Inconvenient facts of Jan. 6
How will you mark Insurrection Day?
On the day itself, Jan. 6, 2021, both former President Trump and I watched events unfold on television. One of us watched with a sense of horror. One of us watched with a sense of — well, we don’t know the mind of Donald J. Trump, but perhaps the various investigations can get that information for us and explain why he did nothing for three critical hours, despite pleas from colleagues and family members that he act to stop the madness.
As for what to do to mark the one-year anniversary, weigh your answer carefully — but of course, none of us will. We will, instead, see the world through our unique political lenses. Me? I’ll hang my American flag at the front door and scan for news of more arrests and indictments of the traitors who stormed the U.S. Capitol a year ago. I’ll also anxiously await indictments for more high-ranking officials, because insurrections don’t just bubble up.
We’ve watched the videos and soon we’ll be listening to more testimony, but a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll said the country remains divided over a host of questions around Jan. 6 — including whether former Presidents Trump bears (from the poll) “a great deal” of responsibility for the attempted violent overthrow of the government (92 percent of Democrats think so, compared to 27 percent of Republicans).
Frankly, even that phrase, “attempted violent overthrow of the government,” is a bone of contention. From the poll, 54 percent of Americans said the protesters who stormed the Capitol were “mostly violent.” When you look at party affiliation, 78 percent of Democrats said the protesters were “mostly violent,” but just 26 percent of Republicans agree.
Here’s where facts become inconvenient for those Republicans seeking to soft-pedal the narrative: I have yet to attend a peaceful protest that caused, as did the insurrection, $1.5 million in damages to property (according to the office of the Architect of the Capitol).
I have also never attended a peaceful protest that left lingering injuries among attending law officers, such as the wounds of the officers who defended the Capitol that day. In addition, videos from peaceful protests don’t include bear spray or a man crushed in a door and crying out in pain.
So, who are you going to believe? The GOP? Or your own lying eyes?
Some of that may have to do with your ability to handle difficult truths. A 2017 study titled “Cassandra’s Regret” showed that more people preferred not to know uncomfortable information — such as whether they’d ever get divorced or the date of their death (if such information was available). We don’t want to have our firmly held beliefs challenged (that our marriages are blissful and we’ll live forever), which brings us to confirmation bias. When we are confronted with videos of a violent mob destroying the Capitol, either we can align ourselves with the truth or we can insist those videos aren’t an accurate reflection of reality.
Facts don’t seem to change people’s mind. You can point to the multitude of failed court cases that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and certain types will still question whether President Biden won. (He did. Get over it.) It’s what has kept us in a state of constant vigilance since Jan 6, 2021, the same way it’s kept us in this damnable pandemic. A significant number of our fellow travelers embrace a willful refusal to live in a factual world.
Here are some more difficult truths: Jan. 6, 2021, was the inevitable result of concentrated efforts of horrific people, and some of those horrific people are elected representatives. There were no accidents that day. What happened was precisely what was meant to happen, and it let the rest of us see just how fragile is our democracy and just how low some people will go to retain or gain power.
Let’s hope the Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6th Attack on the United States Capitol shows no fear or favor in their pursuit of the truth. There are 725 arrests related to that day, and counting. According to a recent report from the Justice Department, 225 of those people have been charged with “assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees.” Among those, 75 people have been charged with “using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”
About those officers: Here’s where things get weird. In this fractured time, we are as close to agreement on the insurrection as we can get on just one issue. The Post poll says we mostly agree that protesters injured the police during the attack — that’s 96 percent of Democrats, 81 percent of Republicans, and 84 percent of independents. For the rest, how police officers get injured in a non-violent protest is a puzzler, isn’t it?
Have you watched “Don’t Look Up” yet? In Netflix’s disaster/satire, a soulless president surrounded by preening sycophants faces a catastrophic event for which she is in no way prepared. As things get tense, there is a moment in the movie when a crowd of President Orlean supporters begin to see the light (which in this case is a comet heading straight for them). As they realize they’ve been lied to, the rubes boo and toss bottles at the stage, on which stands the Orlean son/ chief-of-staff, a more feckless schoolyard bully you’d be hard pressed to find. You could almost take delight that the hateful politicians are about to get theirs, except the entire world is about to go down with them.
I watched the movie mostly because all my friends did, but I didn’t love it. Too many of the scenes that were supposed to be funny were ripped from yesterday’s headlines. That nonsense really happened, and it wasn’t funny then and it hasn’t gotten funnier since. And besides, seeing the light, where a crowd of rubes realizes they’ve been had, really only happens in movies, damn the luck.
Susan Campbell is the author of "Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood," "Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker" and "Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl." She is a distinguished lecturer at University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.