A Sense of Doubt blog post #2284 - Rewriting Recent History about the Violent Insurrection Against our Country and Democracy
We are living in alternate reality in which "republicans" are creating a world that does not exist. It's nauseating. It's offensive. It's vile. It is beyond simple dishonesty. It's more destructive than the word "lie" implies.
It is grotesque.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/the-gop-is-turning-the-january-6-insurrection-into-a-new-lost-cause/
The GOP Is Turning the January 6 Insurrection Into a New Lost Cause
Rewriting history has officially begun.
On January 6, the day Congress was scheduled to certify the electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election and declare Joe Biden the victor, thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol. They looted congressional offices, vandalized the building, and assaulted hundreds of law enforcement officials. The insurrection left five dead—including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick—and marked a dark day in the history of the United States. Among the countless photos that went viral was one of a man flying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol. That such a symbol was still proudly waved in America only foreshadowed the egregious whitewashing to come.
Rewriting history is a staple of American mythology. Across the country, one can find people who sincerely believe that slavery wasn’t that bad, the Civil War was fought over states’ rights, and that, had he not been murdered by a racist, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would’ve been a Republican today. American exceptionalism requires recasting the particularly ugly parts of our past into rosier scenarios. And now, just a few months after the insurrection at the Capitol, the Republican Party has laid the groundwork for repeating this grand tradition, creating their own version of the Lost Cause narrative from the Civil War.
It’s not quite right to say that the Republican Party is living in an alternate reality. They actually experienced the reality that they have now chosen to completely reframe. At a House oversight committee hearing last week, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) sought to dramatically downplay the severity of the attack on January 6, comparing an armed mob to a “normal” visit by tourists. “As one of the members who stayed in the Capitol and on the House floor, and who with other Republican colleagues helped barricade the door until almost 3 p.m. that day from the mob who tried to enter,” he said, remaining grounded in reality thus far, “I can tell you, the House floor was never breached, and it was not an insurrection.”
It’s quite an imaginative leap to be one of the lawmakers forced to barricade a door while a violent mob attempted to break through and still claim that the mob’s actions did not constitute an insurrection. But he was far from alone in this new appraisal of the event. As impressive as his mind-bending argument was—smashing windows and beating cops with flag poles was just another day at the American parliament—the GOP’s nearly unanimous attempts to engage in massive historical revisionism has one familiar precedent. If 156 years after the Civil War, millions of people believe that the Southern states were fighting for “states’ rights,” then surely today’s GOP can also convince them that the January 6 insurrection was just another protest.
Technically, the Confederacy only lasted four years, but in practice white supremacists have kept the dream of a pro-slavery state alive through the collective myth known as the Lost Cause. There are a few components to this cherished dogma. First is the racist belief that the Southern states that seceded from the Union in the run-up to the Civil War were righteous and justified and did so not to preserve slavery as an institution but as an assertion of constitutionally guaranteed state’s rights. This belief was further buttressed by the fact that Reconstruction—which was an attempt to reunite the country after the war and end discrimination against the newly freed people—was largely a failure. The failure of Reconstruction then further legitimized the fantasy that in the end the South was sort of right all along.
After the Civil War, former Confederate states were readmitted fairly quickly, a ban on former Confederate soldiers serving in the government was short-lived, and white vigilantes and paramilitary groups wreaked havoc across the states. Their approach was to violently overtake governments and kill Black people and any white people politically aligned with them, all the while passing laws that made it impossible for Black people to exercise their civil rights. For the Southerners who continued to champion the myth of the Lost Cause, this era, which was marked by unspeakably horrific violence against Black people, was often conveniently ignored.
Reconstruction expert and historian Eric Foner describes the myth as advancing the proposition that “Reconstruction was a vindictive effort by Northerners to punish white Southerners, that Black people were incapable of taking part intelligently in a democratic government. And therefore, the overthrow of Reconstruction was legitimate.”
Fast-forward to the weeks and months after the insurrection, during which hundreds of people were charged with crimes ranging from entering a restricted building to assaulting law enforcement officials in connection with the insurrection. For some Republicans, however, the suspects are the real victims. “Where is the outrage about young people being unfairly treated?” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) asked at the same hearing. “Joe Biden’s Justice Department is criminalizing political protest.” This is rich coming from the political party that has dozens of proposed bills that stifle free speech and criminalize protest. It’s also the first of what I assume will be a deluge of attempts to rewrite history.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) also believes the insurrectionists are the real victims. “Outright propaganda and lies are being used to unleash the national security state against law-abiding US citizens—especially Trump voters,” he said at the hearing. “The FBI is fishing through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal record and restricting the liberties of individuals that have never been accused of a crime.”
One possible strategy to set the record straight would be for Congress to form a commission to investigate what happened on January 6. Democrats are in favor of doing this and advanced legislation to create such a body. Unsurprisingly, the majority of Republicans, many of whom still believe Donald Trump won the election, are against it. A factual record would directly contradict the lies they’ve already told and will continue to churn out. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) opposed the idea of focusing only on what happened on January 6, because he disingenuously argued that the commission should look into “left-wing” violence like Black Lives Matter or other antiracist groups. “Given the political misdirections that have marred this process, given the now duplicative and potentially counterproductive nature of this effort, and given the Speaker’s shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America, I cannot support this legislation,” he said in a statement.
Obviously, there is no reason to investigate liberal groups; the January 6 attackers had just come from a Trump rally during which the ex-president encouraged them to go to the Capitol. They were wearing Trump hats and waving Trump flags. But in order to reshape the history of what happened that day, the GOP wants to downplay it or even outright deny that it was an insurrection. It’s in this denial that the parallels between Reconstruction and the Capitol attacks are most worrisome. If Republicans succeed the way the South did during the Reconstruction era, the future story of January 6 will not be that it was a violent white supremacist attack on democracy, but rather that it was a heroic tale, a venerated Lost Cause for modern times.
- The House voted to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, with 35 Republicans voting in favor. But Mitch McConnell, minority leader in the Senate, said he opposed it.
Opinion: Why Republican opposition to a Jan. 6 commission could be a blessing in disguise
The stated reasons for the GOP opposition to a 1/6 Commission are incoherent and implausible. Both Republican leaders denounced the commission as a partisan Democratic plot. McCarthy accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of not negotiating “in good faith” and wasting “time playing political games.” McConnell chimed in to accuse House Democrats of having “handled this proposal in partisan bad faith going back to the beginning.”
This will play well on Fox “News” but, like much of what the right says these days, it simply isn’t so. The bill to establish a January 6 commission was negotiated in good faith between Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and the ranking Republican member, Rep. John Katko (N.Y.).
The proposed version of the 1/6 Commission is scrupulously bipartisan with five members, including the chair, appointed by Democratic leaders, and five members, including the vice chair, appointed by Republican leaders. While the chairman would be allowed to appoint senior staff members and demand information from the federal government, the panel could only issue subpoenas if both the chair and vice chair agreed, or if a majority of the members voted to do so. The bill also set Dec. 31 as a deadline to issue a report — far too little time to litigate subpoenas if potential witnesses (such as Trump and McCarthy) refuse to voluntarily testify.
Even if this bill were passed — which now appears unlikely — it would have still allowed considerable room for Republican obstructionism if all of the GOP-appointed commissioners voted in lockstep. There would have been nothing to stop McCarthy and McConnell from appointing rabid Trumpkins for precisely this purpose. (Imagine if, say, former Trump White House aide Stephen Miller were the vice chair.)
That McConnell and McCarthy are opposing even this balanced approach suggests they are intent on simply covering up what was arguably the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Both Republicans, while voting not to impeach Trump, also strongly indicted him. Just days after the assault, McCarthy said: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” McConnell later called Trump’s conduct “a disgraceful dereliction of duty.”
But now, the Republican leaders have become Trump’s collaborators in a coverup. Without a thorough investigation, we will never learn exactly what Trump did prior to, and during, the riot. There was a gap of three hours and 19 minutes between the time Capitol Police requested military assistance and the time when the military was finally ordered to respond. Was Trump responsible for the delay? What did the president know and when did he know it?
And what about the role of Republican members of Congress in fomenting this insurrection? We know the disgraceful things they have said in public. For example, Rep. Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.) accused Democrats of staging a “coup d’etat” and told his followers: “Be ready to defend the Constitution and the White House.” But what links did GOP members of Congress have behind-the-scenes with the insurrectionists?
These are only a few of the many questions that remain unanswered despite ongoing congressional hearings and law enforcement investigations. McConnell and McCarthy must be concerned that the answers would prove embarrassing to their party. But Democrats can get the truth out by following the example that Republicans themselves set.
In 2014, the Republican House majority voted to create a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack — a terrorist assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. Republicans treated this as a scandal akin to Iran-contra or Watergate — largely, as McCarthy later boasted, because they wanted to hurt the presidential prospects of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The committee was heavily stacked for the majority party: It had seven Republican members and only five Democrats. Republicans were able to do what they wanted — and they did. The Benghazi Committee spent 2½ years and $7.8 million in its investigation — and still did not find any wrongdoing by Clinton.
The Republican refusal to agree to the bipartisan 1/6 Commission bill could actually be a blessing in disguise. It will free Pelosi to set up a January 6 Select Committee in which Democrats will be more firmly in charge — as Republicans were on the Benghazi committee. The Benghazi investigation was a political stunt, but this investigation is deadly serious. We must get a full accounting of the events of Jan. 6 despite Republican attempts to bury the truth. If we do, Republicans may come to regret their opposition to the bipartisan 1/6 Commission.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2105.20 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2148 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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