Today is the third anniversary of January 6, 2021, a day that will live in infamy — the day that a riotous and fascist mob attacked the US Capitol in Washington DC — urged on by the then-president — to prevent the lawful certification of Joe Biden’s election.
It was an insurrection; it was a coup attempt — and for the first time in the nation’s history — the peaceful transfer of power was interrupted by the violence of those who wanted to see our democracy destroyed and wanted Trump to illegally remain in power.
As Americans who believe in the rule of law and in our democratic traditions — flailing and weakened as they are — we must acknowledge and remember this attempt to install a fascist dictatorship and end the American experiment.
Many of us watched the attack unfold on television after Trump urged his thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol. We watched in horror as our fellow citizens brutally attacked Capitol police — injuring many — and wondered where the police, the National Guard and US Army were. We later found out that the Trump secretaries of defense and army thwarted the timely deployment of law enforcement to curtail the coup. Then, later we found out the extent of the coup effort – the fake electors, the phone calls demanding more votes, the treason of members of Congress themselves.
Five people died as a result of the assault, mostly Capitol police officers. Another 140 policemen and women guarding the Capitol were injured, many of them severely, both houses of Congress were ransacked, the mob hunted down Congressional leaders whom they sought to maim or kill — including the vice president whom they intended to lynch, and the fascist mob raised the Confederate Flag from the Civil War and paraded it through the building — something even the Confederate Army was never able to do. For the first time, the flag of white supremacy, slavery and treason “flew” inside our United States Congress.
By now three years later, 1240 people have been arrested and charged with federal crimes from misdemeanor offenses like trespassing to felonies like assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy. 452 of those were charged with assaulting law enforcement officers.
Roughly 730 people have pleaded guilty to charges, while another roughly 170 have been convicted of at least one charge at a trial decided by a judge or a jury, according to an Associated Press database. Only two defendants have been acquitted of all charges, and those were trials decided by a judge rather than a jury.
About 750 people have been sentenced, with almost two-thirds receiving some time behind bars. Prison sentences have ranged from a few days of intermittent confinement to 22 years in prison. The longest sentence was handed down to Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys national chairman who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for engaging in the plot to stop the transfer of power. He got 22 years.
As Michael Moore has explained, perhaps the worst was about to happen. After being chased into hiding by the mob, members of Congress came out and returned to their respective House and Senate Chambers.
They still had one job left to do: Officially certify that Joe Biden was the elected President of the United States of America. Of the 535 Representatives and Senators who had earlier taken the oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution, 147 of them — all Republicans — just hours after they ran for their lives to survive this coup attempt, chose to side with the treasonous mob and voted to block Joe Biden from entering the White House to do the job the American people elected him to do. It was a stunning mass action of treason, to violate their Constitutional duties and give “aid and comfort” to the insurrectionists.
Most of those 147 Republicans were re-elected already and the rest are now running for re-election. As is the coup instigator in chief.
Over the last three years, much of the political landscape of the country has been defined by that day, January 6th. And the treasonous Trump is back promising to fully install a fascist regime when he’s re-elected in 10 months. Of course, he eventually was placed under arrest and charged with 91 felony indictments in a conspiracy to overthrow the government’s free election and is currently awaiting at least five separate trials.
Misinformation, outright lies, election denials, the extreme right-wing media have all chipped away at public opinion of the attack. As the Washington Post reported:
A Post-University of Maryland poll published this week shows a sizable share of Americans accept lies about the 2020 election and the insurrection that followed on Jan. 6, 2021. Only 62 percent say Joe Biden’s victory was legitimate, down from 69 percent two years ago, and far lower than after the contested 2000 election. One-third of U.S. adults say they believe there’s “solid evidence” of “widespread voter fraud” in the 2020 election. Regarding Jan. 6 itself, 28 percent say former president Donald Trump bears no responsibility, 21 percent say the people who stormed the Capitol were “mostly peaceful” and 25 percent say the FBI probably or definitely instigated the attack.
It’s very disconcerting to realize that a sizable chunk of our fellow Americans are ready to install a fascist dictatorship. However, most Americans have not been fooled. Over two-thirds accept that Biden was elected. Nearly half believe January 6 should disqualify Trump from the presidency. If he is convicted, these numbers will climb up.
Yet, this day of infamy must never be forgotten. The lessons learned from it — how we came this close to losing our Democracy — must be passed down to future generations. Democracy, as we and the rest of the world all know, is a fragile enterprise. Democracy is not a spectator sport – we all must be involved in protecting and maintaining it. On January 6th three years ago, we found that democracy can be lost in the blink of an eye.
And now, a renewed commitment, a mass outpouring of support for liberty, freedom, equality and solidarity, must take place this year. Some want to make January 6th a national holiday – Democracy Day – a day we celebrate the right for everyone to vote, without harassment or suppression, and where no one, regardless of wealth or position, is above the law.
There’s another day and date coming up in a short ten months in November. It could be America’s last free election. Let’s ensure it’s not. Voting is the least we can do to save our democracy – and there is so much more we will have to do. Let’s not sleep-walk into fascism.
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Some recent news articles:
1. “Capitol police officers reflect on Jan. 6 riot one year later: ‘I’m still mad,'” NBC News, January 7, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/185797?t=8&akid=373035%2E17611408%2ErhngT8
2. “How citizen investigators are helping the FBI track down Jan. 6 rioters,” PBS NewsHour, January 3, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/185798?t=10&akid=373035%2E17611408%2ErhngT8
3. “Trump Administration Civil and Human Rights Rollbacks,” The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, accessed January 5, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/185799?t=12&akid=373035%2E17611408%2ErhngT8
4. “The Trump campaign embraces Jan. 6 rioters with money and pardon promises,” NPR, January 4, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/185800?t=14&akid=373035%2E17611408%2ErhngT8
5. “Trump’s Insurrection Act Threat,” Brennan Center for Justice, November 28, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/185801?t=16&akid=373035%2E17611408%2ErhngT8
6. “The Trump campaign embraces Jan. 6 rioters with money and pardon promises,” NPR, January 4, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/185800?t=18&akid=373035%2E17611408%2ErhngT8
Jan. 6 readers: please see this post acknowledging and remembering this day.
Like Covid, there are people who are trying to completely ignore it…to their peril. And our peril. Others are actually celebrating this day, also to our peril.
And like Covid and it’s ‘just the flu,’ it didn’t really happen as they were just ‘tourists’ peacefully visiting the Capitol’ or, if you want to go this way, a bunch of ‘Antifa’ with Nancy Pelosi directing actors dressed up as MAGATS (make america great again trump supporters) doing all the bad stuff. FAKE!
The one thing I keep reading (and hearing in this county) is that ‘they didn’t have guns.’ And my reply to that is that the militia had vans full of weapons waiting. And the fact that if I hit you in the head with a flagpole I’d be in jail for ‘assault with a deadly weapon’ and ‘attempted murder.’
Next comes my “What if they weren’t white and it was a couple thousand black guys and gals with pipes and clubs smashing in the windows and climbing in while clubbing cops who were trying to keep them out? What if they were screaming HANG TRUMP?”
And “How would you feel if they had caught and hanged Pence and Pelosi and AOC and…others on their list?”
I’ve had a few very…conflicted looks at that point along with obviously glitching brains because there weren’t any replies in a few conversations around here beyond “uuuuummm, ahhhh, uh” before the “you voted for Biden” bleats out. Talk about sheep-like snowflakes!!
I’ll leave it to the reader as to what some of the answers were, though…I don’t want to spread that kind of poison.
What we have are traitorous anti-Constitution Confederate politicians infesting the ranks of OUR Congress and the Judiciary. And the military and militarized police forces. They need barred from ever holding office or being in a position of power, too, just like their leader. Definitely add SCOTUS into that group, too. Impeach the unSupreme Court. They LIED on their applications…
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So, like Trump, if I say, you know, with his famous ‘wink-wink nudge-nudge’ that seems to be so prevalent and well-understood in right wing Maga-land; that they need to be gotten rid of as they are poisoning the blood of our country would people realize I mean removed and barred from holding office ever again…or Trump’s MAGA version?
But how funny is that when a leftie or even a Democrat/leaning center-right person says something like that there aren’t immediate attacks by crazies on GOP politicians or judges, eh? Yeah, real funny how that doesn’t seem to happen.
But there are when Trump and other Maga politicians let loose tirades against their enemies… because that’s what anybody that disagrees are, right? What does this mean?
This is just my guess, my opinion, but maybe, perhaps, it means there are a lot more loonies under their banner as are the vast majority of mass shooters in this country who also are tucked under the umbrella of being a ‘conservative.’ Hmmm, does anybody see a pattern here?
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So far today I haven’t heard the fully automatic machine gun going off up the hill from me in celebration of this anniversary but that may happen later tonight. Plus I haven’t been out much so it may have already happened.
Did hear a couple of bursts from it at NY midnight. Probably a ‘bump-stock modified AR-15’ from the sound of it. Along with multiple calibers of gunfire in all directions echoing from the mountains all around along with fireworks displays bursting over a pretty dang dry forest because we haven’t had much snow this year. I always wonder where all those bullets go, ya know?
I guess it’s just Trump’s “I love the poorly educated” crowd just having fun.
sealintheSelkirks
“And the military and militarized police forces. They need barred from ever holding office or being in a position of power, too, just like their leader.”
So people who served in the military or former police officers shouldn’t be allowed to run for elected office?
Not if they supported this insurrection they shouldn’t. You swear an oath to uphold the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies and then do that? No way, lose the privilege by breaking your oath is the minimum that should happen.
sealintheSelkirks
Ok yeah. That should go for anyone who supported the insurrection.
Funny thing about Trump. He makes a big issue on how important it is that a Presudent must be delivered at birth within our borders. (Which is intellectually ridiculous and goes against our country’s constitutional mantra of enlightment and inclusion.) Yet he doesn’t rant on about where a President’s spouse is born. I like Melania, but her accent reminds me of Natasha, the foreign spy, from the Bullwinkle cartoons,
This is great article is an example of how the OB Rag, needs a new name. The Rag has expanded and covers important OB news, SD news as well as national issues.
I think the Biden re-election theme of “saving democracy” is too vague and slippery to embrace easily. It doesn’t speak to me, a lifelong Democrat and American History major, and it won’t resonate with a social media-habituated electorate that doesn’t read newspapers and never took a civics class in high school.
But when I am reminded that a Trump-incited January 6 mob violently tried to prevent our emblematic “peaceful transfer of power” following the presidential election of 2020, I totally get it. As citizens, we have been duly notified what’s-up by the Capitol invasion on January 6, 2021, and by subsequent years of Trump denials and distortions to obscure the truth of those historic events.
Trump and his congressional followers, who to this day will not acknowledge that Biden was duly elected, should be driven from elected office.
There’s also the issue of the “Electoral College,” an arcane complexity
that was tampered with by Trump’s followers that’s hard to justify in the modern era.
Let’s hope Biden will find a powerful relevant message to the American people. Not based on future “Bidenomics” that ignores current realities like gas, electric,,water, gasoline, groceries and rent that are through the roof. And not like the latest confounding pitch — George Washington at Valley Forge, which deserves a prompt return to the archives.
Somebody needs to outline the recognizable basics of a child’s essay on “What Democracy Means to Me” in the era of Donald Trump so that Joe Biden can fire up American voters to turn out and do the right thing in 2024.
Excellent article. We learned that our Democratic Republic is much more fragile than we thought. What frightens me is that danger does not seem lessened with the passage of three more years of time. You’re right Frank, we have to get everyone involved. I do see positives out there. The younger generations are voting in higher numbers now. You have reminded us before what MLK said- “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It’s our job to do the bending.
https://news.yahoo.com/special-counsel-probe-uncovers-details-130200912.html
Dotard in inaction.
And this is the guy Trump gave an official Presidential pardon to right before he had to go to prison. The insanity of the orange cheeto covering his ass in full bloom:
Roger Stone Caught Discussing Plot To Assassinate House Democrats, Reportedly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze4iig7C4c4
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Biden’s certainly doing all he can to lose this election. What the hell is wrong with the democrats? Oh, yeah, it’s the wealthy neoliberals making all the calls. Are they insane or just stupid?
sealintheSelkirks