You saw it

It's not a difference of opinion

Four years ago today I told you this:

Today we will witness the latest in a series of Tubby’s attempts to steal the election. Trump suggested last summer, you may remember, that he might delay the election so he could steal it, and as the election was in progress he tried to stop votes from being counted. When it was clear Biden had won, Trump’s “elite strike force” of lawyers pitched a bunch of absurd lawsuits to try and overturn the results, and then Republicans tried to prevent the certification of each swing state’s electors, sometimes by gathering in parking lots and making up their own roster of fake electors like some rotisserie league dictatorship.

Today Joe Biden’s 306 electoral votes and Donald Trump’s 232 electoral votes are to be counted in a joint session of Congress which several Republican members have promised to disrupt. Though it may stretch out the process for as much as a day or two, because the process demand objections must be entertained and voted on by both houses, the Democrats have a majority in the HOR so this is probably not going to work.

“Probably” is doing a lot of work here, though. Mike Pence may pull some shit, as Tubby has commanded, which would put us in uncharted territory…

As we saw later that day, Pence didn’t go along. But the MAGA faithful tried it, storming the U.S. Capitol, beating up the cops, smashing doors, very clearly — very clearly — trying to get their hands on the Senators and Congressmen in the joint session and forcibly stop the count, that is, effect a coup.

And when at last they failed and the count resumed, 147 Republican members of the joint session objected, including Matt Gaetz, who has never backed off his belief that the vote should have been overturned. (Gaetz was Trump’s first choice for Attorney General in his second administration.)

Trump and his other goons have never relented, either, and if you watched interviews of Republicans in the years since then you may have seen interviewers ask them (though not frequently nor persistently enough) whether they believe Biden won fair and square, and heard them give transparently nonsensenical answers. In this they either reflect or influence the opinions of Republican voters, who by wide margins believe the 2020 election was fixed.

It’s interesting that, though Trump insists on a fairy-tale version of January 6 as a “Day of Love,” the Trump press, like Republican officials and voters, by and large still talks around what happened. I don’t think it’s because they’re ashamed to full-on back the Big Lie, though they may fear that a day will come when it will matter that they lie so blatantly about it. I think it’s more likely that they don’t have to say the words so long as their avoidance and prevarication shows that they’re in on the gag. Take these sections from “Four Years After Jan. 6, Trump Will Officially Be Certified as 47th President” by one Sarah Arnold at rightwing website Town Hall:

…This marks a pivotal moment in the wake of what Democrats have labeled an “insurrection.” The certification comes after years of legal battles and political efforts aimed at keeping Trump out of the White House. Despite continued attempts by the left to use January 6th as a dark stain on his legacy, Trump has emerged as one of the most consequential presidents in modern history — despite the left’s efforts to rewrite history and reshape the narrative in their favor…

Arnold does not describe the events of 1/6/21, but mentions that, as Congress prepares for the 2024 electoral vote count, protestors are prepared to “demand Congress block [Trump] from becoming the 47th president because he is a so-called ‘Insurrectionist.’” She goes on:

Monday’s certification marks a powerful statement against the left’s relentless attempts to block Trump’s return to the White House despite years of attempts to put him behind bars, political smears, and ongoing efforts by Democrats to tarnish his legacy,

So the real crime of January 6 was that Democrats started calling Trump an insurrectionist, for some reason.

Even sneakier is the Washington Times, which heads its story “Quiet Riot: Joint session to confirm Trump’s win set to go smoothly this time” with this lede:

Some Democrats this week will no doubt simmer over certifying President-elect Donald Trump's White House win, but there isn't much they can do about it thanks to a new law to prevent the chaos that gripped the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Good thing someone changed the law in order to prevent Democrats from pulling off another January 6!

Trump reportedly tests the loyalty of potential appointees by having them attest that they, too, believe this bullshit. I say “reportedly” under advisement because I haven’t seen proof of that.

But I have seen the January 6 footage. We all have. We heard Trump tell the mob that “if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.” We all know what happened next.

A lot of essays about the phase we’re entering cite famous novels and essays about the techniques of totalitarianism such as the aforementioned mix of bold outright lying by the Leader and cautious reframing of those lies by his acolytes until such time as the lie officially becomes the truth. (Trump’s promised exoneration of the J6 vandals is one step in that direction, and we may expect his footlings to lionize these insurrectionists and their deeds, help elect or appoint them to high office, and perhaps make January 6 a federal MAGA holiday.)

But I’m more reminded of the end of Brecht’s Life of Galileo, in which Galileo’s acolyte Andrea, leaving Italy with a smuggled copy of Galileo’s proscribed teachings, takes time to disabuse a child who claims a local woman is a witch, and that the fact no one will bring her milk is proof of it. Andrea doesn’t just tell the boy he’s wrong — he buys the woman a jug of milk and leaves it at her house. The boy, who either has not seen Andrea do this or will not admit that he has, insists that the Devil brought the jug. Andrea tells him, “You must learn to open your eyes.” We can’t say for sure whether Andrea has gotten through to the boy, or whether the boy will ever learn to trust the authority of his senses over the fables he has been taught to believe. But the only hope we can have for the triumph of truth is that it be told.