January 6, four years later

Our institutions failed us. And yet, we move forward.

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

At 1:36 p.m. Monday, NBC News sent out its push alert: “Congress certifies Trump’s 2024 election win, four years after the Jan. 6 riot sought to disrupt the 2020 count.“

Four years and 16 minutes earlier, according to a CNN timeline of this day in 2021, “As he ends his speech at the Ellipse, Trump call[ed] for supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” and march to the Capitol.“

As someone who lives in D.C. and has spent most of his life surrounded literally and figuratively by governmental figures and our laws, it was hard for me to reach any conclusion in that moment today other than that, in order to get to this moment, we failed in a significant and maybe irreparable way as a nation over the past four years.

Our institutions, our self-confidence, our independence — none of them stopped Donald Trump from returning to power. Our Congress, our courts, our political parties, and our Constitution failed in this moment.

Many want us to forget it or ignore January 6, 2021. What you hear — or don’t hear — far too many people saying today about that day is a lie. It was not calm. It was not peaceful. It was nothing other than a brazen attempt to overturn the election — regardless of who got in the way.

What many telling us to ignore January 6, 2021, said that day, however — what they whispered that night, as scary as it was — was the truth. What Republican leaders said, what people of all stripes across the country said, what corporate America did in response. That was all the truth. Diminishing or ignoring what happened — what many of those same people and businesses are saying and doing today — is a dangerous lie.

The past four years were a test of our system of governing that was only exceeded — at least domestically — by the test America faced when Abraham Lincoln led the nation.

And yet, at all points, our government failed.

The failure of Congress to act to bar Donald Trump from holding office again in the aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021, through impeachment and conviction might ultimately become one of the low points in American history. (Yes, the House impeached and I have and do lay most of the blame at the Senate’s feet, but the House acted slowly, and others have convinced me of the fault that lies there as well.)

Our Supreme Court ignored the lessons of the Civil War Amendments. The court pushed aside the constitutional amendment put into place after the Civil War to keep insurrectionists out of office, and the Republican appointees followed that up by hobbling the criminal legal system’s capacity — as slow as the Justice Department moved — to pick up the slack.

And so, four years after Donald Trump and his allies unsuccessfully sought to overturn a presidential election, Trump has faced no consequences and Trump and his allies are preparing to take over the federal executive branch yet again.

I am much more of an optimist than this post thus far might suggest.

It is because of my optimism that I believe that it is important today to speak up and speak out about what happened that day. Particularly so, four years later, as Trump prepares to return to office with a vice president who, as The Washington Post put it over the summer, “has said he would have done what Vice President Mike Pence refused to do“ four years ago.

The period that follows could be difficult — very difficult at times. But, I believe the path forward remains by doing our best to hold our leaders accountable and to protect one another.

For me, I believe one of the ways I can best do that by doing what I’ve always done: I will tell you about how people are using, abusing, or ignoring our legal system and laws in ways that affect our lives. And, I also will tell you how those responsible for carrying out the work of that system are doing so — and whether they are doing so legally and ethically. There will be more to it, of course, but I think that gets at the driving forces.

As I sit here typing, four years ago, it would still have been another four hours before the election would finally be certified. At 3:42 a.m. January 7, 2021, Pence officially certified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

At 3:42 a.m. Tuesday, most of us will be asleep. Because there was no insurrection today and the presidential election was certified more than nine hours ago.

The questions I take with me tonight: What lessons will we learn over the next four years? And, when will the next presidential election be certified?