![]() A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN
The Lesson of January 6: Tragedy Does Not Yield National Unity By David Corn January 4, 2022 ![]() The January 6, 2021, riot has led to the largest investigation in the history of the US Justice Department. Jon Elswick/AP There is a notion that great tragedies unite a nation. Remember the increase in civility that immediately followed the shock and horror of 9/11? But this idea is largely a myth, and the first-year anniversary of the Trump-incited insurrection at the US Capitol is a reminder that calamities do not bring together a country. In fact, they can further divide.
Anniversaries are prime time for pollsters. Surveys conducted to mark our first full trip around the sun since Donald Trump’s brownshirts, fueled by his Big Lie, stormed into Congress seeking to block the peaceful transfer of power, show that the past 12 months have only served to widen the gulf between rational adherents of democracy and those citizens willing to be led by a demagogue into the dangerous wasteland of criminality and authoritarianism.
In a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll, 92 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents said Trump bears a “great deal” or a “good amount” of blame for the January 6 riot. Only 27 percent of Republicans agreed with that. Similarly, 88 percent of Ds and 74 percent of indies noted that there was no evidence of significant electoral fraud in 2020. Sixty-two percent of Republicans said there was. (These people are wrong.) Seven out of 10 Trump voters believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. (Ditto.) An ABC/Ipsos poll asked if the rioters at the Capitol had been “threatening democracy.” Overall, 72 percent said yes, with 96 percent of Democrats agreeing. Yet 52 percent of Republicans said the marauders had been “protecting democracy”—as if the violence that claimed several lives was justified. These Republicans are living in a bizarro Fox-shaped world, far from the realm of decency and sanity. Their reaction to this terrorist raid on the US government is to dig deeper into the hole of paranoia and create more distance between themselves and the reality-based mainstream.
Immediately after this terrorist attack on American democracy, it seemed for the briefest of moments that the hatred and rage of that day might have scared people—particularly GOP leaders—into realizing that Trumpism had gone too far and that the gulf in the body politic it has caused needed bridging. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy each excoriated Trump for triggering this assault on constitutional government (though they pulled up short of endorsing impeachment). And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had been Trump’s obsequious lapdog for years, barked on the night of 1/6, once the raiders had been vanquished, “I hate it being this way. Oh my god I hate it...But today...all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”
Of course, none of these men stuck with this stance of responsibility. They all folded as it became obvious that the January 6 riot would exacerbate, not calm, the stark political tensions that Trump and his minions had inflamed and exploited over four years. These polls show that. And we should have seen this coming. Let’s look at some previous national traumas:
And look at the Trump years. Charlottesville, George Floyd, the Las Vegas shooting, a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans (with many of those deaths preventable). None of these dreadful events spurred civility and productive conversation across the political divide. (Right-wingers red-baited the Black Lives Matter movement as a Marxist threat to the security of the nation.) Awful occurrences tend to widen the tears in our social fabric, as they compel people who cling to misguided and unfounded notions to cling harder. They become not reasons to reassess, but ammunition for the continuing political and cultural battles. Trump and his cultists now point to January 6 as the natural—and justified—reaction to the real insurrection that occurred over a year ago when the election was stolen (fact-check: not stolen) from Trump.
The latest news out of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is that it has obtained firsthand testimony that Trump was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the assault on television while it proceeded. As Trump gazed at the screens, members of his staff pleaded with him to go on television and tell people to stop. McCarthy, on the phone, was beseeching him. And at least twice his daughter Ivanka went in to request that Trump do something to halt the violence. Still, Trump persisted…in watching, no doubt hoping the chaos would bolster his scheme to overturn the election by preventing the congressional certification of Biden’s victory. This is a crime that we don’t need any further evidence of. (There are plenty of other matters for the committee to probe.) We all witnessed it that day: Trump did nothing, as his people—QAnoners, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, Proud Boys, toy soldiers, and others—rampaged at the nation’s citadel of democracy to thwart constitutional governance.
To be repelled by Trump’s action—or inaction—and the conduct of his mob on January 6 would be too much of a shock to the system for a Trump loyalist. It would require disowning a foundational belief in Trump. And as McConnell, McCarthy, and Graham have illustrated, the political tide of this cultism is too tough a current to swim against. Any opportunity for January 6 to yield common cause or a valuable reckoning was a mirage. One crucial point of Trumpism is the lack of desire to reconcile or seek commonality. In many, if not most, cases, national tragedies do not heal; they clarify the rifts that exist. They reveal where the fight is and what work must be done.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com. ![]() The Watch, Read, and Listen List American Radical, Ayman Mohyeldin. Have you ever wondered how a seemingly normal person becomes an QAnoner? What sends someone so far down a dark rabbit hole that they become obsessed with paranoid fantasies and unrecognizable to family and friends? And in one case, dead? In this compelling podcast, MSNBC journalist Ayman Mohyeldin examines the tale of Rosanne Boyland, a 34-year-old woman and Trump supporter from Kennesaw, Georgia, who died at the US Capitol during the insurrectionist attack on January 6, 2021. Boyland’s brother-in-law was a high school pal of Mohyeldin, and after Rosanne’s tragic death, he reached out to the newsman to help uncover what had brought Rosanne, previously a shy woman who hated politics, to Washington to join Trump’s violent mob. Mohyeldin subsequently traces a sad tale in which Rosanne, who struggled with addiction and other health issues and had no job, came across various QAnon videos and conspiracy theories on the internet and in a short period of time—14 hours, it seems—became radicalized. She bought into the BS notion that a cabal of pedophiles was running the world and Trump was engaged in a titanic battle against this nefarious force. And this changed her. It became the focus of the last six months of her life. She became less engaged with relatives and friends, who witnessed this change. Unfortunately, none of them knew how deep it was or what to do about it.
There are mysteries along the way. The man who journeyed with her from Georgia to Washington seems to have disappeared. Boyland’s family—and Mohyeldin—search for him, looking for answers. He is clearly dodging them. And there are questions about the coroner’s report, which concluded she died from accidental “acute amphetamine intoxication”—not from being trampled during the raid. American Radical chronicles a tragic descent that, not surprisingly, has been exploited by Trump conspiracy-mongers. It seems that Boyland latched on to QAnon crackpottery because it gave her a sense of purpose and agency—and this propelled her to become one of the Trump rioters propelled by lies and anger. Mohyeldin returned to his hometown to examine one instance of a soul lost to disinformation and paranoia, but he shows us how Boyland’s death underscores the profound dangers posed by the right’s embrace of lunatic and Manichean conspiracy theories—for those ensnared in these fevered nightmares and, also, for the rest of us. Read Recent Issues of This Land December 23, 2021: Farewell to a stupid year; Dumbass Comment of the Year; Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.
December 21, 2021: How the GOP is establishing political apartheid; Donald Trump’s most outrageous email, spending time with The Shrink Next Door; Susanna Hoffs’ delightful new album; and more.
December 18, 2021: Mark Meadows, the chief’s chief coup plotter; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.
December 14, 2021: Denounce Julian Assange, don’t extradite him; why WandaVision is marvelous; hanging out with Neil Young and Crazy Horse in an old barn; and more.
December 11, 2021: Trump’s newest—and biggest—potential conflict of interest; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Tucker Carlson Edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
December 7, 2021: John Lennon and the NRA—four decades later; Chris Christie: Trump is afraid to lose in 2024; an inspiring documentary about Jacques Cousteau; and more.
December 4, 2021: Donald Trump and the Cruddy Pan Theory of human behavior; Peter Thiel, kingmaker?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
November 30, 2021: One big reason to fear a Trump restoration: revenge; why The Beatles: Get Back is one of the greatest documentaries ever; Tick, tick…BOOM! is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s love letter to theater geeks; and more.
November 23, 2021: How dangerous is Peter Thiel?; No Time to Die as a daddy-daughter film; spending time with Nick Offerman; Aimee Mann’s fabulous new album; and more. Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.
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