January 6th will long be remembered as the day this representative republic known as the United States was nearly brought to its knees by domestic terrorists. The day began with results from Georgia’s special election still coming in for its two US Senate seats with control of the Senate hanging in the balance. As the nation awaited the results, the Trump campaign helped organize the “March to Save America”. It was a march designed to add political pressure to the joint session of Congress in hopes of overturning the presidential election.
For weeks since the November 3 election, the current occupant of the White House has alleged the election was stolen. He fabricated wild conspiracy theories that were easily debunked and laughed out of 60 court cases. The president & his team tried to throw out votes in 6 battleground states where the African-American vote proved crucial to the outcome of the election. He used his Twitter account to continue the conspiracy that it was stolen. He even tried to pressure states like Georgia to overturn the results of its election. When all of this didn’t work… the president decided to pressure Congress to overturn the election even going so far as to pressure VP Mike Pence to “do something”. All of these lies & misinformation whipped his fanatic supporters into a fever pitch. The president continued to pour gasoline on the fire with tweets such as this one:
The president repeatedly touted a planned pro-Trump protest to his 88 million Twitter followers. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Mr. Trump wrote on Dec. 19. “Be there, will be wild!”
Rebecca Ballhaus, Joe Palazzolo & Andrew Restuccia, Wall Street JOURNAL, 1/8/21
The March to Save America was not a peaceful protest. It was a gathering of a mob. This “rally” was designed to lead this mob to try & overtake the Capitol where Congress was there to certify the electoral college victory for Joe Biden. Just listen to some of the comments:
Right after this “rally” thousands of people marched to the US Capitol and attempted a coup to overthrow the 2020 election. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes describes the horror:
Both houses of Congress were forced to evacuate as the terrorists breached the Capitol with the intent of forcing Congress to overturn the election. This hasn’t happened since the War of 1812. Congress eventually was able to certify the electoral college even though 134 Congress representatives & senators STILL opposed the certification after the attempted coup.
In the aftermath of the attempted coup, shock & sadness were the words most used. People from all around the country & the world felt that this wasn’t America. They said “this isn’t who we are.” I have news for them: black people have been telling you that this is EXACTLY who America is.
What was on display on Wednesday was not “patriots” trying to protect democracy; it was about protecting white supremacy. When Senators Ted Cruz & Josh Hawley called for a commission to decide the validity of the electors in the disputed states(much like what happened in 1876) they both had to know what that led to in 1876:
The fireworks of 1876, however, were like none other and not just because it was the country’s centennial. Then as now, the election dispute had its roots in a major cleavage in American society. Barely a decade after the end of the Civil War, the country remained fractured by geography, economics, class and especially race.
The party that ended slavery won the presidency in the short term that year, but the white supremacists got what they wanted in the long term by agreeing to accept defeat in exchange for the end of Reconstruction, ultimately ushering in 90 years of legalized segregation and oppression of newly freed Blacks in the south.
Peter baker, New York times, 1/5/2021
If you need any more evidence then just look to the law enforcement lack of presence at Capitol Hill on January 6 and juxtapose that with how the police presence looked during Black Lives Matter rallies during the summer of 2020.
Immediately the terrorists were being branded as “protestors” and “patriots”. But what if the protestors on Wednesday were black? I’ll let MSNBC’s Joy Reid & Joe Scarborough explain:
What happened on January 6th was just the latest example of a group of people who are not interested in uniting the country. These weren’t all country yahoos. They were lawyers, business owners, law enforcement officials and even elected officials. They didn’t give a rat’s ass about “Blue Lives Matter” as the terrorists overran and assaulted DC Capitol police(leaving one of them dead). They don’t care about democracy. If they did they wouldn’t have allowed a confederate flag to enter the walls of Capitol Hill. They care only about protecting their whiteness. Anything that doesn’t look & sound like them they will consider a threat. Not a Christian? You’re a threat. Not heterosexual? You’re a threat. Not a “conservative”? You’re a threat. Not white? You’re a threat.
Until this country truly confronts its systemic racism roots then we will continue to see this. This is what this country has been fighting against since its inception. This is what America is. This… is America.
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