Two Years On

 

Today is the second anniversary of the attempted coup of January 6, 2021, a date which (to borrow a familiar phrase from FDR) will live in infamy.

I do not pretend to have read in full the massive Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate January 6. I did, however, indulge in enough of a secular break from the 12 Days of Christmas and spent some time reading major parts of it (conveniently available in Kindle version). The Executive Summary, which lays out the fundamentals of the case, is probably sufficient  information for most people's purposes. Combine that with having watched some or all of the televised hearings, and the account becomes quite clear.

In those hearings and in the Committee's Report, the evidence points to "what ultimately became a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election" and leads "to an overriding and straight forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed." Almost everything else in the hearings, the Report, and the supplementary documentation further amplifies this conclusion.

It is important to note, as the Committee did, that January 6 did not stand alone, but was the result of the promotion of the "Big Lie" about the election, which began on Election night itself. (Actually, Trump's election denialism goes all the way back to his campaign, indeed to his first campaign.) The Report provides detailed information about the various false claims that were made, the attempts to influence state officials, the fake electors' scheme, the attempts to get Vice President Pence to do what he himself understood he had no legal right to do, etc. The Report also highlights Trump's role in causing the rioters to come to Washington on January 6 and his infamous inaction for 187 minutes while the riot was going on. 

"It is helpful in understanding these facts to focus on specific moments in time when President Trump made corrupt, dishonest, and unlawful choices to pursue his plans."

Earlier on January 6, Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously referenced the feast of the Epiphany in her talk to the Democratic caucus. "Today, January 6, is the feast of the Epiphany," she repeated that evening. "On this day of revelation, let us pray that this instigation to violence will provide an epiphany for our country to heal."

If healing had been possible in the aftermath of the attempted coup, the opportunity was quickly missed.  The best course of action - if also the most courageous and hence least likely - might have been an immediate invocation of the 25th Amendment, which admittedly was not really designed for such situations. The next best course of action would, of course, have been impeachment, the originally prescribed constitutional remedy for presidential malfeasance. Although not done as quickly as it should have been, eventually President Trump did achieve the distinction of being the second president ever to be impeached. By then it proved too late to remove him, but conviction would still have made a powerful point - and, maybe more importantly, would have disqualified him from running again. But the cowardly lions of the Republican party failed to seize the opportunity to liberate themselves from Trump's control. So instead the insurrectionist spirit survived. It has been evident in Republican antics for the past two years and is dramatically on display in the Republican party's present real-time meltdown on the floor of the House of Representatives.

"The Committee believes that those who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and then, on January 6th, engaged in insurrection can appropriately be disqualified and barred from holding government office—whether federal or state, civilian or military—absent at least two-thirds of Congress acting to remove the disability pursuant to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment." Imagine if Congress had the institutional fortitude to do that!

What the current chaos in the House has highlighted (at 11 ballots and counting) is that Trumpism is very much with us. Far too many people are prepared to believe lies and live by lies. Trump did not so much create MAGA madness as exploit the madness which already existed and which remains alive and well, with or without Trump himself.