JANUARY 6

JANUARY 6

January 6 should not be a day of prayers and testimony and healing. But that is the mistaken act Democrats have taken to do with it today, the first anniversary of the most dangerous political act that ever occurred in our history.

Today should be a day focused on the ongoing threats to democracy which were made corporeal on January 6, 2021. Today should be the day Chuck Shumer has his vote about the filibuster and Voting Rights. Today should be focused on what must be done to counter the threat exposed by the events of a year ago, before it is too late.

National healing and reconciliation are what is done AFTER the authoritarian threat is defeated and the perpetrators have met their proper fates.

Instead, we hear Joe Manchin say that changing the filibuster to do this is “a heavy lift” for him. Which likely means it won’t happen. But I personally still applaud Senator Shumer for pushing this vote, despite not knowing its outcome, because whatever the future holds for this country, it needs to be in the historical record who was and who wasn’t willing to do what needed to be done to save 232 years of constitutional, democratic, republican governance.

Treating today as an occasion for spiritual edification and public psychotherapy is a absolutely the wrong way for political leaders to reckon with a political threat to democracy that is ongoing. This was not a one-time event in need of sacralization and memorializing. Every day since that day, we have witnessed the broader attack on democracy that has gone on every day in statehouses across the country, on social media, and inside the Capitol itself, where House and Senate Republican leaders are doing their part to undermine constitutional democracy in coordination with their fellow Republicans at all levels of government everywhere.

Today is the day to throw Mitch McConnell’s words of a year ago back in his face, and the in the face of every member of his party, which I will quote in full:

"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. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he'd lost an election.

"Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty. The House accused the former President of, quote, 'incitement.' That is a specific term from the criminal law.

"Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.

"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.

"And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.

"The issue is not only the President's intemperate language on January 6th. It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged 'trial by combat. It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President.

"I defended the President's right to bring any complaints to our legal system. The legal system spoke. The Electoral College spoke. As I stood up and said clearly at the time, the election was settled.

"But that reality just opened a new chapter of even wilder and more unfounded claims. The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things. Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally.

"This was different.

"This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence began.

"Whatever our ex-President claims he thought might happen that day... whatever reaction he says he meant to produce... by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world.

"A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the Administration.

"But the President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn't take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored.

"Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!

"Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger... even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters... the President sent a further tweet attacking his Vice President.

"Predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as further inspiration to lawlessness and violence.

"Later, even when the President did halfheartedly begin calling for peace, he did not call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later. And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.

"In recent weeks, our ex-President's associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to re-elect him as a kind of human shield against criticism.

"Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters. That is an absurd deflection.74 million Americans did not invade the Capitol. Several hundred rioters did. And 74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it.

"One person did.”

Almost all the commentary regarding the recent death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s focused on his deep spiritual commitments and the way he promoted national healing by founding and leading South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

But that public healing took place AFTER the political defeat of apartheid.

We are still in the midst of a battle for the future success of American democracy - a battle that knowledgeable observers have said is a “coin toss” as to its outcome. It is NOT “a battle for the soul of America.” It is a POLITICAL conflict concerning the SPECIFICc institutions of voting, partisan competition, and election administration that is the heart of our constitutional democratic republic.

We can only have reconciliation and healing AFTER the enemies of our constitutional democratic republic, who have rejected the norms of democratic processes and attempted to destroy them, have been defeated and have acknowledged that defeat and have once again agreed to hold with and follow the tenets of our Republic.

Seeing this otherwise is as foolish as we were on February 23, 1993, when we as a nation saw the failed attempt to take down the World Trade Center as a one-off event attempted by fools. There was a direct line, of both personnel involved and growing knowledge of what needed to be done, between that day and the morning I was awakened at 5:45 a.m. by a friend calling from New York City to tell me to “go turn on the television! We’re under attack!”

If that phone call comes on the Wednesday morning following the first Tuesday in November 2024, it will be too late. The war will be over and the enemy will have won.

Thank god President Biden said what he did this morning:

“We saw it with our own eyes. Rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the Speaker of the House, literally erecting gallows to hang the Vice President of the United States of America.

“But what did we not see?

“We didn’t see a former president, who had just rallied the mob to attack — sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, and the nation’s capital under siege.

“This wasn’t a group of tourists. This was an armed insurrection.

“They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people. They were looking to deny the will of the people.

“They were looking to uphold — they weren’t looking to uphold a free and fair election. They were looking to overturn one.

“They weren’t looking to save the cause of America. They were looking to subvert the Constitution.

“This isn’t about being bogged down in the past. This is about making sure the past isn’t buried.

“That’s the only way forward. That’s what great nations do. They don’t bury the truth, they face up to it. Sounds like hyperbole, but that’s the truth: They face up to it.

“We are a great nation.

“My fellow Americans, in life, there’s truth and, tragically, there are lies — lies conceived and spread for profit and power.

“We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie.

“And here is the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interests and America’s interests, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.

“He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own Attorney General, his own Vice President, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost.

“That’s what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward.

“He has done what no president in American history — the history of this country — has ever, ever done: He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.”