The assault on our nation's capital on January sixth of last year was one of the most disgraceful moments in our nation's history. Never before had violent American insurrectionists openly attacked a national government body with the intention of overturning a democratic election. Several people died in the attack, and at least eighty one members of the Capitol force and sixty five members of the Metropolitan Police Department were injured. This is how it should be remembered from not only a historical perspective, but also a preventative one; we must never let such a shameful event happen again.
While at times the riot itself seemed like the case of the dog that caught the car, with rioters a bit stunned at how easily they got into the building, then finding all the members of congress gone, decided to mill about aimlessly, engaging in childish acts of theft and vandalism. Still, it could have been so much worse; if any of those members of congress had not been evacuated in time, they could easily have been overrun and harmed or killed. And while it may sound like a movie plot, what if those rioters had taken members of congress hostage? And what if they demanded that they would only release those hostages if Donald Trump were declared the winner of the election? And what if then president Trump had openly said that they were right? It's a terrifying thought.
You would think that calling that riot an utter disgrace would be common sense, and maybe it was in the immediate aftermath. But now that time has passed, the Republican party, still following orders from its deposed leader, has mostly decided to oppose having a congressional committee study how, why and what happened on January sixth. A bill to create such a committee just passed the House of Representatives, but only thirty five Republicans voted for it and over a hundred voted against it. During the debate, some Republican house members made outrageous statements that downplayed the danger of the riot, like when representative Andrew Clyde said that it looked like a "normal tourist visit." (Even more outrageous, pictures have emerged from that day showing Clyde helping to barricade a door to keep out those "normal tourists"!) After the bill passed the house, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell formally came out against it. Yes, the same man who said on the floor of the senate on February thirteenth that "January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president." also adding that "There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day." But that was then and this is now. An April fifth poll of American voters found that over half of registered Republicans do not accept the verified fact that conservative protesters, supporters of former President Trump, attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, with many of them believing that the riot was started by left wing protesters (like that all purpose boogeyman Antifa) in an attempt to make Trump supporters look bad, even though the FBI has said that there is no truth to this rumor at all. Since McConnell takes his orders from the still popular in his party Trump, he too had decided that the riot is something to forget about.
It has become fashionable for media pundits to say that we know live in a post truth society, and it's hard to dispute that when tens of millions of Americans believe something to be true because they want it to be true without any basis in fact. Although it's easy to blame Trump and his thousands of lies, his ascendancy was really built on decades of the same kind of lies spewed by right media figures like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Sadly, there really isn't anything that can be done about this situation, as anyone who has ever argued with a Trump supporting friend or family member can attest, changing someone's firmly held belief is very hard. Really, all we can do is accept that some people are hopelessly caught up in the right wing media bubble, and hope that there aren't enough of them to put Trump (or someone like him), in the White House.
No comments:
Post a Comment