Resisting the January 6th Memory Hole

This week, the US House of Representatives voted to pass a bill to create a commission to investigate the events and activities that culminated in the insurrectionist riots in the Capitol on January 6^th 2021. Senate Republicans are mounting resistance against the bill and the vote may well split the chamber.

This is investigation is necessary.

Instead of facing the harsh spotlight, some Republicans are trying to rewrite the narrative of facts from that day arguing that it’s not worth it or nothing much happened.

This must not be tolerated.

I urge all Americans to contact their senators and make sure this exploration reveals the mechanisms, rot, and disinformation associated with this event. The republic cannot thrive without a sober look.

After losing the election, the 45^th president refused to concede on the baseless, unproven, and toxic charge that the election was “rigged.” He and his legal team filed around 60 lawsuits. His single win was trivial in its substance. Several of the judges who decided against his lawsuits were, in fact, appointed by his administration. It was not the case that these were previous-administration loyalists determined to defeat him at all costs. The appointed attorney general William Barr also said there was no evidence of election compromise.Source Source.

These are facts.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said, in affirmation of the election:

“The absence of any reports of foreign interference is a ringing endorsement of our bipartisan work. And it slams the door on the embarrassing, irresponsible rhetoric that some Washington Democrats spent four years broadcasting.”

McConnell celebrated that while the voters selected a new president, they had expanded the Republican hold in the House and (at the time; later runoffs in Georgia would change this) held the Democrats to a minority position. These are facts. Source

Trump later, around January 3^rd, applied personal bully pressure on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find votes.” He did this and was recorded doing so. This is probably illegal. After three recounts, the integrity of the voting system, recalling McConnell and Barr, was upheld. These are facts. Source

But the GOP continued to pull in money based on this Big Lie about the election being stolen. This is a fact. Source

ASIDE: I have to ask, would that mean that the seats gained in the House were fraudulent? Were the votes to keep Republican candidates in Senate seats also fraudulent? Or was a magic fraud field extended solely to the specific line item between Joseph Biden or Donald Trump was presented? Astounding evil magic, if so.

In fact, while vainly crowing that they were moving on from Trump, the RNC has continued to raise money on his name. “Since April 24 [2021], fundraising e-mails from Republicans have mentioned the former president 97 times — an average of more than five times a day. [Republicans are] using the former president’s name — and Republicans are — to raise money for 2022.” Source

This complicit amplification and support for Trump’s deranged, unsubstantiated fantasy created a disinformation bubble that edged discourse steadily to the realm of political violence in a way that members of Trump’s own party decried as dangerous. This is a fact.

For a moment there, Fox News seemed like it might take the principled stand, that it would share with its followers that “Goshdarnit, our guy didn’t win.” However, capital interests reared its head. Fox News likes to maintain a patina of being “new channel.” However, it is not. It’s an entertainment service that uses commentary on news as its stock-in-trade. Like any entertainer who plies a living from entertaining, keeping eyeballs is paramount. With the arrival of right-wing, fringe news sources (OAN, and NewsMax), Fox felt, for the first time, pressure from a threat of those competitors stealing their market. To ensure that they weren’t “primaried” out of their position is the most-favored right-wing news network, they stepped up their “questioning” campaign.

• “Shouldn’t we recount the votes again?” You mean after fifty independent states certified a distributed, subtly different, difficult-to-orchestrate-in-collusion processes? No.
• “But couldn’t it be possible that some votes were erroneously counted?” Possible, but in a deciding way? Not likely.
• “But couldn’t it be possible that the Chinese printed fake ballots on bamboo (huh) and flew the overnight into Maricopa County, Arizona and used said effort to control the election. Don’t do drugs, kids
• etc.

These bad-faith questions let Fox spread disinformation or sow doubt from a safe distance under the auspices of “asking questions.” It was a cynical and brilliant calculation. This language laid groundwork to poison minds so that Trump’s “Save America” Speech of 6^th January, 2021 found motivated listeners. All that was missing was the right match to light the powder keg unto political violence.

We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

– Donald J. Trump

Concerned citizens marched to the Capitol. This is a fact. Trump also, pace, said to “go peacefully” in the speech the previous quotes comes from. That’s a fact.

He also said:

• “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.” No evidence has been offered to date. No lawsuits have prevailed.
• “And by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It’s a disgrace. There’s never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries. Just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we’ve been going through in this country. It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace.” What is a computer vote? And again, none of these charges have had a single shred of durable evidence presented.
• “States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify.” Which states? Where did they ask for this?

Suffice it to say, many things were said, many were rank fantasy. The man was playing with matches and gasoline and hoping to watch the tree-house burn down.

This apocalyptic, violent, fearful rhetoric fomented a violent insurrection that cost lives, blood, and treasure on the 6^th of January in Washington, DC. These are facts.

During these efforts, the Confederate Battle Flag, which never prevailed in doing so during the Civil War, was actually paraded inside of the U.S. Capitol. This is a fact.

Trump’s party, rightly, turned on him. Senate Leader McConnell denounced him:

The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.

Source

Representative Kevin McCarthy denounced him.

“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” the Bakersfield Republican said during House debate on impeaching the president, the first time he has said publicly that Trump was to blame. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”

Source

These are facts.

However, since the violent insurrection, the former president continued to raise money. He has continued to consolidate his power base. He has continued to poison the prospects of those who rallied against him. He has maneuvered his supporters, not so much Republicans as Trumpists, to become a channel for his unbridled id.

Those who had denounced him (e.g. McCarthy), cowered and, given their choice between principles and Trump, chose Trump. McCarthy even traveled to Mar-a-Lago to beg to be back in the exile’s good graces. These are facts.

But how can they live with themselves. They know that it is a lie, yet they also know that they cannot call it such and that they must live with fact and anti-fact within their hearts. Anything that reminded them of the cognitive dissonance needed to be corrected.

To resolve the irreconcilable hypocrisy of their positions, the colonized Republicans (who are now either true believers or, for their own good, feigning conviction) began a massive effort to remove anything that reminded them of their cravenness. They sought to first gaslight the American public and second to purge anyone in their team who was not on-board with re-education.

Observe Georgia Representative Andrew Clyde’s gaslighting. Here he is photographed barricading doors in a panic…

But as of today, he now likens the insurrectionists behavior inside to a “normal tourist visit.”

Here’s what rioters did on Jan. 6. They forced their way through barricades and past law enforcement to breach the building. They smashed windows and broke doors. They ransacked offices. They chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” They attacked police officers. They caused the House and Senate to shut down for several hours on the day they were certifying the presidential election. One put his feet up on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and left her a nasty note. None of these actions are things that tourists normally do at the Capitol.

Source

Here’s what the not-tourists did to the office of Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

These are facts.

Clyde also claimed that the insurrectionists were unarmed. Some definitely were armed.

The net goal is to try to make the 6^th “Just another Day” that “wasn’t that bad” that is a ginned up issue to “make Republicans look bad” as a political tactic. Clyde is a useful water-carrier in this rhetorical trope.

And for those who stare the facts in the face and refuse to mentally perjure themselves, only Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming stands apart when she said:

Freedom only survives if we protect it. We must speak the truth. The election was not stolen. America has not failed.

But her presence, her repeated, irritating, carping reminder of the truth was so uncomfortable to the quisling Republican caucus, they purged her. Ironically, for as much time as the Right spends bemoaning “Cancel Culture” against those with unpopular opinions, they seem to have no problem with “Purge Culture.^*”

Throughout the Trump presidency, a consistent assault on reality by means of Big Lie propaganda (“There were more people at my inauguration than Obama’s!”) has mutated the Republican party into a party of lickspittle quisling Trumpists. While there might be a loyal opposition party somewhere one that could (legitimately) discuss conservative ideas like border security, entitlements, or stimulus packages, those voices are mute and are ghouls in the thrall to a cult of personality that is swallowing the party from the inside.

They want to make us buy the Big Lie.

They want to gaslight us into believing that the sun is the moon and vice versa.

They need us to believe their Big Lie.

Even as late as yesterday, continued assertions of the Big Lie continue. The Big Lie and the Big Liar’s threat is real and endures.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Attributed to Josef Gőbbels

Therefore, let us seek truth.

Footnotes

• *: This recalls the philosopher Karl Popper’s observation in The Open Society that in a liberal society it is vital to hold the freedom of speech paramount. But it cannot be held as an absolute for there are certain types of speech which destroy the meta-concept of freedom of speech itself, thus rendering it dead and thus leaves the formerly-liberal-democracy an ersatz-liberal-democracy. Such a hollow Potemkin creation is weak and ready for authoritarianism (or worse). Absolute tolerance of free speech, as such, is like permitting virological invaders to nuke the immune system. To this end, if allergies be the result of our immune systems over-zealously attacking things to which they should have a far softer response, we can learn a lot and overreact to actors and ideologies that might damage the immunological response.

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