A day to recommit to democracy

I'm finding the anniversary of the day Donald's dupes stormed the Capital building thoroughly dispiriting.

Yes, a majority of the electorate "pardoned" the incoming president in 2024, though recent polls say majorities still oppose pardons for the J6ers convicted by the Washington courts. The MAGA message machine may be able to change that. Or not.

It won't with me. The intellectual authors of the attack on the Capital and on the result of the 2020 election will always remain traitors to the nation's better aspirations and to the United States Constitution. They are still beneath contempt.

Charlie Warzel and Mike Caulfield, in The Atlantic, make a plausible case that the dupe faction of us is unmovable thanks to our information diet. 

When the Democratic Party chose to make the 2024 election about Trump, his threat to the rule of law, and the “battle for the soul of this nation,” as President Biden once put it, it was under the assumption that the indelible images of January 6 would be able to maintain their resonance nearly four years later. 

That assumption, broadly speaking, was wrong. Confronted with information that could shake their worldviews, people can now search for confirming evidence and mainline conspiracist feeds or decontextualized videos. They can ask AI and their favorite influencers to tell them why they are right. They can build tailored feeds and watch as algorithms deliver what they’re looking for. And they will be overwhelmed with data.

The hum of the justification machine is comforting. It makes the world seem less unpredictable, more knowable. Underneath the noise, you can make out the words “You’ve been right all along.”

When people have become unmoored from experiential truth, only a cold, hard kick upside the head is likely to bring them back into material reality. The COVID pandemic might have done it but didn't; what will it take? Human nature and history are not cancelled by the Elon and Donnie show; something will upset this fantasy world, though it's hard now to see what. And whatever it takes is likely to inflict much pain on all of us.

On remembering January 6, here's former US Attorney Joyce Vance: 

As Democrats make tentative overtures and talk about bipartisanship at the start of this new administration, it’s important to understand that while there are moments for compromise, which is the only way government works, there are some things we cannot, and must not, compromise on. January 6 is chief among them. We cannot and must not pretend that Donald Trump did not inspire an insurrection. We should not forget that despite being reelected in 2024, he tried to steal the 2020 election.

January 6 should be the day we recommit to democracy, every single year. It must not become they day we forget about it.