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| "Patriots" overtake the U.S. Capitol on 1/6/21 (YouTube) |
An untold number of words were published yesterday about it being the fourth anniversary of January 6, 2021 -- one of the most awful days in U.S. history. I will submit that if you are an American of adult age, you should consider it the worst day of your life -- at least in a big-picture "the fate of our country is at stake" sense.
Now that the anniversary is behind us, I'm not sure many Americans think much about Jan. 6, or even take it seriously. Some surely see it as a positive, although I'm not sure how warped you have to be to take that view. Perhaps we live in a diseased country, filled with warped people who genuinely believe we need to replace 250 years of democracy with some form of authoritarian government that will be based on the whims of "President-Elect" Donald Trump. (I put "President-Elect" in quotation marks because considerable evidence points to the 2024 election being hacked to benefit Trump and steal the presidency from Democrat Kamala Harris. Longtime election-integrity expert Steven Spoonamore has conducted more research and published more articles than anyone I know of on the hacking issue. I would encourage all Americans to read Spoonamore's work because he spells out how a stolen election can, and most likely did, happen here. He certainly has convinced me that I am among the millions of Americans who do not know that Trump actually won the 2024 election -- or that he will be a legitimate president when he is inaugurated in two weeks.
Of all the insightful articles published about the Jan. 6 anniversary, I must give a special hat tip for a particularly compelling piece to William Kristol, of The Bulwark. He begins by writing under the banner headline "Our National Day of Shame." Then he narrows it down to this secondary headline -- "It’s January 6th. Trump Won." I suspect that was written as a combination of grim reality and bitter sarcasm. If it was meant to be a splash of cold water in the face to those of us who believe Trump is wildly unfit to be president (and Kristol seems to fit in that group), it served its purpose.
Why is Kristol's piece so effective? He serves up some hope, but the article, as a whole, is not terribly hopeful. It's much too real for that. He serves up grim reality, but the whole article is not grim. Kristol begins:
George Orwell wrote that in our day “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
So let me restate the obvious: January 6, 2021 is a day that should live in infamy.
But for the next four years January 6th won’t live in infamy. Because in two weeks the man who incited January 6th, the man who now excuses it—no, celebrates it—will be sworn in as our next president.
So the obvious if unpleasant fact is that today we as a nation are in a worse condition, facing a more ominous future, than we faced four years ago.
The mob violence of January 6th was awful. That it was incited by the president of the United States made it worse. That it was the capstone of a more comprehensive effort by President Trump and his apparatchiks to overturn the election results and to stay in power made the date even more deserving of infamy.
Warning: If you are a Never-Trumper, the following section is indeed grim - no punches pulled:
But Biden’s silence about Trump merely brings home the extent of Trump’s success. 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?
Some of the more respectable supporters of the new administration are aware of how distasteful this will be. The Wall Street Journal editorial page frets that “pardoning such crimes would send an awful message about [Trump’s] view of the acceptability of political violence done on his behalf.”
But that is Trump’s view. Indeed, it’s his oft-expressed view. Indeed, he ran for office on this view—and won. The fact that some establishment types have chosen to close their eyes to this isn’t his fault.
Kristol returns to a sense of hope, and the following words could be seen as the heart of his piece:
What can be done? Here in the United States, there are thankfully many sources of possible resistance, ranging from others in government—at both the federal and state level—to institutions in the private sector and civil society. They all have a role to play in the fight against the whitewashing of history and the erasure of truth.
But in the near term, it is the Senate of the United States that can do the most to help. It is the Senate that has to choose whether to confirm Trump’s cabinet and sub-cabinet nominees. It is Senate committees that can hold hearings and get those nominees on the record on January 6th.
All senators have to do is to ask the nominees whether they agree with what President Trump said on January 7, 2021—that what happened on January 6th was a “heinous attack” and that “the demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.”
Senators can ask this of all nominees. And Senators can refuse to confirm at least some of the January 6th deniers, especially those nominated to important positions in law enforcement and national security.
One nominee particularly deserving of decisive rejection is Kash Patel, selected to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In an important article this morning, Tom Joscelyn and Norm Eisen lay out evidence that clearly shows why Patel is unfit to serve as FBI director. They show in great detail that Patel has embraced and promulgated false conspiracy theories not just about January 6th in general, but about the very organization he’s been nominated to lead.
The authors conclude, “That is not only an insult to the memory of that day; it should be disqualifying for him to helm the bureau.”
Will it be? Will the United States Senate permit Trump to install a full-on January 6th truther as head of the FBI? Or will some Republican senators put country before party, enabling the Senate to set up some roadblocks to our steep descent on a path towards an Orwellian and authoritarian future?
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