A year ago today, a mob determined to intimidate Vice President Mike Pence and Congress into delaying the certification of the 2020 presidential election descended upon the Capitol from the Ellipse, where President Donald Trump had falsely told them, “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide.”
While not everyone who marched on the Capitol that day planned to commit violence, many did, as evinced by the hockey sticks, wrenches, and baseball bats seen throughout the crowd. When this violent element was met with completely justified and restrained resistance from law enforcement, a riot broke out. Over 140 law enforcement officers were injured, over $2 million in damage was done to the Capitol building, and one rioter was shot dead.
What happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was not a peaceful protest. The violence committed that day was absolutely criminal, which is why the arrests of over 700 rioters by the FBI are completely justified, as is their continued prosecution by the Department of Justice.
Congress has also already held dozens of hearings into the communication and leadership failures that happened leading up to and on Jan. 6. This is not an event that has been forgotten or swept under the rug. Those that committed violence are being held accountable, and law enforcement agencies have implemented reforms to make sure they are not caught outnumbered like that ever again.
As damaging as the Capitol riot was, however, far too many on the Left are making it an obsession that inhibits rational thought. The New York Times editorial board, for example, apparently believes that “every day is Jan. 6 now.”
“The Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends,” The New York Times says of the Republican Party. The New York Times editors apparently forgot an entire summer of violence by left-wing rioters in dozens of cities, explicitly designed to bring about political change.
“Over the past year, Republican lawmakers in 41 states have been trying to advance the goals of the Jan. 6 rioters — not by breaking laws but by making them,” The New York Times continues. “Thus the Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country, in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court.”
And this is how The New York Times morphs the very real and deplorable violence of a few individuals on one day into a condemnation of almost half the country for merely participating in the civic process of legislation. Remember those chants of “lock her up”? That’s what the New York Times editors are now saying about people who disagree with them on policy. “It’s a shame we can’t just lock them all up, lawmakers and governors included, because of something a few hundred completely unrelated people did a year ago.”
This belief that Jan. 6 is a prism through which the entire world must be understood shares many of the same characteristics as a cult. Cultists are said to have a low tolerance for ambiguity, a strong desire for absolute answers, and a pervasive “us vs. them” mentality. There is even an apocalyptic element thrown in when this “every day is Jan. 6 now” mentality is applied to future elections.
“I’m worried that if Republicans win in the midterm elections, that voting as we know it in this country will be gone,” California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell told MSNBC this week. “This is not only the most important election, but if we don’t get it right, it could be the last election.”
Suggesting that a Republican victory this November would be the end of our constitutional republic is crazy cultist talk. Democrats tried to run on fearmongering about Trump in Virginia in 2021, and they failed. If Democrats want to run on this message again in 2022, if they want to make Jan. 6 an “every day” concern in the midterm elections, then good luck with that.
“A healthy, functioning political party faces its electoral losses by assessing what went wrong and redoubling its efforts to appeal to voters the next time,” the same New York Times editorial reads. The New York Times, and the Democratic Party that it supports, really need to look in the mirror.
