Much is still unknown. Much of what we do know is both tantalizing and deeply troubling.
A Riot By Any Other Name
For starters, it’s hard to know just what to call what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. On the day of the siege, commentators said the protesters were “storming the Capitol.” Some even said “sacking” the Capitol. Historians noted that it was the first time the Capitol had been assaulted since the British attacked Washington, D.C. in August 1814, during the War of 1812. Later, the term “insurrection,” came to dominate the discussion, though Republican defenders of the incident preferred “protest” or, at most, “riot.” A few, straining the English language, said the insurrectionists were just “slightly unruly tourists.”
If a “terrorist act” is activity that terrorizes groups of people, Jan. 6 was domestic terrorism. We had scores of accounts of senators and representatives (and their staffs) preparing to defend themselves from attack, cowering beneath desks and making what might have been last calls to their families and friends.
The Capitol was cleared and secured within four hours on Jan. 6. Congress defiantly regrouped and completed the process of certifying the election of Joe Biden. On that stunning day, several senators and representatives spoke passionately in defense of constitutional due process, and in unambiguous condemnation of the attack on the Capitol, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and one of the president’s close friends Lindsey Graham.
What If?
Protestors who breached Pelosi’s office left a note on a manila file folder saying, “YOU WILL NEVER STEAL THIS COUNTRY” and another saying “WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN.” But they did not tear down the drapes, overturn the speaker’s desk, or trash the office. Photographed sitting in Speaker Pelosi’s chair with his left leg propped up on her desk, Richard “Bigo” Barnett scrawled a greeting to Pelosi, third in the constitutional line for the presidency: “Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch.” A few months later, Barnett’s attorneys filed a court document explaining that what he actually wrote was “Hey Nancy Bigo was here biatd.” This is revisionism worthy of the savage satire of Jonathan Swift.
Breaching The Capitol
If the insurrectionists had gotten their hands on any of their perceived enemies in Congress (not all Democrats), would they have held them for ransom (overturn the election or else)? Would they have roughed them up? Would they have executed them? If they got Mike Pence in their hands and he refused to do their bidding at the joint session of Congress, would they have assaulted or killed the sitting vice president of the United States? We don’t know, but at this point in our chaotic and disturbed time, actual violence cannot be ruled out.
Against that background, it is perhaps not surprising but still alarming that a poll from the COVID States Project indicates roughly a quarter of Americans say it's sometimes appropriate to use violence against the government — and 1 in 10 Americans say violence is justified "right now."
And what would have happened to the United States if the mob had killed one or more members of Congress that day, or even beaten them up? How would the people of America have reacted to that, including the 74 million who voted for Donald Trump in 2020? How would the defenders of the events of Jan. 6 have defended that? Would Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde have said, “You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the sixth, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit”?
Given what happened (and what didn’t), it is tempting to conclude that the country was subjected on Jan. 6 to something that had as many farcical as tragic elements. And yet we must not forget that five Americans (by some counts nine) died because of the riot, and more than 140 law enforcement officers were physically assaulted, some of them brutally. I wasn’t there, of course, but the Jan. 6 incident feels a little informal and half-hearted to me. The insurrectionists could have done vastly more damage to the Capitol building. They could have set the building on fire. They could have toppled some or all of the statues in Statuary Hall. They could have ripped paintings, some of them priceless, off the walls and slashed them with knives. They could have destroyed historic desks in the United States Senate chamber, desks that have been used by more than 1,800 U.S. senators, including Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John F. Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Harry S. Truman. What happened on Jan. 6 was not the storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789), and its subsequent demolition. In some respects, it more resembles the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich (Nov. 8-9, 1923) than unrestrained fury. Terrorists take selfies live in the postmodern world. One rioter who is a real estate agent from Texas made a pitch for her professional services while live-streaming the attack.
Counting The Cost
The total damages to the Capitol campus have been assessed at $30 million — and climbing. No important work of art was destroyed, but the Capitol’s art conservators say that pepper spray and other substances will have to be removed from paintings and statues. John Trumbull’s epic paintings of the American founding in the Rotunda escaped vandalism.
What Now, What Next?
But what if there had been simultaneous attacks on state capitols on Jan. 6? Under what conditions would the insurrection have spread throughout the nation?
From this safe distance it may seem to some as if the insurrection was no big deal, because it ended in a whimper rather than a coup d’état. However, one doesn’t need to read very deeply in the literature of collapsed republics — most notably the Roman republic in the last years of the final century BCE — to realize that when violence displaces due process and the rule of law in a formerly stable civilization, people are just as likely to emulate the lawlessness and violence that they have witnessed as to shrink back from the brink and insist on lawful transfers of power. As a social system begins to collapse, violence becomes the new norm.
Perhaps the most troubling thing about the Jan. 6 incident is that most elected officials in the Republican Party refuse to acknowledge the threat it represented (and perhaps invites) to American political and social stability. If, as Aristotle taught, wisdom is calling things by their right names, those moderate Republicans who nevertheless defend the character and behavior of Donald Trump on that day are endangering the future of the United States by letting themselves be bullied either by Mr. Trump or his millions of ardent followers. By the time they realize what they have done and invited, it may be too late to save the country.
These contested elections represent only one contributing factor to the disintegration of America, but they have helped to put the most consequential nation in the world into political paralysis. The best historians and political scientists have been nearly unanimous in expressing concern, even pessimism, about the future of American democracy in the face of the last six years. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection has to be seen as a potential harbinger of dark things to come. We may hope that Jan. 6 was an end and not a beginning, but this is one occasion when Thomas Jefferson’s call for “eternal vigilance” will be required to save the American republic.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
You can also hear more of Clay Jenkinson’s views on American history and the humanities on his long-running nationally syndicated public radio program and podcast, The Thomas Jefferson Hour. He is also a frequent contributor to the Governing podcast, The Future in Context. Clay’s most recent book, The Language of Cottonwoods: Essays on the Future of North Dakota, is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and your local independent book seller. Clay welcomes your comments and critiques of his essays and interviews. You can reach him directly by writing cjenkinson@governing.com or tweeting @ClayJenkinson.
