Reflections on January 6, 2021, Three Years later
To an objective political observer, admittedly an endangered species as, among other things, he or she would need to have been either politically neutral or supportive of political movements with no chance of attaining or sharing in political power, January 6, 2021 was a reaction against a series of real insurrections that began more than four years earlier, insurrections which began during early November of 2016 when the leadership of the Democratic Party orchestrated a slow motion coup. A coup orchestrated in conjunction with most of the corporate media, the outgoing Obama administration, a large portion of the federal bureaucracy (especially the intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice), a significant portion of the judiciary at both state and federal levels and traditionalist members of the Republican Party (who vehemently opposed their party’s candidate). The insurrection, in large part involved a quest for autocratic power by political professionals tied to the military-industrial-intelligence complex but included many decent citizens who were terrified of the president-elect, both because of the successful media campaign against him as well as because of his “shoot-himself-in-the foot pomposity, belligerence and immaturity.
The insurrection was clear and obvious on January 20, 2017, inauguration day, when massive demonstrations against the new president were held in diverse parts of the country but especially in the capital, Washington, D.C., seeking to disorder the inauguration where the “protestors” swore to do everything in their power to disrupt the new administration, asserting that the new president was not their president. Unlike the events of January 6, 2021, those efforts were carefully coordinated, orchestrated, funded and organized with former attorney general Eric Holder as the point person. Mr. Holder had been charged by the outgoing president, Barak Obama, to lead a “civic” organization purportedly engaged in coordinating large scale, full time activities to “promote democracy”. As important as the Holder led organization was the attack on the new president launched by the Democratic Party in Congress and through the bureaucracy alleging that Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election had been due to illegal foreign interference by the Russian Federation. In the federal bureaucracy, the insurrection was stimulated through a series of continuing leaks of both classified information and rumors, most of which lacked serious merit. Finally, concurrently with the foregoing, an ongoing series of nationwide violent disturbances, including takeovers of government property were coordinated with the assistance of local elected officials, purportedly in protest of police abuse of power resulting in the deaths of a number of people who were apparently, but not always, involved in illegal activities.
Supporters of the newly elected president watched all of the foregoing in dismay, protesting the lack of related enforcement of applicable laws and, concurrently, the whole country was put through the spectacle in Congress and in the Justice Department referred to as Russiagate. The new president was accused of violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution because his long established businesses continued to operate and a number of his supporters were promptly indicted by a hostile Department of Justice as unregistered foreign agents under rules that apparently did not apply to his political opponents. They still don’t. Nor, apparently, does the emoluments clause.
During the 2020 electoral cycle, as evidenced in information that became public when Elon Musk acquired Twitter, all the major social media platforms, major portions of the federal bureaucracy (especially the intelligence agencies and Department of Justice), all conspired to obfuscate evidence unfavorable to the incumbent’s opponent in the presidential election and to promote disinformation unfavorable to the incumbent, as well as to deprive the incumbent of access to most major media, social as well as corporate. In addition, purportedly based on measures required to avoid the consequences of the Covid 19 pandemic, most states controlled by Democratic Party affiliated governors relaxed restrictions designed to avoid electoral fraud by expanding access to both receipt and return of electoral ballots through mass mailing without required voter requests, and enabling their return, not by voters but by third parties, something anathema worldwide in states that seek to promote electoral integrity and avoid a market in votes.
The result of the foregoing was that an important plurality of the electorate lost confidence in the electoral results, especially when a barrage of mail-in ballots, many harvested by third parties and subject to discrepancies involving dates and signature verification, arrived at the last instant changing the anticipated electoral results. The foregoing seemed especially egregious in elections in the State of Georgia were many residents of foreign states were encouraged to move their voting domicile to Georgia in order to permit them to vote there. While problematic the issue became acute when a runoff was required in elections to the Senate and it was suspected that voters who had already cast ballots in other states, moved their voting domicile and were allegedly permitted to vote in the second round of the elections, although they’d not been registered in the first round. Numerous complaints of voting irregularities and improprieties were lodged all over the country but, in stark contrast to the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, the vast majority of such complaints were dismissed on procedural grounds and few were in fact investigated, exacerbating the suspicion that the election had been “rigged”.
On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump was still president of the United States and called for massive but peaceful protests, much the way the Democratic Party did in 2017, but also, to assure that protests did not get out of line, he urged that federal troops be deployed to protect the Capitol, an offer rejected by the Democratic Party leaders who controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the United States infiltration of political and civic movements by local, state and federal agents has become normal and the groups that organized the proposed protests for January 6 were thoroughly infiltrated, apparently not only by agents charged with gathering intelligence, but by agents provocateur who apparently participated in encouraging some of the protesters to invade the Capitol grounds in order to delay certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election by the Democratic Party controlled Senate while a member of the Republican Party still served as that bodies presiding officer. Apparently, some hoped that the vice president would order an investigation of the claims of electoral fraud and delay the certification but in that, they were very mistaken. A small group broke off from the massive protests and apparently, in many cases with the assistance of Capitol police, invaded the Capitol seeking to occupy it. Something not common but not unheard of either in other protests during the past century. To many of them, the Capitol represented the most appropriate site to engage in political protest, but some of them crossed the line and engaged in ludicrous activities as though they were souvenir shopping or engaging in photo sessions. There was some violence but the only serious violence was that taken by federal agents and police against the trespassers, in one case, involving what appeared to be the type of abusive taking of life which had led to the prior year’s Black Lives Matter protests. It is interesting to reflect on the purported terror the trespassers caused among the members of Congress present, members from both parties, members despised by most of the electorate with an approval rating at the time of only 20%. That approval rating is now even lower. Perhaps they have good cause to fear the electorate which, however, while disapproving heartily of Congress as a whole, keeps reelecting the same people in their own districts.
The consequences of the protests and trespass on January 6, 2021 were completely different than the reactions to myriad protests during the prior four years, many of which involved violence and takeover of government property on a long term basis, but few if any charges or prosecutions. Instead of investigating the allegations of electoral irregularities which led to the protests concerning the results of the 2020 elections, many of the protestors as well as the trespassers were charged with serious crimes, with many prosecuted, found guilty and, if they dared to fight the charges, sentenced to lengthy periods of incarceration. The fact that they honestly believed they were performing their duty to protect the Constitution was, despite constitutional guarantees and especially the provisions of the Declaration of Independence, deemed irrelevant. As was the comparison with the activities of the four prior years.
The last three years have done nothing to diminish the absence of faith in the legitimacy of the electoral system. Indeed, flagrant attempts to defeat democratic (small “d”) support for the ex-president have increased, with the full weight of the judicial system at both the state and federal level, both the penal and civil systems, weaponized to prevent the former president, who leads all the presidential polls, from returning to power; to prevent him from even appearing on presidential ballots. That, of course, reinforces rather than diminishes the certainty among those who believe that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen”, that they were right, and that those involved in the disturbances at the Capitol three years ago were brave patriots fighting to preserve, rather than to overthrow democracy.
Many believe (with cause) that the electoral systems in purported democracies all over the world are unreliable, and that includes many in the United States. They may well be right. They are probably right. Even if votes are actually counted accurately, as to which there is now serious doubt, manipulation by the corporate media, social media, the bureaucracy and the judicial system has become fairly obvious. That is a systemic problem in a system where selection of members of the judiciary is a thoroughly politicized process and where self-serving billionaires not only control all media, but own it, and have the technological tools to completely manipulate it.
The issue of a downward spiral involving geese and ganders is now very concerning. If Mr. Trump regains power, what happens next? The bureaucracy is so thoroughly entrenched, as is the judiciary, that attempts to reform them would require massive dismissals, something that the courts could easily obstruct for at least four years. Calling for a new constitutional convention may be an answer, but the specter of declaration of a state of insurrection, martial law and the emergence of a permanent, formal dictatorship seems all too likely. The former may be the case regardless of who wins given that another election deemed stolen may well lead to a real insurrection, and as Abraham Lincoln taught us, the only way to deal with real insurrections is through an autocratic dictatorship. Not that we’re all that far from such a situation now.
Donald Trump is not the cause of the foregoing problems, although he may well be a catalyst. It is hard to understand, given his personality and mannerisms, how so many voters support him, but they do. And, as in the case of so many who vote for Democratic Party candidates although they loath them and their policies, many Trump supporters support him, I strongly suspect, because they loath the party of perpetual war, ever increasing defense and intelligence budgets, foreign intervention and polarizing woke policies, the Democratic Party. And because in both cases, although other options exist (in this electoral cycle, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West come to mind), they are frozen out of the quest for power by the corporate media and the duopolous dictatorship under which we’ve lived all of our lives.
As an aside, one wonders how those who celebrate the 4th of July can feel so opposed to political insurrections by citizens who honestly believe in the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence celebrated on such date. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, believed that such reactions were healthy and ought to take place at least every twenty years. While to me that seems extreme, given our current polarization and the extent to which our civil and political liberties are being curtailed, I acknowledge that populist reactions from both the left and right wings of the political spectrum appear to have reached a boiling point. Given this sad state of affairs, one obvious to those of us who live abroad but apparently invisible to too many of those who live in the United States, the future certainly bodes ill for the United States, but as far as most of the world is concerned, that may not be a bad thing.
Things on which to reflect, seven plus years after the start of the successful Democratic Party insurrection of 2017.
_______
© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.