January 6, Three Years On

A look back at 2021.

On the sixth of January 2021, Donald John Trump tried to overthrow the government. He incited an insurrection: whipping up his MAGA horde into a frenzy, encouraging them to besiege the Capitol, and sitting on his smelly ass doing nothing as innocent people died. As I said three years ago: it was the worst attack on our democracy since Booth shot Lincoln.

The coup failed, like most things Trump tries. His own pathetic cowardice contributed to that failure. The Capitol police held the line. The deranged and hellbent besieger Ashli Babbitt was shot dead, frightening the less committed MAGA. Member of Congress survived unscathed. Mike Pence refused to go along with the scheme. Despite the efforts of Trump’s lieutenants and a gaggle of seditious senators, the vote was certified. Even Republican stalwarts like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell condemned Trump and the insurrection. Justice prevailed.

But things could just as easily have gone south. Pence could have ignored the advice of Dan Quayle and the lecture by his son—or he could have been hanged before he even got to make the call. The besiegers could have been armed with assault rifles and mowed down Capitol police. Nancy Pelosi could have been in her office when it was breached. The pipe bomb outside the Democratic Party headquarters could have exploded while VP-Elect Kamala Harris was there. Trump could have shown up at Capitol Hill to heroically lead his MAGA army, instead of soiling his diaper while he cravenly watched the events unfold on cable news.

The truth is, we got lucky.

To mark the third anniversary of the failed insurrection, I went back and looked at some of the pieces I posted in January of 2021. At the time, my primary concern was that Trump be impeached and removed immediately, before he could further damage the country; we got the former but not the latter, and are still paying the price. There was also a rumored MAGA march on January 19, a sequel to the insurrection I was worried about, that never materialized. President Biden’s inauguration came off without a hitch. There were some things I got wrong, of course; some people, like Sidney Powell’s associate Lin Wood, who wound up being not as important as I thought at the time. But most of what I wrote three years ago has stood the test of time.

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The first January 2021 piece, “Trump and Punishment,” a meditation on the aforementioned John Wilkes Booth and traitors, includes this excerpt:

Andrew Johnson’s failure to properly punish the traitors—and make no mistake: Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and their Confederates were all stinking traitors, the vilest in American history—has ripple effects to this day. There is a thruline from the half-assed Reconstruction to Ford pardoning Nixon, and from there to Obama not investigating Bush and Cheney for war crimes.

This is what we do in this country. We repeat the same mistake, over and over and over. We let the bad guys off the hook. The traitors. The murderers. The thieves. The confidence men. The so-called “white collar” criminals. All escape with a slap on the wrist. And if history is our guide, that’s exactly what will happen to the despotic Donald John Trump and his gaggle of venal collaborators—some of whom he has already pardoned!

We cannot—we must not—allow that to happen. The crimes are too serious, the damage to the country and the world too great. For the soul of the nation to survive, we must recognize the crimes of the President and his co-conspirators for what they are: a coordinated attack on our democracy. Trump’s attempt to extort the Georgia Secretary of State to steal the election is only the most recent in a long line of examples.

It’s difficult to wrap our minds around this, I’ll allow. This level of sedition, practiced by this many politicians, has not been seen in this country since the 1860s.

What’s notable is that I wrote that on January 5, 2021—the day before the insurrection. I was already convinced that Trump was a clear and present danger to our democracy. Was he ever!

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The first PREVAIL piece after the insurrection, “Trump Crusaders, On the March,” posted on January 8, 2021. By then, I had moved beyond the Civil War and had the Crusades on the brain:

WHAT WE NOW KNOW as the Fourth Crusade began in 1199, when a troop of rough-and-tumble French noblemen—the MAGA of their day—heeded the new Pope’s call to liberate the Holy Land from the infidels.

The endeavor was bankrolled by the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, who was in his eighties and almost blind—a decrepit mob boss, basically. Using what amounted to early-13th-century psyops, the Doge managed to convince the Frenchmen that before they attacked Jerusalem, they should first lay siege to Constantinople. This made zero sense to the self-righteous Crusaders, because Constantinople was a Christian city—the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Why should they make war with other Christians? But the Doge needed this to happen: the Byzantine emperor owed him a lot of money, and this was an excellent opportunity to use borrowed muscle to collect on the debt.

Constantinople was famously impregnable: surrounded by difficult-to-navigate waters on three sides, and defended on the fourth by a series of unscalable walls, of the kind Trump never managed to build. Even Attila the Hun took one look at the place and kept heading West. But in April of 1204, the Doge and his French brute squad managed. They landed their ships on the perilous shore, and the Byzantine guardsmen helped them penetrate the city walls.

Once inside, the Crusaders lay waste to the greatest city in the world, slaughtering its citizens, raping its women, burning its buildings (including the great library), destroying its precious artwork, and stealing whatever they could get their grimy hands on. As one historian put it: “There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.” That this unspeakable horror was committed in the name of Jesus Christ did not escape the notice of the Pope, who was livid when he heard the news. “Whoever suggested such a thing to you,” he wrote, “and how did they lead your mind astray?” The Pope’s C.Y.A. tone was similar to Mitch McConnell’s on Wednesday night.

Before Trump came along, back when I was still writing fiction, I spent a good year and a half working on a historical novel about the Byzantine Empire. This was a robust civilization that for seven centuries was the center of Medieval Christendom, the cultural capital of the Western world. And now? Most people are only vaguely acquainted with its name. Its greatest contribution to modern society is probably the word icon.

When empires fall, they fall fast.

I’ve thought about the Fourth Crusade a lot these last few days—since the motley MAGA army of smirking cosplay insurrectionists stormed the U.S Capitol. The Constantinopolitans surely knew that the three emperors who held the throne from 1199 to 1204—Alexius III, whom the Doge installed; the Trumpy Alexius IV, who robbed the treasury and fled; Alexius V, the Mike Pence-like sap who was left holding the bag—were bumblers. But I’m sure they did not realize, as they prepared for Easter that fateful year, that their city was on the verge of being destroyed—that life, as they knew it, was over.

The Crusades, and the Fourth Crusade specifically, remain a valid comp. Like the French soldier class of the 11th century, MAGA was susceptible to powerful disinformation campaigns. To this day, the fervor of Trump’s most loyal supporters is more religious than logical—which is why common sense, reason, and cogent arguments don’t get through to them. Those who believe they’re right are always more dangerous than those who think they are. You can’t argue with faith.

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By January 11, writing in DAME Magazine, I was coming to terms with what happened and what should be done about it. Here are the last three paragraphs:

This is what sedition looks like. We throw that word around casually, and Trump’s allies overuse it to dilute its effect. But that’s what that was. We just experienced a viable attempt by a lame-duck president and his supporters to overthrow the government. Anyone involved with this must be indicted, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

And that’s why impeachment should move forward, even after Trump’s term of office ends. After January 20, he will no longer enjoy the protections of the presidency. He will be a private citizen, compelled like the rest of us to testify under oath. That impeachment trial could—and should—function as a commission for the besieging. Call Hawley to the stand, and ask why he saluted the insurrectionists. Call Cruz and ask what prompted him to give that speech. Call Brooks and Boebert. Call Giuliani and grill him like a well-done Mar-a-Lago burger patty. Call Junior and Ivanka and Eric. Call Lin Wood and Mike Flynn and Roger Stone. Call Pence.

After four years of lies, we’re due for a bracing dose of truth.

Some of the January 6 planners were indeed convicted of seditious conspiracy, and will be in prison for years to come (unless Trump wins and pardons them). But we have yet to hear from Hawley or Cruz or Brooks or Boebert or Giuliani or Wood or Flynn or Stone or Pence or Trump’s three oldest spawn. And, to their great and eternal shame, enough Republican senators voted to acquit the instigator of the greatest attack on our democracy in 16 decades that Trump remains at large: the Republican frontrunner.

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The third of my January 2021 pieces about the insurrection, “Capitol Records,” posted on January 15—five days before Biden’s inauguration. For reasons of space, I’m going to skip over the middle part, about the composition of the people who participated in the insurrection and the fact that it happened during the pandemic, and run the rest of the piece here:

WHEN JOHN WILKES BOOTH shot Abraham Lincoln, he exclaimed, “Sic semper tyrannis.” That is the state motto of Virginia, and it means, “Thus always to tyrants.” Booth fervently believed that the democratically-elected President of the United States was a power-mad despot, and that, by killing him, he was liberating his countrymen from tyranny. In his sick mind, he was a hero. In reality, he was an angry white supremacist, radicalized by false grievance: MAGA 1.0. He fell for the Big Lie of the 1860s—just as his spiritual descendants fell for the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from their Führer, Donald John Trump.

I keep referencing the mid-nineteenth century because the Civil War is the only precedent in our nation’s history to what’s happening right now. “Stupid Watergate,” we jokingly called it, but Trump has gone far beyond the wildest excesses of Richard Nixon. The republic is under attack—present tense. The peaceful transition of power, which took place even in 1860, is in jeopardy. Troops are bivouacked in the Capitol. The lame-duck president, an inveterate criminal, wants to remain in office, mostly to avoid prosecution. Whether motivated by cynical political calculation, rank delusion, authoritarian radicalism, coercion, or fear for their family’s lives, the lion’s share of a once-proud political party—ironically, the Party of Lincoln—has thrown in with him. Republicans failed to remove Trump a year ago; 400,000 Americans¹ are dead because of their failure. Granted a second chance to do the right thing, most of the GOP balked.

Last Wednesday, a coup attempt came a hair’s breadth away from succeeding. The collaborators sought to, first, stop the electoral votes from being counted, because Trump had been told, wrongly, that this would prevent Joe Biden from taking office (by the same lousy low-rent lawyer who wrote the Kamala Harris birther attack in Newsweek!); and second, hunt down and execute Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and possibly Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley, so that Trump could resign and be pardoned by unctuous lapdog Mike Pompeo, who as Secretary of State is fourth in line to the presidency. If the second part sounds conspiratorial, I ask: Why else had Q whisperer Lin Wood called for the VP’s execution? Why else were there gallows erected outside? Why else would the Secret Service have whisked Pence away? The besiegers were seeking out Mike Pence, and they were seeking out Nancy Pelosi—and they made it into the latter’s offices, terrorizing her young staffers, smashing her mirror, and making off with her fucking laptop. What do we think these berserkers would have done if they had found her there? Shared a pot of tea? Binged Downton Abbey? Quilted?

Again: January 6 was an attempt to do harm to leaders in the presidential line of succession. This is no small thing. It’s not something we can gloss over because of “unity.” It’s the worst attack by secessionists since Lee surrendered. And only by the grace of God, and the heroic acts of police like Eugene Goodman, were we spared a bloodbath.

That coup attempt was instigated by a number of powerful players, including the President, members of his family, his personal attorney, two sitting Senators, a cabal of seditious House Representatives, various and sundry alt-right personalities, and the wife of a sitting Supreme Court Justice. Three sitting Congressmen coordinated with the event’s organizer. At least one, Lauren Boebert, tweeted out Pelosi’s location during the besieging, directly violating orders by the security detail. The day before, members of Congress allegedly gave a recon tour of the warren of hallways in the Senate to some of the attackers, who came with schematic maps and seemed to know exactly where to go to find key individuals. Even now, with additional security members in place, some gun-happy members of Congress, all vocal supporters of “Stop the Steal,” are refusing to walk through metal detectors. Rep. Madison “Dr. Strangelove as a Young Man” Cawthorn claims he was packing heat during the besieging; given his lusty support of “Stop the Steal,” Donald John Trump, Adolf Hitler, and firearms, we should be grateful he didn’t take out Pelosi himself.

Certainly there were people on the inside with some inkling of what was happening. Ali Alexander, the alt-right dipshit who helped organize the “Stop the Steal” rally, confessed that three members of Congress helped him plan the event: Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, and Paul Gosar. This remarkable video by the photojournalist Sandi Bachom shows that the attack on the Capitol was well orchestrated; group leaders with megaphones issued commands, which the rank-and-file followed. And the police did not arrive on the scene until it was too late:

NowThis @nowthisnews

‘Senators evacuated the building! Now or never! … Bring the line forward!’ Journalist @sandibachom embedded herself in the Capitol riot and captured what she believes was a ’rehearsed and orchestrated’ attack

And here we are.

It took a besieging of the Capitol for Nancy Pelosi to mobilize for a second impeachment. But mobilize she did. Indeed, the House went from being attacked by the MAGA terrorists to voting to impeach the President in less than a week. There are many reasons for pursuing this path to its conclusion, but one of the most obvious is to get the traitors on record. History will show that contemptible scoundrels like Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Devin Nunes, and Elise Stefanik voted to keep the tyrant in power. . . .

The events of January 6 comprised an attack on our republic, the likes of which have not befallen this nation since the Civil War. And the perpetrators of this ghastly crime, this desecration of our sacred space, must not get off lightly—even if all they did was wander around the halls, even if they are a high school gymnastics coach and this was a first offense.

As I see it, the (mostly white) men and women who participated in the besieging of the Capitol waived their U.S. citizenship the instant they penetrated the building. It is one thing to peacefully protest outside—that is lawful and protected. But once the Rubicon was crossed, these secessionists became not Americans but enemy combatants. They should be treated accordingly. It would be ironic if the QAnon crew, who for years have promised to send the Clintons, the Obamas, and Rick Wilson (for some reason) to Gitmo, wound up there themselves.

Me, I hold with these sentiments:

On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic. 

Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.

I will vote to impeach the President.

The Squad-loving radical socialist member of Congress who wrote those stirring words? Liz Cheney, one of just ten House Republicans who voted to impeach. Strange bedfellows indeed!

Trump is a petty, greedy despot who has egregiously violated, again and again, his promise to defend the United States. Now he has instigated a coup. He must be removed from office, prosecuted for his heinous crimes, and remanded to ADX Florence for the rest of his miserable life.

Thus always to tyrants.

I believed that then, and I believe it now. The only thing that has changed in the last three years is that Trump has embraced the role of tyrant, encouraging comparisons to Adolf Hitler, and making plans to turn the presidency into a dictatorship. As such, he’s a figure both Lincoln and Booth would have reviled.

By next January, we’ll know if the country has succumbed to this MAGA cancer, or excised the Trump tumor once and for all. If we choose wrong in November, we won’t get another chance.

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Photo credit: Voice of America. Trump speaking at the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021.

1. Dead of covid.