My Extremely Brief Take on January 6th

The system failed.

Photo by Brendan Beale on Unsplash

Today, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has no long wind-up, no complex framing, no deep research. Today, Congress met and took the appropriate amount of time to certify that Donald Trump was elected president. This happened despite the fact that Trump was the man most responsible for it taking much longer the last time around — and at the cost of actual lives no less.

I remember watching those events four years ago, when even folks like Kevin McCarthy seemed like they had had a come to Jesus moment:

What a long, strange trip it’s been in four years since that day.

Readers can peruse the New York Times’ Dan Barry and Alan Feuer on how Trump reframed the events of January 6th, or the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel and Mike Caulfield on the online ecosystem that made that possible. Today I don’t particularly care.

All I know is that the following people are responsible for where we are today. In ascending order of importance:

1. Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020 but due to a combination of hubris, age, and ego stayed in the 2024 race far too long, stacking the deck against anyone who challenged Donald Trump;

2. Merrick Garland, who took way too long to mobilize any serious Justice Department investigation into Trump’s myriad felonies;

3. The Supreme Court of the United States, who repeatedly, persistently evinced zero interest in applying any legal or constitutional constraint on Donald Trump. As a result, no future president will feel constrained in any way whatsoever by the Emoluments Clause, Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, or, as it turns out, pretty much any law that might otherwise restrict the President of the United States;

4. Mitch McConnell, who could have tipped the scales on Trump’s second impeachment (and made it pretty clear afterwards how he felt about Trump) but, in the end, did not vote to convict;

5. Congressional Republicans, who acted and sounded pretty goddamn terrified when the rioters attacked on January 6th. If they had all decided to jump at once and vote to impeach and then convict Trump, his political power would have evaporated. Instead, scared of their own partisans, they capitulated to Trump;

6. Donald J. Trump, who whipped his supporters into a frenzy, attempted to organize slates of alternate electors, refused to recognize the results of any election that he has lost, and has promised to pardon those who violated laws to serve his interests. And finally,

7. The American people, who had plenty of opportunities not to vote for Trump again. In early 2024, Republicans could have gone to the polls and selected a Trump clone who had not committed multiple felonies. In November 2024 voters could have gone to the polls and selected a different candidate who, to repeat a theme, had not committed multiple felonies. And yet, in the end, a plurality voted for the toddler.

Folks are going to point out that today marked a peaceful transfer of power, overseen by the loser of the last presidential election, and isn’t that a great thing for democracy?! Usually, it is. But the fact remains that the only reason for the peace is because the guy who has threatened or fomented political violence for the last ten years won the election this time around. America’s political elite appeased a bully, the American people endorsed that strategy, and now America’s economic elite is falling all over itself to appease the bully some more.

And when you think about that dynamic for more than half a second, you realize how pathetic it makes this country sound.