January 6th, echoes of the riot
The only thing wild this year is the weather
January 6th is officially a National Special Security Event in Washington, D.C. But today there won’t be any crowds at The Ellipse to hear the president address them. There won’t be any “Stop the Steal” signs bobbing along Pennsylvania Avenue. There won’t be any rowdy throngs marching to the Capitol. The biggest threat to today’s ceremonial certification of the Electoral College vote is the weather. It’s predicted that Winter Storm Blair will drop between 6-12 inches of snow on the D.C. area.
It’s also a somber time in the Capitol, with former President Jimmy Carter lying in repose at the Carter Center in Atlanta, set to travel to the Capitol by plane and motorcade tomorrow, where he will lie in state in the Rotunda until Friday, when the nation will honor him with a memorial service. Then Carter will make his final journey back to Georgia, where he will join his wife, interred in their family plot in Plains. I always wondered why Carter chose to be buried at his family home, versus at Arlington National Cemetery, where he is certainly entitled to be buried. But that’s how Jimmy Carter was—unpretentious to the end. Carter was committed to his own values, right or wrong, and little could sway him from a course when he set his mind to it.
Many Israelis I know have no love for Carter, as he spent a large part of his post presidency years cavorting with terrorists, while he gave Israel a cold shoulder. Possibly that’s a result of Carter’s theology, which does not place much stock in the covenant people who now live in the land God granted to Abraham. I found an interesting tidbit on who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 among Protestant denominations. Leading the list was Assemblies of God, which is the denomination I have attended for many years.
I know I have a controversial take on 2020, but I stand by it. I believe that Trump and the associated plate of spaghetti beliefs of Trumpism is the equivalent of eating six chili dogs from The Varsity when you’re beginning to feel the least bit ill. That’s what my old friend and Georgia Tech grad told me. It will go through you and clean out whatever’s there, or it will kill you. But either way, better to get it done quick rather than suffer, and have to digest it later.
If Trump had won in 2020—if he had not followed his worst instincts on COVID and paranoia regarding mail-in ballots, setting up his own loss—we would not have had the months of insipid lawsuits, illegal coup plotting, and of course, January 6th, 2021. We would not have had the quick impeachment and trial for the riot. We would not have had Liz Cheney falling on her sword to slay the Trump dragon. It’s likely Cheney would still be a Republican in office (how’s that for alt history?), versus receiving a Presidential Citizens Medal from Biden. (Trump was upset that he didn’t get to hand out “fake medals,” which he obviously did, and are not fake.)
We would not have had four years of President Joe Biden. We would not have had the switcheroo for cognitive failure in the middle of the 2024 campaign. And more importantly, we would not have Trump about to take office in 14 days. I don’t know what we would have had with four years of Trump in office, but I do know that today it would all be in the past, and the future would not be four more years of Trump.
The reason I voted for Trump in 2020 is that I believed, and still do, that the confines of office would keep him from being the worst version of himself, and that four years out of office, and a return (which I predicted in 2020) in 2024, would allow him to become a far greater threat to many guardrails of our republic than he would have been serving consecutive terms. Especially versus Joe Biden.
But one of the main reasons Trump got elected in 2024 is his stance on war, and specifically on Israel. Regardless of what Trump actually believes about Jews (I don’t think he particularly has an anti-Semitic bent, given that he is friendly with so many Jews, including his own son-in-law), Trump gives Jews, and Israel, a wide lane of access and respect. Our enemies tend to believe him, and our allies fear his chaotic approach.
The 2020 chart could be sorted by “beliefs on the role of Israel in Christian theology” and you’d get a similar result as who voted for Trump in the greatest numbers. Democrats these days are much more aligned with the post-presidential years of Jimmy Carter. But if you’d ask Bill Clinton, he’d tell you it wasn’t Israel that sunk the Oslo Accords, though much of that agreement, de facto, is in effect, it was the Palestinians, particularly Yasser Arafat, who refused a deal giving Palestinians everything they asked for—in 1998.
This is not to say that Carter endorsed terrorism, which he did not. He would not have found a friendly audience among the college brats who applauded October 7th, 2023. However, Carter would have had the ears of all the eggheads who blame Israel for creating the conditions that brought the pogrom about, even though it was Carter’s actions in office that ignited much of the anti-American hatred burning in Tehran these last 45 years. There’s a line of thought that extends directly from Jimmy Carter to Kamala Harris, though it does not pass through Bill Clinton or Joe Biden, who are more old-school liberals in dealing with the Middle East.
Donald Trump has more in common with Joe Biden—the Joe Biden who would do everything he believed, not the Joe Biden who acted as a national caretaker for four years—than either of them have with Kamala Harris. If Joe Biden had not allowed his staff to walk back half his remarks as “gaffes” or misunderstandings, much of what the White House did these last four years would not be much different than what a Trump administration would have done. Even the pandering and student loan forgiveness; I can imagine Trump doing something like that, as long as it was his idea and not someone else’s. Actually, Biden left most of Trump’s tariffs in place, and by 2024, Biden pivoted to Trump’s border enforcement, sans wall.
Kamala Harris probably did more to elect Donald Trump than Elon Musk did—she could not articulate a single reason to vote for Joe Biden over Trump, while simultaneously not offer a single thing she’d do differently than Biden. Her only play was to listen to the echoes of January 6th, 2021.
The echoes of January 6th past are important. It was a terrible day, possibly one of the worst days of our Republic, and even on a par with April 12, 1861, the day Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter. In what I find another interesting tidbit of history, Jefferson Davis’ own secretary of state, Robert Toombs, offered his opinion of that plan in early 1861, writing:
The firing upon that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.
But Jeff Davis wanted action to spur states which were on the fence regarding secession to move, and military action was the lever he used to move them.
Trump is no Jeff Davis, and Liz Cheney is no Robert Toombs; neither is Mike Pence. But all of them played similar roles in an act of rebellion against the nation’s own order and laws to their Civil War forebears. If Mike Pence had participated in Trump’s plan, it would have been the equivalent of Fort Sumter. That day was bad enough as it was. I remember it bitterly.
But this year we will not have a repeat of January 6th, 2021. It will be peaceful, blanketed in snow, and quiet in Washington, D.C. The Capitol will be preparing to host the funeral of a former president, instead of cleaning up the mess of a thousand invaders. We will have a solemn week, marred only by Trump’s shrill online insults and diatribes, but, for now, unmarred by his presence, though Trump said he plans to attend Carter’s memorial service.
Trump will also be heading to New York for his sentencing in the Stormy Daniels election payoff case he lost. Odds are Judge Juan Merchan will release Trump unconditionally. It would be quite interesting if Merchan sentenced Trump to 12 days in jail, with no visitors allowed. That would set up all kinds of impossible situations, like—January 20th we get Acting President J.D. Vance since Trump wouldn’t be able to take the oath of office. Or Justice Clarence Thomas filing an appearance as Trump’s personal attorney so he can travel to New York and see his client in jail, and swear him in to office, with the Secret Service as witnesses. But that’s all the musing of fiction.
On January 20th of this year, Donald Trump will take the oath of office. I don’t think Joe Biden has it in him to resign and make Kamala Harris president for 10 days, like some think should happen. I don’t think Biden likes Harris enough to do that, and it’s not really good for the world for it to happen.
America needs a boring, peaceful transition of power, and that’s exactly what we will get. The next four years are not going to be boring. But neither was Jimmy Carter’s only term in office.
Today, perhaps the blanket of snow, and the peaceful, solemn day will help to quiet the echoes of four years ago.
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