire misses the point because its underlying premise
seems to be that those who were appalled by J6 considered it to
be the worst day in human history. None of us ever said or
implied any such thing; we only said it was one of the worst
events in modern American history -- an event that shook the
guardrails and truly imperiled democracy in a way that we'd never
seen in our lifetimes.
And yet Trump and his allies continue to work very hard to
rewrite that history. From a January 6, 2025 opinion piece in Newsweek, written by David Faris, Associate Professor at
Roosevelt University:
Trump's years-long Orwellian disinformation campaign justifying the riot as legitimate political expression and lionizing the perpetrators as heroes suffering from unjust persecution succeeded in muddying what should have been crystal-clear waters. After getting wound up with one of Trump's patented speeches featuring a firehose of lies, non-sequiturs and bombast, thousands of brainwashed MAGA die-hards descended, lemming-like, on the United States Capitol Building, scaling the walls, roaming the halls and creating violent mayhem. Some of them were armed with guns, carried zip ties and had plans to capture and possibly kill members of Congress. Others likely believed they were along for some kind of twisted joyride and seemed to be having the time of their lives.
But no sentient person illicitly roaming the halls of Congress—while elected officials and their staffs ran for their lives and hid from them—could possibly have believed that what they were doing was acceptable or legal. Four rioters died or were killed at the scene, a U.S. Capitol Police officer lost his life the following day after sustaining injuries during the melee and several other officers committed suicide in the days and weeks that followed. One hundred forty other police officers were injured in the mayhem.
Faris also rips apart the common MAGA whataboutism argument that the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter rioters weren't treated nearly as harshly as the J6 perps:
The comparison also happens to be...factually wrong. More than 17,000 people were arrested during the summer 2020 protests, and more of them have served actual jail time than the Capitol rioters. Importantly—and I can't emphasize this enough—this is in spite of the fact that none of them were seeking to murder the vice president of the United States. If you can't accept that trying to kill members of congress is worse than smashing a window at a Cheesecake Factory, I just don't know what to tell you.
Remember and resist
All spin aside, January 6, 2021 was in fact a day of shame, and
millions of us will never forget, even though for years we have
been scolded and told we need to "get over it" and
"move on." With King DonOld ascending the throne on
January 20, there will almost certainly be even more of an effort
to sweep the atrocities of J6 under the rug, coupled with
attempts to retaliate against the bipartisan committee of true
patriots who investigated January 6, held hearings, and issued a
massive report about what really happened. Regarding the threats
of retaliation, J6 committee principal Jamie Raskin, one of my
personal heroes, has said, "Bring it on."
“We welcome any further investigation of Jan. 6 that they want to engage in,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol recently. “I've not seen an attack on even the smallest detail, so if they could come forward with a couple of those, then I might be able to accept what they're saying is something other than just idle political rhetoric.”
Few of us have the large platform of a Jamie Raskin or a Liz Cheney, but I think that all of us who believe in the truthful telling of American history can do our part to keep the Trumpublicans from rewriting that history. And in so doing we can possibly help push back the rising tide of authoritarianism/fascism that threatens not only America but the world at large. But it's up to us, as "God" Himself wrote on His January 6, 2025 message:
The problem isn’t just Trump—it’s the machine propping him up. It’s the money, the corporate media, and the revisionist storytelling that’s erasing what actually happened on January 6th. And if this is how we deal with an insurrection, what happens next?
No one is coming to save us. Not the corporations. Not your elected leaders. It’s truly on us. We have to unite against the billionaire class that is just fine with using fascism and propaganda to keep us all at each other’s throats.
Amen to that, God.
Related on this Whirled
July 6, 2021: Day of Rage: The most in-depth look yet at
pro-Trump riot on January 6, 2021
Published on the 6-month anniversary of J6, this
post highlights a must-see documentary that truly exposes the
horror of the Capitol Hill riots. The embedded video is no longer available, but the
YouTube link works, although the video
is now age-restricted due to its intensely graphic nature. It's
worth the effort to go through the steps of confirming your age
in order to view it.
