The Findings Are Every Bit as Bad as We “Alarmists” Said. It’s Time for America to Wake Up to the Awful Truth
“I was slipping in people’s blood.”
“It was carnage.”
“January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup.”
“All Americans should keep in mind this fact: On the morning of January 6th, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power. “
“Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.”
“The violence was no accident. It represented Trump’s last, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power. And ultimately, Donald Trump — the president of the United States — spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy.”
“But for Donald Trump, that was only the beginning of what became a sprawling, multi-step conspiracy aimed at overturning the Presidential election.”
“Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy.”
“The sacred obligation to defend this peaceful transfer of power has been honored by every American president. Except one.”
“Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful President. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”
“You will also hear about plots to commit seditious conspiracy on January 6th, a crime defined in our laws as ‘conspir[ing] to overthrow, put down or destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to oppose by force the authority thereof.’”
What just happened? Why do the January 6th Committee’s findings matter? Do they? They matter, my friends, immensely, and intensely.
I chose to let their words speak for themselves, because their words are important. Many, many hours went into choosing those words, as precisely and carefully as they could be chosen.
Why do these findings matter? Is it because they were delivered by a Democrat and a Republican? Is it just that Americans should pay attention? Is it that they relied on the testimony of insiders — who, caught out, finally gave up the ghost? For all those reasons, and more besides. The single most crucial one of which is these.
Let this sink in: the American government just formally accused a former President of an attempted coup. And that was just the beginning. Just like we — the “alarmists” — said. These findings tell us that we “alarmists” have been saying all along was exactly right. In fact, those of you who read regularly will probably almost chuckle these findings, because they sound almost exactly like what I’ve written. I’ve had to choose my words carefully, too.
What was this? An attempted coup.
To do what? To overturn a Presidential election.
Courtesy of what? A sophisticated, multi-part plan.
Which was what? A conspiracy, involving political insiders and paramilitary fascists alike.
“Attempted coup”? “The culmination”? A “sophisticated, multistep” plan? Allow me for a brief moment to point out that these are literally the words I use — and the conclusions I came to. Not in the interest of point-scoring, but to make a larger point, which I will come to.
On January 7th, the day after the riots, I called it an “attempted coup.” Before the coup even happened, I said this: “[Trump’s plan] is something much cleverer: a sophisticated, coordinated, multi-layered attack on the few institutions American Democracy has left, from votes to ballots to electors to courts to the people themselves.” On the anniversary of the attempted coup, I wrote: “Jan 6th is best understood as a culmination, the climax of a pattern, and “the coup attempt — the final one — had been carefully plotted and was the pretext for a conspiracy to end democracy.”
And probably, you’ve been saying it too. How long have we been saying not just “kind of” that or “implying” that, but literally saying that? Me? You? At this point, quite a long time. I predicted all the above before it happened. And then after it happened, I had the slightly annoying job of saying what it actually was because…let me take a step back and illustrate why this isn’t just about point scoring.
Who do these findings indict? Who are they for? How do they help us solve America’s truth problem? These findings don’t just indict the right. They also indict the center. They indict many, many of America’s most mainstream institutions. What do I mean by that? Obviously, I don’t mean “indict” criminally…yet. But we’ll come back to that. They indict a broad, broad swathe of American institutions.
A huge, huge portion of Americans believe the Big Lies that the election was stolen, that Jan 6th was just a tourist visit, that the President didn’t incite a violent attack on the Capitol as part of a plan, which was itself the culmination of a plan to destroy American democracy. But why is that? It’s not just because Fox News doesn’t cover it that way, and fills their head with nonsense. It’s because on the other side, institutions have failed in incredible, shocking, insane ways at their jobs.
And so there’s a huge truth vacuum in America. One side lies, but the other doesn’t tell the truth.
How have the Washington Post and New York Times and CNN and so forth been referring to January 6th? While I’ve been careful to always — always — call it an “attempted coup,” which, again is literally what the Committee concluded…they don’t know what to say. So they settled on the idea that it must have just been a “riot,” or maybe an “insurrection,” for a while there in February, after which the meter was quickly dialed back. Hence, those taking part in the coup now became mere “rioters” — and they were just the foot-soldiers. What about the higher-ups orchestrating the rest?
How have the same institutions — remember, this is the “liberal” media — framed Jan 6th? They haven’t. When the obvious conclusion that all this was part of a plan, that that plan was a sophisticated one, involving multiple layers and levels, when all that was raised? They’d go out of their way to attack that very idea. Hey — this was just a riot.
What was the subtext here? Maybe we can just quietly….forget about it. Maybe it’ll all go away.
The Washington Post and New York Times and CNN — all of America’s major media institutions failed this test in terrible, horrible way. But this was one of the biggest tests in American history. Telling the truth about the first time there was a plot to destroy American democracy from the inside.
One side lies. But the other won’t tell the truth. I’m not kidding around with you or just trying to score points. This isn’t good enough. You cannot have a working democracy with institutions which allow truth itself to be demeaned and degraded so casually, and then play a part in it. I’m just an idiot with a blog. The Post and Times have billions of dollars and thousands of reporters at their disposal.
Why is it that you and I got it right, and they got it wrong? Why is it that they couldn’t describe what actually happened? Either they’re idiots, or they’re afraid to, you decide. Editorial choices were made — and still are made. Those choices are things like “no saying fascism,” or “can’t say coup.” Man, if a dentist was this bad at his job, a town square would be full of teeth — and toothless people. Truth matters, and institutions have to defend it.
And yet they’re still out there doing it. The Times’s coverage of the Jan 6th committee? It’s about a “narrative” with “characters.” As if they were reading a novel. Watching a Marvel Movie. This isn’t fiction. It’s reality. Are these people morons? Idiots? Creeps? What is this, a grad school seminar, where the professor might give you extra credit for analyzing a nonfiction event like it was fiction? Is it one of those annoying prizes for arty fiction books nobody reads? It’s none of that. This is coverage of the worst crisis a rich democracy has had since the Nazis overthrew the Weimar Regime.
Covering it like it’s fiction isn’t just a disgrace — it’s how Jan 6th happened.
How much clearer could the link be? You see, when even the Times is pretending like the Jan 6th Commitee is fiction, to be covered like a Netflix thriller, or comic-book movie, then of course half of America can believe the Big Lies. Because you too are treating reality that way.
One side lies — but the other doesn’t tell the truth. This wasn’t about a “narrative,” or a “story,” or a cast of characters. This was a goddamned set of findings by a bipartisan committee of the United States Government about how close democracy came to ending. The Times should be burning with embarrassment for publishing this dreck — but it isn’t. It has no real understanding of the role it plays in American collapse. But the rest of us should.
The Big Lies are believed because the putative good guys don’t even care much about the truth. And that is why the Jan 6th Committee’s findings matter. It’s not just the hard right, which only watches Fox, that’s the problem here. The point isn’t just convincing the Trumpist base they’ve been lied to. It’s also about correcting the record. So that the irresponsible idiots at places like the Post and Times, who barely seem capable of doing their jobs anymore, have to begin to.
Now you can’t just call it a riot. You can’t just pretend there wasn’t a plan and a plot and a purpose. You can’t get away with the shoddy, careless, thoughtless “both-sides” stenography which passes for journalism and punditry on our side.
The Committee’s work matters in that sense. It’s holding our side to account, too. Our work has to begin there, because the fact is that our side has fallen down on the job. It has allowed the nation to pretend to forget, to walk away, to hope it all magically goes away. But this was a coup attempt. It’s not just going to magically disappear. As the Committee again rightly said, “Our work must do much more than just look backwards. The cause of our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over.”
Yet it’s hardly just the Post and the Times. When I talk about the reality of what happened on Jan 6th on Facebook or YouTube — it’s even worse. On Facebook, I’ve literally gotten banned multiple times for simply writing posts talking about these facts using the terms the Committee has — so much so that over the last year it’s become a running joke between me and my wife and kid sis and friends. On YouTube? The algorithm will deliberately give me a strike, because it thinks I’m the extremist here, stretching the truth, telling the lies — while those who are like “Jan 6th? Like a summertime visit to Paris! Chef’s kiss! Mwah!!” are algorithmically heavily favored, in the same way that misogynists and bigots are. LOL.
See how bad — how crazy, crazy bad — this problem is? Institutionally, this story hasn’t been allowed to be told. But this story is reality. We’re not in a grad school classroom contesting versions of “The Marvel Cinematic Universe” using Derrida’s notions of deconstruction to try to please an aging hipster of a professor. We are citizens in one of the world’s oldest goddamned democracies, being asked to do the work of defending it.
All that is why the Jan 6th Commitee’s Findings matter.
Yes, the next step is trying to convince the Trumpists they’ve been lied to. It’s not going to be easy. It may well be one of the hardest tasks America’s had to undertake since the civil war. But you know what? It’ll be a lot easier when we can get our side in order. And we can only do that now that the Jan 6th Committee has made in plain what that day really was. Attempted coup. Conspiracy. Multi-step plan. Carnage.
It was all those things. It hasn’t been described that way. That story hasn’t been told. Our institutions — the ones on our side, at least putatively — have been too afraid to tell it. They still are. And we are going to get nowhere like that, my friends. To fight this battle for democracy, our side needs unity, organization, purpose — not disunity, incompetence, and aimlessness. Like calling an attempted coup a mere riot, or minimizing a plot to end democracy as some kind of conspiracy theory on the same level as the one that the election was stolen — all of those are allowing the Bigger Lies to spread unchecked.
The Jan 6th Committee’s hard work is about undoing all of that. It is American democracy working, for once. To correct its failing, faltering institutions — not just Fox and Trump, but so, so many of them, from the Times to the Post to YouTube and Facebook — with the damning power of the truth. Not my truth or your truth. But the truth.
Let every American, like it said, pay attention. Because the truth still exists. Either it does — or The Lie will. That is the lesson too many nations have learned, the hard way, too late.
Umair
June 2022
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