Remembering January 6th
Let's not imitate the Republican Party of the 21st century in the days ahead
By Sam Bellamy
There likely will be no gallows constructed at the Capitol tomorrow when Vice President Kamala Harris presides over certification of the 2024 presidential election results.
Armed men carrying zip ties in their back pockets won’t attack police officers, break through windows and doors and chant threats against the vice president or speaker of the House.
There will be no one carrying Confederate flags past statues of our nation’s former leaders, and no one will storm to the speaker’s podium wearing face paint or carrying a spear or sporting a fur hat with horns.
No one will urinate or defecate on the House floor or any other floor in the building.
These are some of the major differences between the Republican Party of the 21st century and the loyal opposition in the Democratic Party.
Maybe the main differences.
One side of our political divide harbors and nurtures the violent, the extreme, the unbalanced, the criminal and cheers them on in Charlottesville, on Jan. 6, on social media sites like X, in the nation’s newspapers and on its airwaves.
Behavior largely unseen since the 1930s and ‘40s in Nazi Germany is applauded, defended, made the subject of commemorative coins and fundraisers, and deemed worthy of a presidential pardon.
The other side of the divide, by and large, will act like lower-case democrats – or, if you must, DemoncRats, as some Republicans prefer.
As disappointed, as frustrated, as angry as they are about the outcome in November, Democratic lawmakers will vote to certify the results that return Donald Trump to the White House, and the people who put those lawmakers in office will accept that certification peacefully.
Yes, there are Democratic voters who insist the November election was rigged and that Harris actually won by a landslide. But, like the former “America’s mayor” with the runny hair dye (and principles), they provide no proof, only suspicion.
And there are Trump opponents, many of us, who credibly claim that Trump’s rise to the top is inarguably the result of a wave of misinformation and of the masterful, well-funded manipulation of the basest of human impulses. Impulses we’ve also not seen in such multitudes since the aforementioned Nazis.
Many, many Americans – the majority of us voted against Trump, after all – will continue to object to the overbearing presence of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, Kash Patel and all the others in our lives.
We’ll do so on social media, in letters to the editor, in tense conversations with red-hat wearing neighbors and relatives and on the streets of America.
Some of us may show up tomorrow, on the fourth anniversary of Trump’s orchestrated riot and literal shitshow at the Capitol, to make sure that that horrible and terrifying day in our nation’s history isn’t forgotten.
Some will show up to protest the results and show up again, probably in larger numbers, on the day Trump is sworn into office a second time.
The protests no doubt will continue, and perhaps grow ugly at times as Trump begins rounding up immigrants (and likely, in time, anyone who remotely resembles a dark-skinned person from another land) and as he begins implementing other heinous policies.
Some Trump opponents may choose violence and possibly bloodshed. The destruction of public and private property seems likely. It’s often the go-to for people who are angry and frustrated and feeling powerless.
We hope not.
When people who cherish democracy resort to imitating the actions of the horn-wearing, the face-painted, the fascist worshipping, the white power goons, the Jan. 6 mob, they push our nation closer to chaos, to disintegration, to the rise of something worse than probably even the Donald Trumps, Elon Musks, and Stephen Millers of our day can conceive.
Tomorrow and Jan. 20 and in the days ahead, let’s accept what happened but fight peacefully to change our course.
Any fool can lower or unzip his or her trousers and leave a “message.”
Let’s continue to shine a light on a path far better than that selected by the Republican Party of the 21st century.