Good evening everyone:

‍

The anniversary of the January 6^th coup attempt has to be marked, but I can add nothing that hasn’t already been said. That is particularly true given the powerful statements of President Biden and Vice President Harris this morning.

‍

The President observed poignantly, “You can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t obey the law only when it’s convenient. You can’t be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies.”

‍

The Vice President, who spoke before the President, added: “What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders. What they sought to degrade and destroy was not only a building, hallowed as it is. What they were assaulting were the institutions, the values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed, and shed blood to establish and defend. On January 6th, we all saw what our nation would look like if the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy are successful. The lawlessness, the violence, the chaos.”

‍

We are fortunate to have such clarity from the nation’s two highest leaders.

‍

So, a year later, how far have we come? I, unfortunately, struggle to get beyond a decidedly negative view:

• We have been reminded – not that we needed to be – that the pursuit and maintenance of political power is an absolute end, transcending the cultivation of virtue, the pursuit of the common good, the observance of principled leadership.

• We have some 140 members of the House and 8 Senators still serving who voted to invalidate votes legitimately cast, painstakingly counted, and repeatedly certified – members who unapologetically maintain their certitude, refuse to see in it a violation of their oath of office, and who are daily triggers of various forms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to countless others affected by the day’s events, including capitol police officer and congressional members (if you haven’t, look up Representative Dan Kildee’s moving accounts of his mental health struggles occasioned by the events).

• We have 126 – and counting – candidates for various election oversight posts throughout the country who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election and who are poised to walk their communities off a cliff if the results don’t play out in their favor in the future.

• We have witnessed an unshakeable embrace by a substantial portion – a minority, but not an insignificant one – of the politics of division and demonization as not just a convenient organizing ploy for a particular election cycle, but also as a desired permanent outcome of democratic processes.

‍

There are certainly sources of optimism – perhaps I should be focusing more of my attention on those:

• The House January 6^th Committee is valiantly pursuing a course that will tell a full, dispassionate, and unambiguous story of the events leading up to the acts of terror at the Capitol and the events of the day itself – a transcendentally important antidote to the poisonous distortions peddled by far too many in positions of public responsibility, spinning insidious nonsense that would whitewash, normalize, and seek to bury the memory of the events.

• Accountability is evolving, with 700 people arrested, 175 charged, and 75 convicted, plea-bargained, or placed on parole – the United States Justice Department is functioning as it should, working methodically, apolitically, professionally on the largest web of criminal investigations in the nation’s history.

• An overwhelming preponderance of the fifth estate – the press in all of its sprawling diversity – has been relentless in pursuit of understanding who knew what, when, and how and has refused to be cowed.

• And, to return where I began: the current occupants of the White House are genuinely committed to erecting every legally permissible corrective to one of the darkest days in the country’s history.

‍

Let me close with Vice President’s Harris’ words:

The strength of democracy is the rule of law. The strength of democracy is the principle that everyone should be treated equally, that elections should be free and fair, that corruption should be given no quarter. The strength of democracy is that it empowers the people.

The fragility of democracy is this: that if we are not vigilant, if we do not defend it, democracy simply will not stand; it will falter and fail.

What was at stake then, and now, is the right to have our future decided the way the Constitution prescribes it: by we, the people — all the people.

‍

Rip