In the Shadow of January 6th
By Albert B. Kelly
If you’ve been listening to the news since the start of the New Year, the chances are good that you’ve heard various news pieces reflecting on the year anniversary of the January 6th Capital riots and the fragility and vulnerability of our democracy. News anchors and commentators point out how divided we are at this time. A few speculate on how easy it would be for an authoritarian ruler to come along and blow up our republic.
I will admit that I’m torn on the issue of our vulnerability. There are days when it seems like the whole damned thing is coming apart right before our eyes and that all it would really take to go full-on authoritarian would be a wolf in sheep’s clothing with a little polish, a robust Twitter following, and a few allies in the judiciary willing to do some behind-the-scenes maneuvering and the whole “by the people, for the people” thing would be history.
But then there are other times when I’m comforted by the idea that if the %#$& really hit the fan, that enough of my fellow citizens, the American people, would really dig in and not let the whole thing unravel or be taken over by a group of well-dressed thugs whether they come in the name of the left or the right. I suppose my faith in the “middle”, this idea that somehow the center will hold, makes for a mighty small hook on which to hang my hat, but it’s the best I’ve got at the moment.
We are certainly a divided people and if nothing else, we know this because some call January 6th a “disturbance”, or an “uprising” while others call that day a “riot”, an “attack”, or a “siege”. What one calls it largely depends on how they view what happened that day at the Capital, but it will really be left to history to render the final judgement.
When you strip away the “issues”, it all centers on the rule of the law. Whether we survive as a democracy will largely come down to whether or not we’re willing to place ourselves under the rule of law and whether we will permit ourselves to be governed. We already know what it looks like when a sufficient number of people stiffen their necks and will not adhere to the rule of law- it looks like our Civil War.
Sure it may sound overly dramatic to mention the Civil War in the same breath as January 6th, but I think we would do well to sit with a few of the parallels and comparisons for just a moment. It does not require a far leap of imagination to see the rumor mill of November 1860 running hot and wild in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida with all sorts of conspiracy theories about the election of Abraham Lincoln and what he would do if elected.
The majority of people in those seven states refused to be governed by what they saw as this illegitimate president and even as Lincoln was getting ready to take office in March of 1861, armed forces from those states threatened to take federal property (Fort Sumter) in South Carolina. Ultimately the thing came to a head there a few weeks later and the opening shots of the war were fired. After that, Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia, and North Carolina joined the others and left the Union and the rest as they say, is history.
I suppose January 6th looks small and confined or even inconsequential when compared to Fort Sumter and the first shots of the Civil War, but that’s only because we know the end of that story- the roughly 600,000 dead and the carnage that came unbelievably close to destroying this country precisely because a large enough group of people refused to live by the rule of law, they would not be governed.
And it no doubt started with rumors and wild conspiracy theories making the rounds on horseback, all coming to a head with the election of 1860. Today, conspiracy theories are packaged differently and it’s Twitter instead of horseback, but necks on the left and right are just as stiff. Whether we survive or not will largely hinge on whether enough of us in the middle, (think Nixon’s silent majority), insist that the rule of law be upheld above everything else because the alternative remains unthinkable.