The Moment We Lost The Plot

It has never been easy for me to write about January 6th.

Even standing in the crowd that day to cover the chaos, I found getting the first reports out to be a real struggle. First, thanks to the mass of the raging mob or perhaps heavy law enforcement technology, the Internet was blocked. It was a challenge to send videos and messages documenting what was happening in front of me. But, in addition to dealing with these concrete logistics, I had to overcome pure disbelief. Did I really see people climbing the walls? Were Nick Fuentes Groyper’s flags really hanging from the windows of the US Capitol? What happened to the police?

The stunning realization of how things had spiraled out of control stopped me for a second. My mind raced to process what was playing out in front of me. I don’t think I ever fully returned to the state of reality I had before those insane scenes. I don’t think any of us did.

Immediately afterwards, I had a hard time grasping the magnitude of it. As an eyewitness and journalist, I felt a real burden. I had to express not only how far we had moved from any notion of law and order, but also how much more violent it could have been.

This urgency became an annoying weight as it quickly began to seem like much of the country was eager to move on or ignore the hard truths of the moment. The tendency of many to look away and move on to the ultimately interstitial and liminal moment of Joe Biden’s presidency was exacerbated by the fact that there was an entire campaign devoted to rewriting and reversing the basic facts of what happened. The attack on our government was quickly matched by an attack on our collective memory that portrayed that day as by turns harmless, staged, or even heroic. The task of these propagandists was made even easier because much of Washington’s leadership demonstrated a reluctance to identify and punish the members of Congress, the various crooks, and the dark money groups that formed the political arm of the January 6 Movement.

Like so many other investigators, lawyers and whistleblowers, I have been swimming against the tide for years. Along with other journalists, including here at TPM, I have diligently tried to fact-check the most blatant lies, expose the many direct links between the rioters on the ground and President Trump, and even disclose evidence that official investigations have failed to present publicly. On other somber anniversaries, I have also tried to counter the blatantly and ridiculously false narrative that this was some kind of peaceful, positive protest by recounting the terror I felt in that crowd. Ultimately, these efforts failed. The narrative, at least for now, has been completely and radically rewritten under the pen of Trump’s pardon.

January 6 was not the first tragedy of the Trump era. By the time he incited crowds to march toward the Capitol, the president had already presided over the separation of children and a chaotic response to the pandemic that had claimed countless lives. This was clearly not the last Trumpian outrage, either. His second term was marked by the systematic dismantling of the federal workforce, the fraying of the social fabric, and the subversion of the country’s long-standing legal traditions. The masked officer rule has taken over in the courts.

This shows how Trump and his allies are willing to ignore democracy and their almost limitless and completely shameless ability to lie. It also revealed the extent to which they had mobilized the Internet’s most extreme subcultures to – in some cases literally – break down all the barricades protecting our democratic traditions.

Yet all these years after the word “unprecedented” essentially lost all meaning, the attack on the Capitol feels like a moment where a very particular line was crossed. This shows how Trump and his allies are willing to ignore democracy and their almost limitless and completely shameless ability to lie. It also revealed the extent to which they had mobilized the Internet’s most extreme subcultures to – in some cases literally – break down all the barricades protecting our democratic traditions. And the aftermath proved how many of our checks and balances were essentially checked.

Over the past week, Trump’s violent and often absurd attacks on the old order have taken on a new international dimension with his invasion of Venezuela, the removal of that country’s dictator, and his declaration that America would now seize the oil fields and run the show there. As always, this situation shows no signs of stopping, and similar threats are now escalating against Greenland and Mexico. It is difficult for me not to think that there is a connection between the excesses of that era and the current military frenzy.

January 6 was, for me, the moment we lost ground. This was a significant step in the erosion of our core values. This emboldened Trump’s violent authoritarian movement and allowed him to continue on his path. The doors were forced open.

Many observers have examined Trump’s actions in Venezuela and argued that they are just a more blatant version of centuries-old US imperialism. They are not wrong. Yet somehow Trump manages to take our country’s worst tendencies and amplify them to an absurd degree.

As I found myself once again faced with this anniversary and struggling to find the right words about January 6, I sought inspiration from one of the greats, Hunter S. Thompson. I pulled out his Gonzo Papers and came across a 1990 column in which he assessed the legacy of Richard Nixon. Thompson recounted how, in a 1974 editorial, he attempted to skewer the cruder tendencies of the political class by launching what he described as an “ironic” and “far-fetched scenario” that the country would solve its problems in the Middle East by “simply grabbing the oil” from the Middle East. Shortly thereafter, Thompson noted that the Nixon administration had transformed what he thought was a far-fetched vision of “invading the Middle East to seize Arab oil” into “a definitive policy option.”

“Nixon was a monument to everything that was rotten about the American dream – he was a monument to why it failed,” Thompson wrote. “He is our monument.”

Of course, in the years since Thompson published this article, the idea of ​​an oil invasion has become a reality. Nixon, in hindsight, becomes an early innovator of the bold ideas that Trump takes in absurd new directions.

Trump and his gilded, misshapen White House are monuments to the feverish night sweats that tore us away from the American dream. He is our monument – ​​and January 6 is his national holiday.