I’m sorry folks, but January 6 is who we are

Within hours of the last of the thugs who invaded the Capitol building being cleared, some Republicans were already trying to cast it in a different light. Some blamed the riot on ‘left-wing agitators,’ and a few even publicly called it a ‘peaceful protest.’ There were even a few that blamed the FBI for ‘instigating it.” 

The right-wing media, which gave the unfolding riot minimal coverage, was quick to amplify many bogus Republican claims, some even going so far as to argue that it didn’t even take place. 

Another refrain, and one that has unfortunately even been used by main-stream, non-right-wing media is that the events of January 6, 2021, are not ‘who we are’ as a nation. 

Sorry to burst the bubble of whoever believes that nonsense, but January 6, is exactly who we are as a nation—or at least a large number of us. 

Let’s start with the anti-government groups in this country, many of whom participated actively in the Jan. 6 insurrection. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC), despite the fact that some militias disbanded and hate groups declined after Jan. 6, the number of anti-government groups in the country increased in 2022 from 488 to 701, an increase of 48 percent, the highest number since 2015. Anti-government groups are rooted in our history, from the very beginning, and have produced such incidents as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, when 168 people, including 19 children, were killed when a Gulf War veteran who was a follower of a White supremacist movement, set off a fertilizer bomb that destroyed the federal building in that city. Prior to Oklahoma City, there was the rise of right wing groups line The Order in the 1980s, and in the early 1990s, deadly standoffs between law enforcement and anti-government groups at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas. 

But this violent activism goes back even further than that. In 1786, Shay’s Rebellion, in protest over taxes and other economic inequalities, broke out in Massachusetts, and in 1791, farmers in western Pennsylvania launched the Whiskey Rebellion over the steep tax on whiskey. Those on the political right have had a bone to pick with the federal government since the establishment of freedmen’s bureaus and the granting of citizenship to former enslaved people after the Civil War. These grievances were further exacerbated in the 1930s when FDR’s New Deal created the government’s first safety net to help the downtrodden and poor, and by the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s, which was viewed by many on the right as proof that the government was their enemy, out to help minorities and to curtail the powers and privileges of the majority. That attitude hasn’t been helped by the realization that Whites are projected to become a minority in 2045. 

Younger whites, those under 18, are already in the minority in the U.S., having achieved that status in 2020. 

Fear is a powerful motivator and when combined with the survival instinct it causes people to take some extremely radical views and actions. So, yes, violence like that which occurred on Jan. 6 is what we are and until we face it square on, it is what we’ll continue to be well into the future. We already see it in our politics, from the former president who is currently under indictment in several jurisdictions for multiple civil and criminal charges, including inciting the rioting of Jan. 6, whose lawyers claim that he never an oath to ‘support’ the Constitution. The fact that he did swear to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution was conveniently ignored. I’m no lawyer, but how you can preserve, protect, and defend without supporting, or the fact that you didn’t promise to support it then excuses your effort to overthrow it, is beyond belief.

This propensity to violence is who we are and we’ll all be a lot better off if we admit it and then as a people determine to do something about it.