One of the defining characteristics of American democracy was that every four or eight years, we had a bloodless coup. A person, the most powerful person in the world, packed their bags and left the White House so another could take up residence. Maybe this happened with good tidings. Maybe there was bitterness. But either way, it happened without an attempt to prevent it, with at least the veneer of dignity.
It was an appalling vision, bodies storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. It was the culmination of months of preparation for failure, the sowing of a lie well in advance. It was part of a broader scheme that skirted the outer edges of law and reason closely enough to create the appearance of faux legitimacy to those who needed to believe but lacked the knowledge or capacity to understand.
For all the excuses made, it was an attempt at insurrection, not because it was a riot but because its purpose was to prevent the act of Congress that was naively part of the bloodless coup, the counting of the votes of the electoral college.
It’s unnecessary to argue that the people who broke through the gates, the windows, the doors of the Capitol were well-intended. They may have believed themselves to be patriots because they were manipulated by a shameless, amoral clown, stopping “the steal” that never happened. But breaking into the Capitol to interfere, at whatever level you want to believe so you can pretend it wasn’t part of an insurrection, with the constitutional change of regime is a push too far. You chose to be the patsies of a failed coup attempt. You chose poorly.
Much was lost that day, as well as the days before and since. How to create laws, guardrails, to prevent it from happening again has been the subject of substantial argument and angst. The abiding belief that laws can somehow fix what ails us has seized the warring tribes. Law will not cure the sickness that infects us.
Each party is telling its supporters not to trust our elections unless its favored bills are passed while implicitly persuading its opponents that those bills are illegitimate and dangerous. The result amounts to an assault on public trust that’s worse than any actual problem with American elections.
What’s lost is trust. What we lost on January 6th was our national innocence, that we, as Americans, would somehow find a way to overcome all obstacles. Instead, what we saw was our national bond unravel, how a lie perpetrated by puny people undermined our faith in ourselves. There are no laws that can restore our faith in the integrity of our nation, our government, our purpose.
Maybe this was bound to happen eventually, and the election of an individual so wholly unworthy as Trump was not the cause of our loss of innocence but the product of our national loss of faith in ourselves.
Without trust, we will find ourselves mired in endless contention over who’s cheating whom, who’s manipulating what, how everything is dishonest and everyone is lying, how everything is awful and nothing is worth saving. If we can’t break out of this spiral of mistrust, then there is nothing to save. The fringes will point at each other, hurl accusations and do anything to create that plausible justification to lie, cheat and steal to win “at any cost” because the alternative is intolerable.
It would seem naive at this juncture in history to argue that the transitory obsession with voting laws, counting laws, electoral laws, should be secondary to a political leadership that can amass the support of a nation. Worry less about the mechanics, which both sides seek to game and neither will trust regardless, than what the real majority of Americans want. Win not by shifting the rules to your advantage but presenting a nation with the hope of a future most of us want.
It would seem naive because even the understanding of what Americans want is part of the game, as we’re being told what the “majority” wants, what we should want, even though it’s not what we want at all. But then, even if there were some trusted source of facts, of what we, as a nation want, the passion of the fringes is too deep, too embedded, too shameless, to even consider that their wild reimaginings and bizarre conspiracies might not be real.
January 6th, 2021, was one of the worst days this nation has seen. Don’t compare it to other days, to other riots, to other protests. It’s of a different nature, a different purpose. Don’t explain the good if misguided intentions of those who took part in this insurrection. Don’t argue that it wasn’t an insurrection. Don’t blame the other side. Their ugliness doesn’t make this any less ugly.
Innocence lost cannot be regained. We can’t make what happened on January 6th go away, pretend that it didn’t happen, that it wasn’t what it was. But we can learn from it. Or we can persist in perpetual outrage and loathing. One year has passed since the debacle of January 6th, and we, as a nation, have yet to find a way to live together, to learn the lesson. It’s unclear how long this can go on, but we may well find out soon and the better answer might only be recognized after it’s too late.
Postscript: I fear that this post will bring out the worst in commenters, including comments of a nature so delusional or absurd that they would ordinarily be trashed. Because of the nature of this post, and what happened on January 6th, I will post all comments, no matter how crazy, false or ridiculous. Other readers will then be able to see just how partisan, insane or irrational the commenter is. Govern yourself accordingly.
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Innocence? Lost? smh
I have to wonder if the topsy turvy “up is down” messages this country was getting at the time created the ripe atmosphere for such disorderly behavior. The left certainly played their own role via BLM protests accompanied with looting and rioting while being given a certain amount of approval by our own elected officials. Look at the world we live in now. Blacks attacking Asians is “white supremacy.” Expecting educational proficiency is “racist,” because the results don’t reflect equitably, etc.
On one hand, 700 to 950 nutjobs, out of roughly 329,500,000 people, fell for the Trumpertry and decided rioting in the Capitol was a good plan. On the other, completely inadequate security arrangements failed to contain it at the inception. Even so, Capitol Police, despite the incompetence of their leadership, managed to pull the situation out and prevent any member of Congress from being harmed. In short, despite the unusual ugliness on the part of a very few, the system in fact worked, the riot failed to achieve any purpose, and the transition once again occurred as scheduled.
I don’t see a major problem or any real need for major repairs. Prosecutors are charging the rioters, and the kid gloves from the days of kinder, gentler Capitol policing are back in the drawer, another failed experiment of political correctness. Again, the existing mechanisms appear to me to be working quite adequately. While I recognize there are factions that want this to be a major national crisis, akin to the burning of the Reichstag, in my opinion, it simply is not. There is no need for any new legislation nor any curtailment of civil liberties to prevent the Capitol riot from “happening again.”
If tens, possibly hundreds of millions of people believe, without any evidence whatsoever, that an election was stolen, to the point that tens of thousands of them are willing to violently storm the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, that’s a problem. Do we need new laws or to curtail civil liberties? No, not really. But is it cause for concern that 30% of the country no longer believes in facts or reason and will resort to violence to get their way? Absolutely.
“Tens of thousands”? Are these the shadowy thousands from the Internet that ultimately failed to justify perpetual military occupation of the Capitol? Or perhaps thousands from among “those surveyed” in the recent CBS poll?
What we have here is simply media hype, doubling-down on the effort to gin up the appearance of an existential crisis; a crisis so imminent that we must give total power to Comrade Napoleon to prevent the return of Snowball and the evil humans.
I expect better from you. You’re screaming “fake news” and doing it violently. Even if you didn’t witness a major problem, I did. The Host did too it seems. At least be funny or interesting about it if you’re gonna shit post today.
When news is fake, calling it fake news is appropriate. The reality on the ground for the past year has been that the nutjobs can’t even get a dozen people together at their scheduled rallies. The notion that significant numbers of them are ready for Capitol Riot II is pretty fanciful.
True but, as you can see, if you just focus on the tip the rest of the iceberg doesn’t really exist and, as such, you can hand wave and both sides the issue away.
The nutjobs aren’t the danger. They were merely tools. The danger is what’s causing the purging of Raffenspergers and Van Langeveldes and actual Republicans like Kinzinger.
Basically this comes of the nature of the “party” organizations as coalitions of special interest groups, sucking up to their most extreme constituents. Notions of real political philosophy and national interest have been displaced. The important thing for each “party” is simply that their coalition of batshit crazies must (at all costs) beat the other lot’s coalition of batshit crazies.
In the case of Kinzinger, a very moderate Republican, his district was eliminated in the recent redistricting, controlled by the Democrats who have a firm hand on Illinois. If the Democrats wanted more moderate Republicans, they could have kept Kinzinger’s district; instead, they nuked it so that the loss of a Congressional seat for Illinois would not injure the Democrats in the House.
For the record, I am sure Republicans have done this as well, carved up the district of a moderate Democrat so that it can be replaced with solid Republicans; Kinzinger is just the most recent example of this phenomenon. Politics is ugly, and neither party is particularly interested in good governance and would prefer to take whatever they can, and award no brownie points for moderation to someone on the other team. I don’t think the Republican Party in West Virginia is going to not try to unseat Joe Manchin by whatever means necessary just because he’s a moderate Dem.
We will never know the whole story of January 6th until the Justice Department tells us why they have not arressted a man named Ray Epps. Seen in many videos, starting on January 5th, as a major instigator, he was originally #16 on the FBI’s wanted list for the event. Then he mysteriously disappeared from the list. Attorney General Garland flat-out refused to answer any Congressional questions, verbal or written, concerning this man. Did the FBI have agents/informers in place? Did they know about the events in advance? Obviously, if they did, why didn’t they stop it? In face of the Attorney General’s silence, no one should presume to know the whole story.
SHG,
I was struck by the eloquence of your post. In particular:
“What’s lost is trust. What we lost on January 6th was our national innocence, that we, as Americans, would somehow find a way to overcome all obstacles. Instead, what we saw was our national bond unravel, how a lie perpetrated by puny people undermined our faith in ourselves. There are no laws that can restore our faith in the integrity of our nation, our government, our purpose.”
RGK
I don’t think that trust has existed since Nixon.
Nixon had enough dignity to resign in shame. Trust was dented, but not broken.
The only real change since Nixon is that today, pols double-down on the lies no matter how obvious it may be that they are lies.
Even Nixon refused to challenge the results in 1960 and start bleating about voter fraud when those around him encouraged him to do so (with rumours about Daley’s antics in Cook County, among others).
Different time.
The 700-950 nutjobs aren’t the danger. They were just a few of Trump’s weapons. As we have since seen. A riot is little compared to the systematic purging of the Raffenspergers and Van Langeveldes, the lionization of a Rittenhouse. and the replacement of actual Republicans with whatever such as Gaetz and Greene are.
Our national innocence’s was lost well before January 6. To say that this horrific event was somehow the first significant failure in “our faith in the integrity of our nation, our government, our purpose.” ignores much of our history. This was all part of a continuing pattern. I suggest you look at the events of April 12, 1861, or June 1, 1921 and most recently August 11/12, 2017.
If you’re going to use the same name here as me, please try not to be a blithering idiot. People might confuse us. TIA.
Same
Well said. Also, it was amazing how quickly your postscript was proven out. Got the Lotto numbers?
One characteristic of our national polity not so long ago was the sense that, amongst our leadership, there were those with whom we agreed and those with whom we disagreed, but we accepted that their motivations one and all were for a better nation. If we disagreed, it was because our respective senses of what “a better nation” looked like differed. We believed that whatever we thought of the other guy’s intelligence, politics, or connections, he (always a he, of course) was at least trying to do the right thing.
As some of our elder statesmen die, they’re eulogized for their abilities to reach across party lines, to remain civil, and to remain faithful to American ideals while still aggressively pursuing their political agendas. They seemed — perhaps only seemed, but appearances matter — to serve a higher purpose than simply winning the political game in the short term. At the very least, there were rules they respected and lines one simply didn’t cross; “legacies” mattered and were worth protecting.
One thing that’s changed lately, even before the Trump years, is that we’ve lost a sense of historical perspective. We’re not living in the current phase of the American Experiment, we think; this is the end game. Whatever’s gone before doesn’t matter because this is all there is — winner take all. In that, I wonder if this is the sense folks had in the years before the Civil War — that they’d reached the point where differences were truly irreconcilable and the situation could only be resolved in an uncivilized way, with one clear winner and one clear loser.
I think the current circumstances are a fundamental break, as you describe. For the first time, we had someone in charge of the government who could not even pretend he was trying to do the right thing. There was no method to his madness, no policy we could evaluate, no consistency which we could identify apart from the man’s own self-interest from one moment to the next. It seems bizarre that such a person could motivate so many to vote for him — twice! — let alone a few thousand to put their lives and freedom in jeopardy to attack the Capitol, but he did. It wasn’t trust but unreasoning faith he required of his followers.
Where I have some hope is that rarely do charismatic faith movements survive their leader. Most tend to consume their leader before they die in fractious in-fighting amongst the zealots. Politicians who cater to such faith movements may enjoy some short-term success, but they tend to sign on after the movement has jumped the shark, and after the implosion, their careers are quickly forgotten. I think that’s where we are now. Trump is being booed by supporters for admitting that he received his COVID booster. His businesses are suffering death by a thousand legal cuts. His closest lieutenants are writing tell-all books. The media figures who promoted the QAnon idiocy are fighting amongst themselves and vilifying one another to hijack what’s left for their own purposes.
We’re dwelling on the mind-boggling number of Republican politicians and voters who still identify as pro-Trump, but what else do they have to identify with at the moment? Their party abandoned the free market, small government, conservative ideals which defined it for so long. They embraced the religious right for short-term gain, but they’re finding it hard to maintain those relationships except as a least-bad alternative for them. So they’re going to link themselves to the Trump movement, just as they did to the Tea Party a few seconds earlier. Soon, when one way or another he’s gone from the stage, they’ll be declaring that they weren’t really “with” Trump. Until they manage to regain some defining set of logic-based principles, they won’t be a coherent “party” and our national discourse will remain chaotic. This too shall pass. The American Experiment is damaged but not ended.
And in concert with the Republican voters still backing the cult of personality, we have the Democrats, whose only hope for 2024 lies in Trump being the Republican nominee. As shown by last year’s state races and the current hyping of the Capitol riot, they don’t ever want to stop running against Trump.
Republicans could always choose someone other than Trump. But will they? If the best argument you can muster is that this will won’t outlive Trump, it’s really not much comfort.
Judging from your many comments on this post, this seems to have struck a real nerve with you. Feeling guilty about something?
I feel guilty about so many things, I’m not sure where to begin, BLM. Politically, I’m having a very hard time viewing the other side with sympathy and seeking common ground on divisive issues. Like many, I’m so fatigued by the combative discourse of the past several years, exacerbated by the COVID crisis, that being intentional about taking a long view of history rather than living so much in the moment is the best I can manage right now.
It’s a slow news day.
Biden won the election and it is dangerous that a significant portion of Republicans politicians believe (or pretend to believe) otherwise. Trump is megalomaniac who is totally unfit for the presidency.
However, for four years Democrats pretended that Trump was not legitimate because he got fewer votes or because of Russian interference or whatever. Instead of ridiculing the idea, Hillary Clinton said “I just don’t think we have a mechanism” for investigating the alleged election fraud. The mainstream media gave up any pretense of objectivity and became a mouthpiece for the left making unjustified, bogus claims – see Glen Greenwald for details.
None of this justifies the attempt to stage a coup but I believe claiming conspiracies was a necessary ingredient for Trump’s conspiracy theories to be believed.
There are two different sense of legitimacy being used here.
Democrats maintained that Trump lacked *moral* legitimacy not that he wasn’t legally the president. They merely argued that it was unjust that he was elected when a majority of voters selected Hillary (they didn’t suggest that the Russian interference or the rest meant Trump wasn’t legally the president). Indeed, Hillary conceded to Trump as every major presidential candidate has done for decades.
Claiming that Trump lacked moral legitimacy didn’t pose any threat to our system of government. It’s politics as usual and a call to change how we vote. On the other hand calling into question whether Biden was legally the president is the kind of thing that risks drawing the military into the matter to settle the question (imagine Pence did purport to rule the electoral college votes illegitimate and SCOTUS avoids the issue on the political question doctrine. Inauguration day roles around and Biden and Trump both purport to be the legally elected president and give contradictory orders to the national guard about dealing with the massive protests that have broken out and now we are in a situation with generals picking who is ‘really’ our president).
There was no insurrection. There was no riot. What we saw was a show. I was there and it was obvious what was going on. A coordinated group of people at key positions were directing the action, mostly organized by FBI/CIA front groups such as Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and BLM (for example the Babbit “killing” was filmed by a BLM leader who egged her on until she was “shot” and openly advocated for violence throughout the event but was inexplicably exempted from the harsh prosecution and pre-trial jailing that afflicted the clueless morons following his orders). The police ignored these people even as they ordered and managed attacks on the police. Meanwhile, on the other side of the building, police opened the doors and ushered in people who were later charged with crimes. If you watched the videos I posted a few months ago then you saw it too. None of these “riot coordinators” were prosecuted. Only the idiots who followed their lead found themselves in jail.
Was Trump in on it? Of course he was. This reality TV star, friend of the Clintons, puppet of the real rulers, played the role of US President for 4 years, and he did a masterful job of dividing the American people, culminating in the January 6th “Insurrection” show, and continuing afterward with intentionally ridiculous lawsuits from formerly competent lawyers who suddenly forgot not only basic legal principles but also spelling and grammar, bolstered by credible claims of election fraud (as if elections were fair and honest until now) leading to the present situation where 2 halves of the country both consider the other half insane and/or evil.
Both sides are mostly made up of good people who only want to do what is right, misled by the MSM into a false reality where those who disagree with them are so evil that they must be hated, shunned and destroyed. Democracy in the age of big tech mind control via censorship and gaslighting is a joke. There is no such thing as an informed voter anymore; there are only tools for one side or the other in a false dichotomy. The real dichotomy is between we the people and our unelected rulers, and at this point they appear to be winning the war against us.
Can I borrow your tin foil hat? thanks in advance!
Can you put the conspiracy theories down or are they an obsession for you by this point? In case you are clueless, you are one of the loons the postscript is about. Your fly is down and I’m the kind of guy who would tell you right away because I’d want someone to tell me. Zip it up, PGP. No one wants to see this, as they say.
I was there and I watched the staging of the show, and recorded it on video. You watched MSNBC. Who is clueless?
“I was there…Who is clueless?” – PGP
Doo-dah. Doo-dah.
Scott–I’ll tell you what you already know: this might be the best thing you’ve ever written. Thanks.
Your Pal,
Skink
Skink,
!
Rich
Trump has superpowers.
He’s able to live in peoples minds even though he’s no longer president.
I’d tell people to get on with their lives but they want to roll in the past.
I’m not sure what’s worse – that you’re expecting “crazy, false or ridiculous” comments or that you may, sadly, be proven right.
Thanks for being one of my favorite browsing stops!
I mean, at least I know I’m not the most ridiculous commenter in this here hotel now. It’s nice to know where I stand at least.
Order was restored. The election result was certified. Crackpots were prosecuted. The Capitol still stands.
Despite the nonsense, the nation survives. I like to look at the glass half full. If no one were killed it would have been comical. Innocence will only be lost if someone pulls the Grover Cleveland and somehow manages to get reelected. Will Americans allow that to happen?
I wish I could glass half full this, but it’s hard to do that. We got lucky that things turned out the way they did. We were possibly seconds away from seeing the assassination of members of Congress, possibly even the Vice President. Had the crowd not followed that Capitol Police Officer up the stairs, we could be in a full on civil war right now. I just can’t take much solace that it worked out ok, when a sitting US President whipped his supporters into a frenzy over a span of two months using blatant lies to the point that a not-insignificant number of them headed to the Capitol to try and assassinate the Vice President.
Yes. While perhaps the “innocence lost” angle might be a tad much in the grand scheme of things and we can laugh at the obvious buffoonery of things like the vegan shaman viking and AOC’s melodramatic self centering, if the mob had caught up with Pence or Pelosi or managed to get into the congressional chamber the odds of their continued good health would have not been in their favor. It’s hard to overlook or downplay the intent because it turned out “okay”.
Its just a sign of America finally growing up.
In time to come you will realise that there is no difference which party is in power, the pigs look just like the farmers, and then you can sit back and get on with your lives.
To the rest of the world this is like watching a child tantrum over not getting a lollipop, vitally important to them, but not to the adults in the room. After all, you’ve had a revolution against the British, you’ve had a civil war.. this is absolutely nothing in comparison!
I never lost trust in the idea that a bunch of idiots with funny hats would not take an unauthorized tour of the capitol building to any end. And they didn’t.
Lose trust? Trust in what? Government, as if anyone should have that?
A bunch of idiots, some with funny hats, took an unauthorized tour of the capitol building, to zero end whatever. For the unfortunate dead, sorry, but stupid.
If that’s an “insurrection”, then Americans suck at insurrections.
Did you just disagree with yourself?
I lost my trust in the government after my wrongful conviction 44
years ago. Not immediately, but after my eventual proof of innocence
was dismissed as being irrelevant because it was too late. And after
I learned that it wasn’t a few rogue cops and prosecutors, but the way
the system worked — and continues to work — everywhere in the US.
The Reid technique, which consists of lying to innocent cop-trusting
defendants until they’re convinced that they’re criminally insane for
not remembering their crimes, and plea bargains that reward innocent
defendants for lying and punish them for telling the truth. Bogus
forensic science and suborned perjury.
And it’s not just the criminal justice system. Bin Laden was caught
thanks to government lies about a vaccination program. Politicians of
both major parties lie, as do many major corporations. The Vietnam
war and the Iraq war were both based on lies.
If a third of the population thinks Trump won in 2020, or think that
the virus is harmless and the vaccine deadly, or that 9/11 was an
inside job, government has nobody but themselves to blame for the fact
that the US has become a low-trust society.
Me, I’m a skeptic. I believe what I’ve personally observed, and am
mistrustful of everything else, except what people I’ve known for
years who have never lied to me tell me they have personally observed.
Now we’re talking! Has taken me 24 hours to get this far without saying one word. Normally, am not so shy. Like the way you broke up your sentences in poetic format. Not a bad discussion at all?!? Top job,…our so-called government leaves a lot to be desired, for real. Half empty, shall we say?
You could think it was the opposite, too, ¿no? I mean, if our democracy is so fragile that it wouldn’t withstand a bunch “mostly peaceful” protestors milling around on the Capitol, then we have a much bigger problem. Or, perhaps our democracy is strong enough to withstand a small group of raving lunatics (Viking Guy comes to mind) running amuck in the Capitol, generally passing people off. The Electoral College certified the election, Congress kept doing its job (whatever that is. . . ), Joe Biden was sworn in a few days later, and life went on.
jvb
Yeah, the President almost had the VP assassinated. No big deal, cause he didn’t succeed. Move on, folks.
Exactly.
Mr. Greenfield,
Thanks for posting everything. Certainly an interesting day to read the comments….
Cheers.
Finally! My chance to say what I really think, without fear of censorship from our host!!!!
I got nuthin’.
Very well said, as usual, Scott.
Testing monetization of the blog?
Hope you have a pilot’s license, FMP! If not, the admiral will help you land safely?
Blawg to you, mister! Monetization,… are you kidding? This is a ?-losing and time consuming avocation. The real action is in the courtrooms of Amerika pursuing justice and piece of mind.
Have a goodday, mate. Avocation bordering on verbal diarrhea, if you catch my drift? Ha. Do not trash. I’m warnin’ ya.
Yes, what you said is true. But focusing on what these idiots did doesn’t seem like the important issue Yes, they may have wanted to overturn the election results but they didn’t have any real chance of succeeding. They posed a danger to individual elected officials but not to our democratic system.
The same can’t be said about the attempts to convince Pence and various state officials to overturn the results of the election. It might not be as exciting because it happened via texts and conversations between men in suits rather than a mob fighting police to break into the capital but the attempts to convince elected officials to overturn the election posed (and poses in the future) a far greater threat.