The Inflection Point

“We’re engaged anew in our struggle between democracy and autocracy, between the aspirations of the many and the greed of the few, between the people’s right to self-determination and a self-seeking autocrat.” 

President Joseph Biden, January 6, 2022

It’s been a year and there are plenty of people weighing in on the Insurrection. As with other world/country-altering tragedies, I recall where I was. Online and reading updates after the fact. Honestly? I wasn’t surprised that there was an attempt. I was surprised it wasn’t worse. Let’s be honest, it was very bad.

Nor have I been surprised at the entrenchment of the GOP in the Big Lie. That Republican leadership bowed before Trump and signed off to sign on is not a shock. That a substantial portion of the U.S. population falls into lock-step behind these traitorous quislings doesn’t surprise me, either. 

The seeds of what manifested on January 6 a year ago were planted in fertile soil generations ago. I’ve written a fair bit about the history of the Movement Conservatism that bloomed out of the Communist Panic of the fifties, found its next jumps in evolution under Nixon and Reagan, but really grew with the acceptance of the Tea Party into the Republican fold.

The Tea Party was the first sign of the Machiavellian long game that the likes of Rove, Cheney, and McConnell were playing. You couldn’t ask for a more rabid confederation of loud, obnoxious, ill-informed, and reactionary members to be nurtured to metastasis to grow and spread mushroom-like into the current batch of poisonous fungi inhabiting both government and the private sector. Harsh? You bet! 

Setting aside descriptors like “obnoxious” and “loud”, it’s not an exaggeration to say that these people are ill-informed and frankly, failed by an educational system that has been battered and bruised for decades prior to the arrival of COVID that has placed a huge-beyond-measure burden on educators across the country but most appreciably on public school instructors. That we have a significant population of individuals distrustful of science in general but who have uncritically surrendered to ludicrous conspiracy theories leads me to ask where were these people failed the most. 

It sounds easy to cast blame in a failing education system, but it’s the educational system itself that has been failed by the various state, local, and yes, federal governments who had and have their own agendas of what should/should not be taught and who would rather allocate funds for “more pressing matters” (one assumes) than whether future generations are sufficiently well enough informed to determine fact from fantasy or history from hearsay. 

We have long been an anti-intellectual society, distrustful of experts, and others reduced in the vernacular to “nerds”, “geeks”, and “eggheads.” Yet, how many jocks and sports figures do you know who have found keys to the physical universe, written plays and novels that change the way we see the world, developed life-saving vaccines, or contributed to social movements promoting equality and understanding? On this last point, probably some, but it’s doubtful that if they’re pulling down millions of dollars in endorsements that addressing issues of social justice was uppermost in their minds.

Again, the insurrection came as no surprise. The marks were cadged into doing precisely what they’re elected leaders wanted them to do and the Big Orange Boy at the top knew full well what was going on. Let’s be clear - as more and more material comes to light - the former occupier of the White House and his cabal knew very well they were losing. They knew that after four years of occupation exacerbated by bellicosity and bullshit and finally, by the worst possible reaction to a global pandemic, the jig was up. Their planning began weeks, if not months, in advance. You don’t need to do much to sow distrust and fear and boy-howdy, these goons are good at that! Credit where credit is due.

What are the chances that we’ll see members of the House and the former occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue brought to justice? I think slim. Or if they are, will it be a succession of wrist slaps à la the Iran-Contra Affair where patsies took the fall, but the brains walked away and continued to hold office or will there be some ridiculous olive branch offered from one party to the other in exchange for playing fair in the future?  

Some folks have a sense of optimism about this. I don’t. Biden’s White House has taken a smart hands-off approach letting the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol do its work and the DOJ continuing its investigations. So far, it’s been a crap-shoot. While a couple of Trump’s lieutenants have submitted evidence and testimony, others are denying the legitimacy of the subpoenas and are continuing to play that longer game of playing the martyr to the base. It’s the latter who are more dangerous. 

They’ve done a swell job of playing up the execution of the rule of law as illegitimate. By framing their responses as inviolable by declaring that Trump won and not recognizing the Biden administration as legitimate, they can continue broadcasting the lie to the forty some-odd million who voted for the guy and the potentially millions more not sick or dead from COVID who also buy into the bullshit. These are the paramilitary wannabes who could well be emboldened again to move toward violence. Maybe not at the Capitol, but maybe at a Democratic candidate’s campaign. 

Not to sound alarmist, but the division in this country is being increasingly framed and expressed in violent terminology, if not actions. 

Heather Cox Richardson draws parallels and lessons from what’s transpiring right now in Kazakhstan and Dan Rather’s trenchant observation deserves quoting:

“What we have seen in the wake of the last year is the “Big Lie” has only grown more central to the political gospel of much of the Republican Party. Rather than shock those who had normalized Donald Trump to their senses, the retellings of January 6 in the right-wing echo chambers have turned those who participated in a brazenly unpatriotic act into heroes who are somehow saving the country. In truth, these insurrectionists have disdain for the noble ambitions under which this nation was founded. 

There will be no shortage of commemorations for this day. But they will not be marked equally by this nation. The historical framing of this insurrection is already being stretched across our fractured political landscape. So it is not surprising that the fight for what to teach about January 6 has migrated to our classrooms. It is part of a larger movement to deny future generations a full account of our history in order to preserve the simple mythologies upon which many cling to assert their place of privilege. “

Additionally, Rather stresses that the present need not be prologue (read his piece, it’s far better than anything I’m writing and worth listening to a true elder), that much depends “on who shows up” in the coming days - to vote, to organize, to engage in the struggle for change for the better.

If I am not quite on the glass-half-full on this issue, maybe I should add some qualification. It might well be darker before it gets lighter. Along with Chomsky, decades ago, I tended to see the U.S. as a rogue state (our nation building exercises from the fifties well into the nineties came to a boil and a failure of imperial proportions with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan) and I’m tempted to say it is very much a failed state, but perhaps not quite. Nothing is ever totally dark or completely light in this world. Perhaps what will evolve out of this will be a restructuring or realignment of what the body politic will become. Perhaps something none of us can envision because the present is so confusing, ugly, and stupid. 

On the other hand, it may be that things will grow darker as the social fabric frays under the stress of antagonistic ideologies. The divisions in the country have perhaps, always been here, from the very founding of the republic. 

President Biden addressed the country today and was clear in his vision of who the perpetrators were (and are) and asked a simple question to those who support the former president, who think “the insurrection took place on Election Day”:  “Is that what you thought you were doing or did you think you were carrying out your highest duty as a citizen and voting?”

Sadly, many/most of those people would respond in the affirmative. After all the violence they perpetrated, the loss of life, the defecating in the halls of the Capitol and terror directed at elected leaders, I will lay odds that many of these people would say they would do it again and that those who weren’t there, would say the insurrectionists are patriots. This is what we have come to.

We are at an inflection point, to be sure. And we have been for some time which way gravity takes us depends not just on the results of a committee or even any sentencing that may follow in the wake of investigation. It depends on us. It depends on, as Dan Rather wrote, “who shows up.”

Further Reading/Notes

Barrett, John. Who we are. Dimensionally Barrett. http://dimensionallybarrett.blogspot.com/2021/01/who-we-are.html. January 7, 2021.

Chomsky, Noam. Rogue States - the Rule of Force in World Affairs. Haymarket Books. Chicago, IL. 2015. ISBN 978-1-60846-446-3.

Kennedy, Dan. https://dankennedy.net/2022/01/06/jan-6-2021/. January 6, 2022.

Rather, Dan and Kitchener, Eliot. “One Year Later…” The Steady. https://steady.substack.com/p/a-year-later. January 5, 2022.

Richardson, Heather Cox. Letters from an American. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-5-2021-744. January 6, 2022.