We were lucky more people weren’t killed on Jan. 6
Where were you when the Capitol was attacked? My answer: glued to the television, with eyes wide and mouth open.
How could this possibly be happening in our country, I asked myself as I watched horrified and dumbfounded. I’m sure millions of others were asking the same question. The idea that a sitting president would deny his opponent’s election victory and encourage his own supporters to stop the vote-certification process was beyond imagining, except to those ramming the doors, assaulting the cops, breaking the windows and running down hallways, taunting lawmakers and staff with threats of violence.
To the list of infamous days, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, we now have Jan. 6 — or J6, as rightwing activists have dubbed the insurrection.
Turns out the majority of those arrested and charged were what might be called regular folks, who weren’t part of an organized wing-nut cult. Some of those groups, such as the Proud Boys and neo-Nazis, were represented to be sure. But studies have shown that most of those charged or arrested were plain-old, unaffiliated, random Americans from big cities, often blue states, who came to support Donald Trump. Many were business owners; a notable portion had financial trouble. There was an Olympic gold medalist among them.
And look what happened. And what might have happened if the really bad guys had shown up? My guess is there are some proTrump, anti-government folks out there who are sorry they missed the events that day. That another uprising could occur thus seems not beyond the realm of possibilities. And though the Capitol Police Department says it’s prepared this time, it also reports threat levels that are “exponentially higher” than last year.
Needless to say, Trump had for a time planned to insert himself into the anniversary. But earlier this week he canceled his Jan. 6 news conference in Palm Beach, Fla., and said he would instead hold a rally in Arizona on Jan 15. There, he will likely continue his pathological attachment to the absurd fiction that he won the 2020 campaign. He didn’t, as courts, counters and capable election officials have repeatedly confirmed.
But Trump, as we know, abides by his own reality. We’ve recently learned more about what he was doing during the rioting. Throughout, he was riveted to the TV screen, watching his most glorious moment and ignoring pleas from, among others, his daughter Ivanka and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to stop the violence.
We all know enough about mobs and combustible crowds to understand that it takes only one impatient troublemaker to turn a normal customer waiting line into a stampede or a peaceful gathering into a mob. Five people died as a result of Jan. 6, not counting the four officers who subsequently died by suicide. I think we all know we were lucky the number wasn’t higher.
I say it again: The president of the United States watched with delight what the rest of the nation watched with horror. And, still, they want him back?
Not so long ago, Americans shared a common understanding of how things should be. We understood — no, we believed as a first principle — that our problems could be fixed with elections. Yet today, 68% of Republicans think the 2020 election was rigged. We celebrated our democratic traditions and the peaceful transfer of power. Now, a third of Americans think violence against the government is sometimes justified.
Something has happened to us, and we need to figure it out — now.
Authoritarian leaders rarely do their own dirty work. They get other people to do that for them. Walk down the street to the Capitol, Trump said, and off the mob went. Trump went back to the White House to watch how his minions fared.
With luck and justice, Trump will be held accountable for failing to honor his presidential vow to protect the U.S. Constitution. He didn’t, and he should pay for that. At the very least, he should never be allowed to hold public office again. Then, maybe the rest of us could get back to work pursuing and fulfilling the dream we once shared.