That Other Day of Infamy

 

Today is the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection... There is no concern over whether Congress will be able to do its job, and not to put too fine of a point on it, but that’s because Trump won. Had he lost, there is no telling where we’d be right now. This is small comfort for what we face with his return.

Last Thursday, President Biden honored a group of people, including Liz Cheney, with Presidential Citizen Medals, an award for people who render exemplary deeds of service to their country or their fellow citizens. Trump’s response was predictable. He called Cheney and others involved in the January 6 investigation "dishonest thugs."

Cheney responded: "Donald, this is not the Soviet Union. You can’t change the truth, and you cannot silence us. Remember all your lies about the voting machines, the election workers, your countless allegations of fraud that never happened?

"Many of your lawyers have been sanctioned, disciplined or disbarred, the courts ruled against you, and dozens of your own White House, administration, and campaign aides testified against you.

"Remember how you sent a mob to our Capitol and then watched the violence on television and refused for hours to instruct the mob to leave? Remember how your former Vice President prevented you from overturning our Republic?

"We remember. And now, as you take office again, the American people need to reject your latest malicious falsehoods and stand as the guardrails of our Constitutional Republic—to protect the America we love from you."

One way of protecting the country we love is keeping our memories of the events of January 6 strong and fresh. For too many people, the outrage has slipped away over time. Elected Republicans who took to the floor on January 6 after they were able to return to the Capitol no longer seem to remember the anger, the fear, and the outrage that animated them to protect our country on that day. Following the January 6 attack, Lindsey Graham said, "All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough."

Mitch McConnell said Trump was "practically and morally responsible" for the attack. Today, at least publicly, Republicans have lined up behind Donald Trump, supporting him. January 6 has been effectively memory-holed. 

[January 6] is the moral equivalent of no longer being outraged by Pearl Harbor or 9/11. It's important for us to remember January 6 with clarity for what it was, an attack on the Constitution and the country. I hope you’ll share your stories from that day in the comments. 

Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump celebrated the insurrection with many of his Fulton County, Georgia co-conspirators and other supporters on view. We need to reject that effort to normalize the insurrection with an accurate history of those events as Donald Trump, inexplicably, returns to office.

-Joyce Vance