It's Up to Us

For those of us who care about this country, January 6 was a personal assault; the election of 2024 was a personal tragedy.

Today is, of course, January 6th. Five years ago, Donald incited an insurrection against his own government, encouraging a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol, and endangering the lives of every single person in that building. His actions led to chaos, violence, and the deaths of at least seven people. Dozens of Capitol police officers were injured, some of them grievously. Many of them remain traumatized to this day.

Donald and the Trump regime desperately want to pretend either that January 6th was a positive thing, or to pretend that it never happened at all. It is up to all of us to make sure that we never forget the horrors that were inflicted on this country and on our democracy on that day, all because Donald could not accept that he lost the 2020 election to his opponent, Joe Biden, by almost eight million votes. The narcissistic wound occasioned by the loss was too deep for him to process. Thus the big lie was born and then perpetuated by the Republican Party.

By tradition, January 6th is the day Congress counts and confirms the state’s electoral votes and certifies the results of the presidential election. Up until 2021, this had always been standard operating procedure. The election had already been held; the votes had been counted; and the winner declared. The moment, presided over by the vice president, is essentially ceremonial.

Before the proceedings began, Donald sent out a tweet at approximately 8:00 a.m. that consisted of nothing but lies about the 2020 election, lies he’d been telling every day since he lost. One of those tweets read in part,

States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud… All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike…

Of course, the election was legitimate and Mike Pence had no authority to send anything back to the states. By phrasing it the way he did, Donald led many people to believe that Pence actually did have the authority to overturn the results, a lie which ultimately put his life in danger. After a gallows, complete with noose, was erected outside of the Capitol building, the mob called for Pence to be hanged.

Later in the day while Congress was in session, Donald held a rally at the Capitol Ellipse, further perpetuating the lie that the election had been stolen from him. He ended the speech this way.

“We fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

And the crowd did. With their weapons and their Confederate flags, their zip ties, and their bear spray, they assaulted the officers and began forcing their way into the Capitol building.

[Photo credit: Probal Rashid]

When I initially heard that Donald had planned to walk to the Capitol as well, I didn’t believe it. He is a physical coward and there is no way he would have put himself in any kind of danger. Then it dawned on me that he knew these were his people. They might be out for the blood of Pence and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but they would protect him.

The assault lasted hours. As the violence escalated, the crowd became a mob, and the situation became increasingly grave. The Secret Service attempted to evacuate Pence, but he refused to leave, unsure if he could trust them. He remained within the Capitol building for hours.

During all of this, Donald did nothing except watch the events he put into motion on television. He was urged by those in his inner circle to do something to defuse the situation, not realizing he was getting exactly what he wanted. Those insurrectionists, the people in that mob, were fighting for him; they were fighting to restore him to a presidency he believed belonged to him because he was incapable of accepting the truth and, at least to a degree, had come to believe his lie.

At 6:00 PM, after the riot had ended, Donald posted another tweet in which he referred to the insurrectionists as “great patriots.” Slightly over four years later, squaring the circle of that egregious lie, he pardoned the almost 1500 traitors who had assaulted local law enforcement, threatened the lives of every person who stood in their way, and desecrated our nation’s Capitol.

Donald spared no thought at at all for officers who were injured and the five who lost their lives as a direct result of his insurrection. According to The Washington Post, Officer Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes hours after two men sprayed him with a powerful chemical irritant. Four other officers who served that day died by suicide in the days and months following the event.

We do not discuss mental health in this country and we have a tendency to ignore mental illness. The amount of trauma those officers, as well as members of Congress, and others in the Capitol suffered on that day was exacerbated in the aftermath of the insurrection when the Capitol police officers were betrayed by their government, and Democratic members of Congress, along with a handful of Republicans, were betrayed by their Republican colleagues.

Now, the Republican Party acts as if none of it happened. It is as if those police officers did not risk their lives, did not suffer grievous injuries, did not have their lives and careers upended while protecting the people who have since turned their backs on them. As Donald and the cowards in the Republican Party would have us believe, the real heroes in this story, the true patriots, are the insurrectionists.

Republicans in Congress could have chosen to protect democracy over the one man who has done more to weaken our institutions and destroy our constitutional order, but they chose Donald Trump. In the years since that horrific day, the corporate media, along with the Republican Party, Donald, and his inner circle, have done Yeoman’s work in trying to normalize the greatest betrayal of this country since the Civil War.

We cannot allow that to stand. It is up to us to remember how many people were involved in protecting our Capitol and the people in it, how many people tried desperately to hold the insurrectionists to account, and how much damage has been done by Donald and the Republicans in Congress not only to our democracy, but to our sense as Americans of what our country stands for.

We must remember the lengths they have gone to to undermine the American people’s faith in free and fair elections, in the rule of law, and in justice of any kind.

We are the keepers of these memories, and we can never allow the memory of that tragic, horrific, treasonous day to fade.