“The Final Report of the January 6 Committee” arrived in my mailbox on Jan. 6, 2023, two years to the day after I’d watched the events of Jan. 6 unfold on television. Since then, I’ve followed the news reports and the hearings in search of an answer to one question: could what I’d read and believed, about democracy and American exceptionalism, since childhood, be taken down by a demagogue and a violent mob on a Saturday afternoon? I remembered Hitler and the events in Germany in the 1930s. Surely, it couldn’t happen here, but it did.
American democracy has its critics. Journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken called it “a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.” My grandfather called it a “fraud.” I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s, “history rhymes,” and the 620,000 who were killed in the “debate” over “state’s rights” and slavery.
Was I naïve to read the writings of James Madison in “The Federalist Papers” and believe, as I did, that we are capable of anything more? My grandfather read history and said I was naïve.
There are no reassurances in the Jan. 6 report. It’s two inches thick, weighs several pounds and goes to almost 900 pages. The executive summary and eight subsequent chapters take up the planning for the attack and the attack itself. They are riddled with the self-interested testimony of those who were involved and are, now, trying to save themselves.
It’s clear. Donald Trump and a cadre of true believers lost a national election, then came together to stop the peaceful transition of political power. For me, the narrative recalls the 1962 novel and the film “Seven Days in May,” in which a cabal of generals plotted a military coup. The generals came close. Donald Trump and his followers came even closer.
Jan. 6 wasn’t a single day event—a mob and a demonstration that got out of control. “The Jan. 6 Report” shows it was the culmination of a conspiracy framed and led out of the White House. The narrative reveals criminal intent that runs across weeks and months of plotting that began before the election.
The mob at the Capitol that day were the foot soldiers, the muscle recruited to carry out what was one among several plots and subplots to overthrow the election and the Constitution. They’re being prosecuted. Some are already serving prison sentences. But it’s the powerful people, the politicians, the lawyers, the agents of Donald Trump, and Trump himself, who must be called to account. Their actions and behavior demand accountability.
There are heroes in all of this. First must come the police officers, who challenged the attackers and drove them from the Capitol. Then, there are the elected officials and staffers, who stayed firm and withstood the violence that nearly destroyed our electoral process. There’s Vice President Pence, who refused to be a part of the Trumpian plot and stayed in the Capitol at personal risk to his own and his family’s safety, and Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican’s Republican, who resisted partisan pressure, putting country before party as vice chair of the January 6 Committee.
I haven’t finished reading the report, but when I’m done, it will join the Constitution and the “Federalist Papers” in my library as a reminder of the words of Thomas Jefferson: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
John Diers is a Prior Lake resident who spent 40 years working in the transit industry and is the author of “Twin Cities by Trolley: The Streetcar Era in Minneapolis and St. Paul” and “St. Paul Union Depot.” To submit questions or topics for community columnists, email editor@plamerican.com.
