How we can win back January 6

That's our Capitol, goddamn it, and we're proud of it!

There’s a column in the Washington Post today by Greg Sargent called “What Jim Jordan knows about Trump’s coup attempt and what he may cover up.”  It’s a good column, all down in the weeds about what the congressman from the most gerrymandered district in the state of Ohio did on that fateful day and who he spoke to and what he may or may not know about what happened in the so-called war room in the Willard Hotel on January 5.  The House Select Committee on January 6 has asked Jordan to appear before the committee and testify because, the columnist tells us, the committee is trying to understand “that fraught and chaotic time period and how it fits into larger questions it is asking about Trump’s overall coup attempt.”

All that is good.  We need to know how Trump’s attempt to overturn the election of 2020 went down and exactly what happened so we can be ready for the next time they try to pull the same thing, and the time after that, and the time after that, because Republicans not trying to win elections anymore.  They’re just figuring out new ways to steal them.

And more people need to go to jail, more of the kind of people who populated the two war rooms we know about:  the one in the Willard Hotel, and another one that hasn’t drawn as much attention in the Trump International Hotel.  And some very serious thought needs to be given in Georgia and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. about whether to charge Trump himself with attempting to interfere in the counting of ballots, both those of citizens and electors alike.  Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming has done us the favor of spelling out what’s at stake in her comments from the floor of the House on the matter of holding Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress: “Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes?”

All that is good, too.  But there’s a larger question at stake here, and that is who is going to win the battle over the symbology of January 6?  Trump announced on Tuesday that he’s going to hold a press conference at Mar a Lago on January 6 to discuss “the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020.”  Ominously, Trump warned, “Until then, remember, the insurrection took place on November 3rd, it was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th.”

Other Republican lackeys have been busy excusing the violent assault of the Capitol as “just a regular tourist visit,” and a “peaceful protest.”  But it’s becoming clear that the Republican Party is going to spend a good deal of energy in the run-up to the elections of 2022 and 2024 trying to turn the violence of January 6 into a patriotic act by loyal Americans who were only trying to take back an election that was stolen from them. 

The point needs to be made that the “patriotism” of the Trump mob took the form of beating Capitol police with steel rods and using toxic chemical sprays to incapacitate them while waving the likes of Confederate flags and destroying and stealing property belonging to individual members of congress and senators, not to mention causing extensive damage to the Capitol building itself.  It’s clear that when the Select Committee on January 6 begins its hearings in the New Year that evidence of all that and more will be presented.

But a larger point needs to be made by Democrats and the citizens of the United States in general:  that is our Capitol.  That is our Congress.  That is our government.  We are proud of it all, and we won’t stand for another assault on the place where we the people send our representatives to govern ourselves. 

Washington D.C. used to be a place that families saved up money to visit so they could tour the Capitol and the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian and the White House and the memorials on the Mall and judging by the tourists who returned to the capital last summer it still is.  But something larger needs to be done to make the point that the events of January 6 were treasonous not patriotic, and the building that came under assault belongs to us and not to them.

We need to do something to seize the day of January 6 and turn it into our day, not theirs.  I don’t know if it should be a new march on Washington called the “March of Patriots,” or a peaceful demonstration on the Mall and around the Capitol called the “Day of a Million Patriots,” or what.  Something should be done every year to take back that day from Trump’s mob of traitors and turn it into a day to celebrate democracy.  When January 6, 2025 rolls around, we should be ready to turn the solemn ceremonial counting of electoral ballots and the peaceful transition of power into something that cannot be assailed and a day we can all be proud of again.

The founding fathers wrote January 6 into our Constitution. We should echo that history by seizing the day and writing it anew in the colors of patriotism rather than smearing it with the black blot of treason.

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