Yoda,
the
Jedi Master, once told Luke
Skywalker that the future is
difficult to see because it’s
always in motion.
So too is
the past. Always in motion it is. Its
meaning. We can’t and don’t remember
everything even as we construct narratives
of meaning out of those things we can or
choose to remember.
William
Faulkner famously said the past isn’t dead
— it’s not even past. That’s most
certainly true of the now-infamous Capitol
riot in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s
defeat in November 2020.
America
is
yet again fighting for control
over the past with respect to the
January 6th riot in 2021. This
week at Fox News, Tucker Carlson suggested
the
rioters
were mostly peaceful respectful
sightseers. They revered the
Capitol! They took cheerful
selfies! They even queued in neat
little lines!
Image 1
Insurrectionist
goons, or peaceful protesters who revere the
Capitol?
Even
Republicans
like Mitch McConnell have gone on
record to denounce Carlson’s
cherry picking of the video
evidence. Here’s what McConnell had
to
say:
“It was a mistake, in my view, for
Fox News to depict this in a way
that’s completely at variance with
what our chief law enforcement
official here at the Capitol
thinks.” McConnell cited a letter
by the US Capitol Police that
described Carlson’s program as
being “filled with offensive and
misleading conclusions about the
January 6th attack.”
To state
the obvious: On controversial and
politicized issues like this, the past
doesn’t speak with one voice. Opportunists
seek to polarize the past. To exploit it
for their own purposes. This is true of
Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. It’s also
true of many Democrats.
The
January
6th riots were not an
insurrection. They were not a
coup. They were akin to mob
violence.
They most definitely were a
collective temper tantrum incited
by Trump that led to considerable
chaos and violence. The person
most responsible for them should
be punished. That person, Donald
Trump, walked away scot-free.
My
immediate
reaction
to
the
Capitol riots (written on January
7th) still holds true, I think:
Once
again, America will likely take
the wrong lessons from these
riots. The Capitol police will
likely call for more money, more
resources, more officers, more
guns, more security cameras,
more barricades, etc. There are
already calls for more Internet
censorship.
Homeland Security funding will
surely get a boost. And certain
people will dismiss too easily
the alienation and indignation
of Trump supporters.
What
I mean is this: Americans are
upset. Angry. Alienated.
Confused. And rightly so. And
until our government serves the
people instead of corporate,
financial, and similar lobbyists
and special interests, the
potential for future mobs will
remain. Donald Trump is a total
buffoon, a shell of a man, a
narcissist with ambitions
centered always on himself and
his self-image. But imagine a
more skilled manipulator, one
less narrowly focused on
himself, one with a stronger
work ethic, one with boundless
ambition for power. Such a
person could truly lead an
insurrection or coup, and
yesterday’s scenes suggest such
a takeover would be easier than
we think.
Predictably,
in
the aftermath of the riots, the
Capitol police did indeed get more
money and resources, with House
Democrats approving $1.9
billion
for
added
security. Democrats under Joe
Biden now sell themselves as the
party of law and order, of
expanded police forces (along with
exploding Pentagon budgets and
unanimous support of war-related
aid to Ukraine in excess of $100
billion). They paint Republicans
as dangerous, as undemocratic,
even as an enemy within. Trump,
most recently at CPAC, gleefully
returns the favor, using similar
inflammatory rhetoric.
Meanwhile,
as
Trump angles and preens for
another presidential run,
supporters of his who bought the
big lie of a stolen election and
protested at the Capitol on
January 6th are being hounded by
prosecutors. Yes, some of the
rioters were violent, broke laws,
and merit prosecution and
punishment. But in many cases the
federal pursuit and prosecution of
these “deplorables” has been
over-the-top, notes Chris
Hedges.
Their punishment has been grossly
disproportionate to their crimes.
This may
help the Democrats politically, but it is
unhealthy for our democracy, notes Hedges:
The
cheer leading, or at best
indifference, by Democratic
Party supporters and much of the
left to these show trials will
come back to haunt them. We are
exacerbating the growing
tribalism and political
antagonisms that will
increasingly express themselves
through violence. We are
complicit, once again, of using
the courts to carry out
vendettas. We are corroding
democratic institutions. We are
hardening the ideology and rage
of the far-right. We are turning
those being hounded to prison
into political prisoners and
martyrs. We are moving ever
closer towards tyranny.
Hedges is
right here. The Democrats and Republicans
have been twisting, manipulating, and
polarizing the past for their own
purposes. Two diametrically opposed
versions of the January 6th riots have
been presented to the American people, and
they are both self-serving and dishonest.
Clearly,
Trump was the inciter-in-chief of mob
violence from which he casually walked
away. The Congress impeached him but
otherwise refused to act. The Capitol
police profited from its ineptitude even
as the “deplorables,” Trump’s
foot-soldiers, paid the price for his lies
and tantrums. And so the past is warped
and twisted, bludgeoned and misused, to
serve the needs of the already powerful.
Against
the Dark Side of American politics and
“justice,” even Yoda might lose hope.
