Between Jan 6, 2021, four years after attempted treason, and Jan 20, 2025 the second inauguration of Trump, the Republican Party eager revisionism, has revised our public memory. What will the consequences be to democracy and the status of truth within United States’ culture?
What sticks with me is watching PBS Congressional Correspondent Lisa DesJardins hiding from attackers as U.S. Capitol Police officers engage the attackers. That video held and holds more evocative power than the jarring ones of dozens and 100s of zealous Combover loyalists storming the capitol building. Why it jarred me? The assault was happening in real time maybe an hour into the melee. The attackers’ sounds were of anger and peril. Ms. DesJardins, while wanting to portray calm, looked anxious and nervous.
How have Conservatives convinced themselves that the attack wasn’t gravely ignorant, and vicious violence?
Citizens have forgotten and chosen to forget, or overwritten in their individual memories, and beliefs about the attack on the U.S. Capital building. Plainly partisan people and groups have spread misinformation about Jan. 6, which changed and undermined the facts and context within the cleaner, original public memory. What will K-12 students learn about the attempted treason on the capitol building?
From Newshour Jan. 2022: “In a statement, McConnell called Jan. 6 “a dark day for Congress and our country” after “the seat of the first branch of our federal government was stormed by criminals who brutalized police officers and used force to try to stop Congress from doing its job.”
Knowing that what we saw on-screen was disgusting, and was led by giddily ignorant fools who saw Trump as a beacon and oracle, I’m content that I’ve forgotten much of the movie-like drama. Having seen the misled hoard of flag-waving halfwits, and lawmakers hunched down in capitol chambers is burned into my brain.
As for the mental burning, the mental dissonance between Jan 6, 2021 and concerns in 2025 among critically-thoughtful non-MAGA Americans about tyranny, need to trouble us as citizens. The social-media mindset left the public memory pliable able to forgetting the facts of the psychological and physical trauma what witness The Combover followers did.
“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it,” he said then, calling it “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.” Sen. McConnell according to PBS’ NewsHour.
The continued culture-wide forgetfulness and revision of public memory via FOX News, and News Nation and their ilk needs to trouble us. When Trump fans insist they were seldom and barely at-fault for the violent conduct. This reduces the gravity and reality of the attack upon democracy.
And softened lens, the attempted treason looks much milder than what the corroborated news evidence shows. Alas, among Trump people, bent on defending their ideal strongman, The Combover, they forget or choose to ignore the facts and context of the movie-like attack on the U.S. Capitol.
That means that revising and rewriting their individual and culture-wide public memories of the violence. It makes you wonder what version of truth the official history, and history the K-12 textbooks will impart for lessons to convey the attackers’ grave ignorance and anger, which The Combover happily had stoked via Tweet for weeks, and the anxiety and peril which U.S. lawmakers felt.
Too many people prefer to rely on others’ social-media-based softening of the facts. These followers often turn to “alternative” and plausible conspiracy ideas. That must not taint the corroborated fact about the incident.
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