January 6: An American Day of Fate
PLUS: Why Donald Trump will be defeated in 2024
“Schicksaltag” means day of fate in German, and it refers specifically to November 9 when on five different occasions seismic events occurred that changed the destiny of Germany for all time. There is a powerful lesson to be learned from the “Day of Fate” as Americans observe the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Perhaps it makes sense to view it as an American Day of Fate that is still unfolding with an ending that is yet unwritten.
The events of January 6 are the most thoroughly documented coup attempt in world history. Every second of it was captured on camera. Donald Trump’s lies and incitements, along with those of his co-conspirators are all captured on video, and yet even indisputable evidence is disputable in this age of misinformation.
There are two things that are true together. Roughly 130 people have been convicted for the attack against America on January 6, with another 730 who have pled guilty to charges, while support for the attack has risen within the Republican Party.
This is a terrifying development because it means that, at a fundamental level, overthrowing the government has become a central plank of the GOP/MAGA party. The extremist movement as a whole is better funded, organized and motivated today than it was on January 5, 2001. Nearly every major American company that pledged it would stop donating millions to support candidates who denied an election result, voted to nullify an election result, engaged in conspiracy theories about an election result, and voted to throw out millions of votes, which were disproportionately Black and Brown, to change an election result, have abandoned their promise. The January 6 insurrectionists have become political heroes within an extremist movement that seeks to take power at the ballot box for the purpose of destroying democracy. This has happened before, just not in America.
There is nothing about January 6, 2021, that has changed between January 6, 2023 and today. Nothing new about the event has transpired over the last year at all, but it is important to understand that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. What Donald Trump is saying out loud is what has changed over the last year.
Think about a cloudy sky at the exact moment the thick blanket of grey starts to wisp away, revealing a first glimmer of blue. Now, some people may look at the grey dissolving into blue and determine it was the dissipation of the clouds that must have created the clear sky. Of course, the blue sky was always there, just camouflaged.
Some observers would look at the cloudy sky and know what lays past it, while others would choose to never look up at all. Some don’t care about the sky and what is above them at all, while others are simply oblivious or too busy to notice. Some think the sky is what they can see, and what lies beyond what they can see is something they can’t know.
What Donald Trump is has long been clear, but he is making explicit what was once inferred. The grey is yielding to the clear blue that was always there, but thinly camouflaged for a long time. Donald Trump has made clear he will be a dictator and he will break the American system of government and civilization because he disdains it. He thinks democracy is an impediment and dissent is treachery. He believes in power and believes liberty is a wellspring of weakness. Donald Trump looks at Putin and sees a role model, while he looks at China and sees a system he admires. Trump believes might makes right and power is zero sum. He believes it is a tool to punish his enemies and break their lives for daring to believe in something bigger than him.
Donald Trump is making new promises. He is committing to turning the power of the state against the American people. He is promising to imprison and destroy opponents and create a vast system of concentration camps or gulags where millions will be rounded up at the point of a gun for deportation. He is promising to pardon the insurrectionists and celebrate January 6 as the day his movement truly began. Donald Trump is doing exactly what Adolf Hitler did after his failed coup of November 9, 1923. Hitler turned the event into a day of martyrdom for his evil cause that became known as the Reich Day of Mourning when he took power in 1933. Every year, the top Nazis would retrace the steps of the 1923 coup, turning a criminal act into a day of national celebration.
January 6, 2021, is a day that will live in infamy.
There are only three days in American history that are peers of the perfidy of that day. They are April 12, 1861, December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001. Those three attacks against the United States began wars that killed more than 1,050,000 of our American brothers and sisters of all races, creeds, nationalities and religions. None of those horrific days that unleashed orgies of blood and violence are the equal of January 6, which, 158 years after the end of the American Civil War, marked the high water mark of the Confederate States of America. It was the day the Confederate battle flag finally breached the “citadel of democracy,” and was carried high through the Capitol rotunda. The American flag was desecrated on that day. It became a weapon of violence and sedition as the poles to which it was attached became bludgeons to beat and kill police officers.
The violence wasn’t accidental, and it wasn’t spontaneous. It was something that I predicted would happen in September 2020:
It was organized, and it was planned. It was incited and stoked by a cabal of extremists at the direction of the defeated president of the United States, who sought to overturn the legitimate results of a presidential election in the 244th year of the independence of the United States. It was the greatest act of treachery in American history. It nearly succeeded, and if it had, the result would have ended the American experiment begun in 1776. It would have made the illegitimate Trump a dictator.
When American independence was won at Yorktown the Marquis de Lafayette said, “Humanity has its victory. Liberty has a country.” Lafayette considered the American Revolution to be humanity’s greatest moment. He viewed the triumph as the beginning of the end of injustice and tyranny. He viewed the spread of global liberty and freedom as inexorably derivative of the American Revolution. He foresaw the end of slavery, colonialism and tyranny as a result of the victory. He believed the light of liberty lit in the new world would be the salvation of the old. He believed America was the hope of mankind.
King George was fixated on George Washington. He would ask about him often. He wanted to know his intentions, and wondered if he would become a king or emperor atop an American empire even greater than the British. When he was told that Washington would retire to Mt. Vernon, and transfer power to John Adams, he was flabbergasted. He said that if that was true Washington would be the greatest man of his or any age.
The peaceful transition of power is Americas’s greatest invention. It endured from 1797 to 2021. It ended when Donald Trump, a man who took the same oath taken by Washington and Lincoln, attacked his country, and tried to become a tyrant. It is the greatest and most shameful betrayal in American history.
He did not act alone. His sedition was supported, cheered, enabled and incited by a few thousand Americans that included nearly every elected Republican member of the US House of Representatives, and a dozen members of the United States Senate. Together, they sought to topple the republic in the name of Donald Trump. Of course they failed, but it was not for a lack of effort. This event is the greatest crime and betrayal in American history. January 6 will forever be a day of national shame. January 6 is Donald Trump’s legacy. It is his only legacy.
January 6 is America’s most tragic day. It marks our most shameful hour. It must always be remembered.
Why Donald Trump will be defeated in 2024
Today, I break down why, despite all of the news coverage of Donald Trump's chances of winning in 2024, Americans should not be afraid. I lay out what we can all do to protect democracy and defeat Trump:
Each time I saw a great video of Steve Schmidt, I thought that was the best we got out of him. But he continues to rise to the occasion and here he is again giving an amazing monologue to top it all off. I temporarily forget to worry about the Ukrainians or American politics for a moment.
The American People did prevail in November, 2020. The voice of the American People was heard loud and clear: Donald Trump became TFG.
The American media needs eyeballs and clicks for their advertisers, and since that day in November they reported every screed from TFG in horrifying detail. I’m not trying to mitigate the worst act that a US citizen committed against our nation, but I firmly believe that if the media hadn’t broadcast his every repulsive utterance maybe he would not have had the large following and just maybe January 6 might have been less violent.
Or maybe I’m just an old lady who is just so exhausted hearing about TFG over and over that I want to make up my own reality. Mygod I wish he’d disappear.