There was the guy in the buffalo horns. Another with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. Scores were military, ex-military, paramilitary, and military cosplayers–or police officers. Some were past and present elected office holders on state and local levels. They were overwhelmingly white and male. Most were middle or upper-middle class.
They assaulted police officers from the Capitol Police and the DC Metropolitan Police, responsible for the death of one officer who was hospitalized after the attack, and two more who took their own lives in the wake of the attack.
About 520 have been arrested. More than 250 remain in jail. An estimated 13 have already pleaded guilty to their crimes; one has been sentenced. A not-insignificant number were released to the custody of their mothers, with more having their mommies vouch for them in court. Too few have disavowed their actions; too many have doubled-down on their self-declared status of untouchable folk heroes.
What they exemplify is a small but not insignificant portion of the GOP base who can easily be swayed by an unrelenting stream of disinformation to abandon their fealty to the nation and for some, even their sworn oaths, to show their loyalty to a defeated politician.
But they were just the first wave. On the night of January 6th and the morning of January 7th, Democrats united with many Republicans to certify the Electoral College slates from the States to ensure Democrat Joe Biden would be inaugurated as president on January 20th. Some Republicans who had intended to object to the certification changed their votes after the crowd of domestic terrorists attacked the Capitol; they were genuinely concerned about the stability of the American Experiment if the result of the election was put into doubt. Still more than 120 Republicans in the House opted to challenge the certified slates of electors; so did six Republican Senators: Hawley (MO), Crux (TX), Kennedy (LA), Tuberville (AL), Marshall (KS) and Hyde-Smith (MS).
Trump’s Big Lie had taken hold, and it will now play out in the 2022 midterms as Republicans from the freaky-right will challenge incumbent Republicans in both the House and Senate if they feel they were not overtly loyal not to the Constitution, not to the nation, but to Donald J. Trump.
Those legislators who condemned the crowd and laid responsibility for the attack at the feet of Trump quickly crumbled. Do you remember the words of Republican leaders Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Kevin McCarthy in the House condemning the terrorists’ actions and calling on Trump to recognize reality? They’ve both crumbled. Now, they both fear Trump, afraid that any sense of distance from Trump’s claims will result in the wet-noodle wrath of a completely impotent political potentate.
There will be no magic tonic that will suddenly allow the infected to wake up and recognize reality. No kiss from a prince. No ruby slippers. The GOP is all-in for insanity–taxpayer money wasting insanity. A completely-mockable audit by an unknown third-party in Arizona. Court challenges in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Public declarations from luminaries like Mike Lindell and Sidney “The Kraken” Powell. (And when I say “luminaries,” I refer to the glowing bags with the brightness on a single candle.)
These denials of reality will continue into coming election seasons, and the GOP is hoping that, in the future, it won’t take a storming of the Capitol. Republicans have already passed laws in many states that will make it easier to dismiss votes that don’t fit their agenda.
This is a threat. Not just to our Republic. Not just to the Constitution. Those are surely at risk. The threat is to our safety–literally our lives. The violence exhibited at the Capitol by extremists on January 6th–if it continues to be tolerated and tacitly endorsed by Republicans–will spread from Washington to polling places and elections offices at the local and state levels. It will spread to state capitols when votes are certified. It will be in our hometowns, in schools, in offices.
Their numbers will not grow in any significance: no one is going to wake up this week or next with a sudden realization that a legitimate election was stolen by a makeshift conspiracy of voting machine manufacturers, Italians and Hugo Chavez. Black and urban voters won’t suddenly glom onto election recounts when they have such a hard time voting. Their numbers won’t grow, but their fervor and delusion will.
The vast majority of the 500 already indicted–and of the one to be indicted in the future–don’t see themselves as chastised, gullible fools who got duped by The Big Lie. They still see themselves as the Spartan 300: the first line of defense against an overwhelming enemy.