Coming to grips with January 6
On Jan. 6, 2022, President Joe Biden gave a speech that will one day, perhaps, be thought of as his “democracy” speech.
It was widely and rightly hailed.
The address, given in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol just outside the House chamber, commemorated the events of Jan. 6, 2021 — a day that will surely live in infamy, if the craft of history survives.
But it also represented a pivot for Mr. Biden.
The president is a forwardlooking person, and he has sought to focus his presidency on jobs, health care, rebuilding infrastructure and taxing the rich to pay for it all — his new New Deal agenda.
He also seeks to be bipartisan, which hasn’t been working, so far, in his presidency.
But on Jan. 6, 2022, the president put aside these predilections to talk about the fight for democracy itself.
His proposition is, first, that our constitutional and republican democracy is under threat by an authoritarian impulse, long a part of American life.
And second, that this impulse is now being exploited and weaponized by Donald Trump, his elite allies and his core followers.
Moreover, Mr. Biden asserted that Jan. 6, 2021, lives on not because Mr. Biden and the Democrats keep it alive, but because Mr. Trump and his most loyal followers do.
They claim that what happened on that day was not a violent mob assault on the Capitol and the people who work there, but a patriotic demonstration that got out of hand.
They say this demonstration was abetted, or perhaps staged, by people who were not even Trump followers.
And this bizarre fiction is believed, by many.
The Trumpian tale about why the Jan. 6 siege happened is even more crazy. They say the election was stolen by Mr. Biden and his party. In truth, Mr. Trump had to convince his followers of multiple electoral frauds by Democrats in order for him to attempt to steal the election.
Finally, the Trump forces, according to Mr. Biden and many others, keep Jan. 6, 2021 alive by trying to gain control of election law and the election apparatus in key states — the better to steal the next election.
So, is most of this true?
I think so.
And are we in a fight for democracy itself?
Yes.
The imperative is this: We must get the poison out before we can progress, or even debate policy, once again.
The poison is this: lack of respect for our system and the rule of law; lack of respect for the democratic process and democratic norms; and lack of respect for truth.
As Mr. Biden said, you cannot respect the rules only when you win.
And you cannot love the country only when you get your way.
He might have added: You cannot love the country only when your fellow citizens look like you and think like you.
Now, Mr. Trump is not the first to treat the presidency like a kingship. The imperial presidency, so counter to the Founders’ intent, has grown and concretized over many decades and administrations.
And the imperial courts have, too. The courts — the place where we can “settle” race, abortion and elections.
The Constitution has always needed defending, from left and right. It always will.
But Mr. Trump is surely the first president to pay no heed to the Constitution whatsoever.
He is the first president to incite an attack on the Capitol.
And he is the first president to be an all-out, unapologetic authoritarian.
Those who had some sympathy for some of Mr. Trump’s policy goals — or respect for disenfranchised working folk in the heartland who lost their jobs, towns and cities to the global economy — must now admit that this is who Mr. Trump is.
And that his lack of understanding of our system, and his office, ruined his presidency and destroyed any hope of him helping thepeople who believed in him.
But, above all, we must all recognize that Jan. 6, 2021, is like Dec. 11, 1941. Or 9/11, 2001. And that, as Lincoln said, and John Adams said before him, the deepest threat to a republic always comes from within.
Authoritarianism means power to the strong.
An authoritarian cult, what Trumpism has become, is a threat far greater than budget deficits.
Or wokeness.
The political and intellectual intolerance of so many of our political, media and university elites is not trivial. It is a serious and entrenched assault on free speech and thought.
A true democratic movement would embrace dissent and intellectual diversity.
But, so far, a PC army has not sacked the Capitol.
Are Democrats, therefore, now the democracy party?
By comparison and by default, maybe. But many Democrats refused to recognize Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, and sought to delegitimize him from day one. They, too, reject the system, and the rules, when a democratic result displeases them.
And the old Republican Party seems almost gone. Colin Powell drew the line on Mr. Trump’s reckless antics. And so have the Bushes, the Cheneys, Karl Rove and every serious conservative thinker now writing or speaking. It’s an important band, but a small one.
A republic must be sustained by civic virtue.
A constitutional democracy must be a government of laws, not men.
We need either a new party, or a very old reformed one, that embraces these two great truths.
The deepest “existential” threats, from within, remain what they have ever been: ignorance and indifference.
But Jan. 6, 2021, did and does change everything. It cannot be forgiven. And we diminish or deny it at our peril.