Vote to honor our common humanity, every chance you get
January 6, 2023•399 words
Today marks two years since the awful, tragic, menacing assault on the United States Capitol by paramilitary extremists and a radicalized mob.
We now know—from hundreds of criminal prosecutions, plea bargains and trials, hundreds of thousands of documents, an exhaustive Congressional investigation, and sworn testimony—that the violent insurrection was part of a coordinated attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power. The aim of the Capitol attackers was to use menace and force to prevent the formal Congressional certification of the Electoral College vote count. The insurrection of January 6, 2021, was an attempted overthrow of electoral democracy in the United States.
In December, the bipartisan House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection issued its final report. Also in December, Congress passed crucial amendments to the Electoral Count Act of 1887, to prevent Trump or anyone else weaponizing it again to block the peaceful transfer of power.
Much of the reckoning has yet to come:
New evidence came to light only last month that documents were illegally destroyed and meetings were illegally kept out of official records.
978 people have been criminally charged so far, but those convicted are mostly lower-level participants who acted violently.
Some have been convicted of Seditious Conspiracy.
The most powerful people connected to the plot have yet to be criminally charged.
A Special Prosecutor has been named, to ensure prosecutorial independence from the Attorney General, and the bipartisan January 6 Committee has referred the former president for prosecution.
Everything we aspire to be, as a self-governing society, requires that we consistently vote to honor our common humanity. Core to that basic responsibility is preventing tyrants and gangsters from seizing power.
Much of the performative chaos disrupting the House of Representatives this week is directly attributable to the fact that the House Republican Leadership did not move to hold Trump and his enablers accountable for obstructing the peaceful Constitutional transition. Instead, they marginalized and punished—through use of office and through use of campaign funds and party procedure—those who stood honorably against tyranny and corruption.
Yesterday, one member of the United States House of Representatives, who was openly supportive of the effort to block the peaceful transfer of power, nominated Trump to serve as Speaker of the House. It may be a sign that this menacing corruption is out of favor that Trump received only one glaringly solitary vote.
May it be the last.