The old proverb that says, “If you set out to kill the king, you better make sure that you kill the king,” has a corollary for insurrections because, typically, when an insurrection fails, those who attempted the insurrection are hanged. However, in the failed January 6 insurrection, inspired by our then president and aided by at least two members of the senate and six members of congress, there seems to be an attitude of letting bygones be bygones. Bree Newsome, the artist and activist who scaled the flagpole in South Carolina’s capital in 2015 to take down the Confederate flag, tweeted her take on the Republican’s response to their failed attempt to overthrow the American government, “Sorry we tried to assassinate you & overthrow the election. We didn’t expect it to fail & create this awkwardness between us. Let’s move forward & get back to normal with us blocking any legislation you introduce while we continue to feed a racist terrorist movement.”
There is no doubt in my mind that many of the rioters who stormed our Capitol building were just a part of a mob, excited by and motivated by the lies of Donald Trump, Josh Hawley, and Ted Cruz that claimed that Trump had won the election in November. They were taken in by chants of “stop the steal,” and “Trump won.” They probably didn’t expect to get past the security at the Capitol building and could be seen in videos wandering around with a look of amazement on their faces that they were inside.
The actual insurrectionists were an odd mixture of QAnon conspiracy theorists, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, America First, and other racist and fascists groups intending to enact “1776” again, even though what they were doing was more like the Confederacy. It seems clear to me that the evidence is in that Trump actually believed that if he could raise enough rioters to stop the vote count that he could overthrow democracy and take over the government. The woefully ambitious senators, Hawley and Cruz, hoped to be so supportive of this coup attempt that they might be the heir of the tyrant’s role behind Trump. Even though they did succeed in killing several people and doing millions of dollars of damage to the Capitol while shocking the world and diminishing global confidence in the American government, they did not stop the final vote tally or the inauguration of Joe Biden.
Still, Washington, DC is filled with thousands of soldiers from National Guard units from all 50 states and two territories. After billing citizens for millions of dollars in golf trips over the past four years, Trump now leaves us with a bill for hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for these troops we had to bring to Washington because of his January 6 rally/riot/insurrection. They are staying through the impeachment trial next month because, as the Department of Homeland Security recently warned Congress, we are in grave danger of another insurrection launched by what they called “self-radicalized” domestic groups, or, what we would commonly call, “loyal Trump supporters.”
Things cannot simply go back to normal with any hope of preserving democracy unless those who caused the insurrection and those who led it and participated in it are arrested and tried for sedition against the government of the United States. How can we be a nation of laws if only the rioters who broke windows and spread their feces on the statues in the Capitol are arrested while Trump, Hawley, and Cruz go free?