In Honor of the Sacrifices of the Capitol Police on January 6, 2021

 

“While the broken windows have been repaired and many of the rioters have been brought to justice, 

the truth is that our democracy is at a greater risk today than it was back then.” 

Barack Obama, January 6, 2022

"There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically 

and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day [1/6/21]."

Former Senate Republican Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, after the 

February 13,  2021 57-43 Senate vote that ended in the former president's acquittal.

 

In the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Donald Trump’s political future seemed dead in the water. Then, with strong support from many top-level elected Republicans in Congress, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) flew down to visit former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago just a few weeks after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and brought Donald Trump back to life. Today, Donald Trump has more power than he did in his waning months as President. He completely controls the Republican Party. 

Further, notwithstanding recounts and sustained ballot audits as well as over 60 unsuccessful attempts to reverse the election in federal and state courts, even before Trump-appointed judges, 40% of the electorate still believes Donald Trump was elected President last November (Axios/Momentive Poll conducted just before January 6, 2022). 

Even remembering the visions of members of both parties of Congress attempting to barricade doors or dive under desks (see above pictures of 1/6/21), as Capitol Police put their lives on the line to protect the Vice President and members of Congress, the scheduled January 6, 2022 meeting on the floor of Congress to honor those officers produced only two Republicans in attendance: Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney. The moment of silence from the Republican side of the aisle came from a near total absence of elected Republicans. 

Just think, if Republicans have set up the mid-terms to eliminate Democrat-leaning voters in swing states, as they believe they have, we may be led by a “whatever Trump wants” majority in Congress. That sure as heck is not a democracy… when one man’s control is completely determinative. With the corrective voting rights legislation stalled in the Senate, the GOP has been given pretty free rein to take over Congress.

In a January 6, 2022 speech carried on all major networks, President Joe Biden finally broke his silence on the treachery of his predecessor, although never mentioning Donald Trump by name. “The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election,” Biden said. “He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country’s interest and America’s interest, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.” Shortly thereafter, prominent pro-Trump Congressional extremists simply expanded their conspiracy theory in support of the “big lie.” In a Congressional office building!

“Evidence of how contentious last year’s Jan. 6 riot remains in the public imagination could be found in a cramped room on the fifth floor of the Cannon House Office Building on Thursday afternoon… For nearly an hour, reporters, photographers and conspicuously unmasked Republican aides all listened as Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., two of former President Donald Trump’s closest supporters in the House, peddled unfounded conspiracy theories about the alleged involvement of federal law enforcement agencies in the violent attempt by pro-Trump rioters to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

“The ‘fedsurrection,’ as Gaetz has taken to calling it, implicated the FBI and those at the Justice Department supposedly set on covering it up. ‘They don’t answer the questions that can get to the truth,’ Gaetz charged of the DOJ, which, in an unrelated matter, is investigating him in a sex trafficking scheme. Testimony from arrested rioters and evidence released by the House select committee investigating the riot have failed to convince many Republicans that Trump and his supporters were responsible for the attack or that it was even especially grave; 36 percent of Republicans say that the attack on the Capitol, which left five people dead, was ‘mostly peaceful,’ despite ample evidence to the contrary.” Yahoo! News, January 6th. 

Yes, that same Marjorie Taylor Greene who supported the Q-Anon “government is run by Democratic and bureaucratic pedophiles” theory and believes in lizard people as well as space lasers focused on us. As absurd as it may seem, Goetz and Taylor Greene appear to be winning the war of words and credibility with enough Americans to throw a very big wrench into our democracy machine. The rest of the free world is looking on in horror and is anything but subtle about those feelings.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those Americans who wonder if the great American democratic experiment is over and done, I have to respond that it very well might be.