Opinion

The president pinned blame on the former president Thursday for causing the J6 insurrection. His speech was part of events marking the one-year anniversary of the day the United States Capitol was sacked and looted for the purpose of installing Donald Trump as fuhrer-king.

“Biden came out swinging this morning,” wrote Jim Wright, “and put the blame for this insurrection squarely on those responsible and it's about goddamned time. He should have done that a year ago. There is no compromise with those who would murder us for their own profit.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) groveled for forgiveness from Tucker Carlson after the Fox News host publicly criticized him for referring to the Jan. 6 insurrection as a “violent terrorist attack."

The Texas Republican apologized Thursday night, on the attack's one-year anniversary, for his “sloppy and frankly dumb” phrasing, but Carlson forced the senator to beg for his approval -- and the spectacle prompted the name "Reek" to trend on Twitter.

As you have been repeatedly reminded in recent days, one year ago, thousands of Donald Trump's followers launched a lethal attack on the U.S. Capitol as part of a larger coup attempt whose obvious goal was to overturn America's multiracial democracy and install their Great Leader as de facto dictator. Several people died during the Capitol assault. More than 150 police officers and other law enforcement agents were injured.

Many in Trump's attack force were armed, including with guns. Explosives were found nearby, with other deadly weapons cached not far away.

We have arrived at the one year anniversary of January 6, 2021, when supporters of the president waged war against a co-equal branch of government. Over the past few months, the public has been receiving piecemeal information about both this violent insurrection and the quieter plots that preceded it. While there are many unknowns, here is what is certain: there was an attempted coup on American soil.

In the weeks leading up to January 6, Trump and allies plotted to overturn the election and undemocratically seize power from President-elect Joe Biden. Then, on January 6, Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, potentially delaying certification.

“You’re not a wartime consigliere, Tom,” Michael Coreleone tells his adopted brother in The Godfather. Michael sees that for all Tom Hagen’s legal brilliance and family loyalty, he’s temperamentally unfit for the raw power struggle that awaits the family in Nevada.

Many have made the same brutal assessment of Attorney General Merrick Garland as he oversees the Biden administration’s legal efforts to preserve American democracy. As he addressed the Justice Department and the nation Wednesday, Garland seemed slight and soft-spoken, a scholar rather than a brawler, an incongruous choice to lead the Justice Department in its greatest battle since the Civil Rights Movement. But Garland’s calm, cerebral approach may also have underappreciated strengths.

Gina Haspel, the CIA director, voiced concern about Trump’s extensive restructuring of Pentagon power, allegedly telling the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley: “We are on the way to a right-wing coup.” Her concerns were well-founded.

We have arrived at the one year anniversary of January 6, 2021, when supporters of the president waged war against a co-equal branch of government. Over the past few months, the public has been receiving piecemeal information about both this violent insurrection and the quieter plots that preceded it. While there are many unknowns, here is what is certain: there was an attempted coup on American soil.

A year ago, a stunned world watched rapt as pro-Trump insurrectionists smashed through windows and barricades at our nation's Capitol, disrupting the constitutionally mandated tally of Electoral College votes certifying President Biden's win. But that display of violence ought to have come as no surprise, as escalating threats and violence in our state houses throughout 2020 presaged the Capitol insurrection.

A year later, we must again look to our state houses for a preview of what is to come. In key battleground states, Republicans are steadily building toward a future where they can engineer election outcomes. GOP-controlled legislatures are setting the stage for another attempted coup. The next insurrection will be decentralized, coming from our state houses with the sheen of legal authority. If we do nothing to stop their plans, then as the 2024 votes are tallied in our states, the laws and rules governing the process and outcome will have been rewritten for a particular outcome: Republican wins, regardless of the votes. And an arch-conservative Supreme Court could stand poised to thwart a constitutional challenge to this state power grab. We have the opportunity to stop this in its tracks — by pouring resources and attention into key state legislative chambers and races immediately. What we do next for our states could determine the fate of our democracy.

It is rather easy to lament the state of our country right now.However, income inequality is at its highest in 50 years. We are richer in the aggregate, but most of the gains have gone to upper-class families. The wealth gap is even starker, with upper-income families possessing 75 times as much wealth as lower-income families. In 1983, that ratio stood at 28.

We are not healthy. Around 42 percent of our country is obese. The Obama administration passed legislation to fight the opioid epidemic. It has only gotten worse, with New York needing to open overdose prevention centers. Before the pandemic, the life expectancy for white males was declining, with what has been termed “deaths of despair.”

Today marks the one-year anniversary of a violent assault on the seat of U.S. democracy.

Like most one-year-olds who get scolded for bad behavior, Republicans aren’t owning up to their role in the insurrection. With the exception of a handful of brave souls who are willing to risk losing their seats for the greater good, congressional Republicans are either pretending January 6 never happened or spinning a fantastical victim narrative where the insurrection was a mere “protest” and the Big Bad Democrats (and Liz Cheney) are being unfair to their twice-impeached, one-term president. Right-wing media is singing from the same hymnal, feeding mass denial among the Republican base, two-thirds of whom still can’t accept that Biden won legitimately.

When we think about medieval Europe, we tend to think about kings ruling with iron fists, about Christian crusaders purifying Jerusalem with the blood of the unbelievers, or about Greek and Roman thinking cast into darkness.

It wasn’t so. According to The Bright Ages, a new book by Matt Gabriele and David Perry, kings often worried about their legitimacy, the crusaders were pragmatists, and Greek and Roman learning and culture carried on, not because Muslim scholars preserved it, but because Rome never really fell.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the Capitol insurrection and attempted coup of the U.S. government by former president Donald Trump. There was a time not long ago when everything about that sentence would have made us laugh at the sheer absurdity of it. Nobody's laughing now.

Trump was apparently persuaded by his advisers to cancel his scheduled press conference for Jan. 6 after seeing that he would not get live coverage on all the networks to spread the Big Lie and excuse the violent mob that stormed the capitol a year ago vowing to hang Vice President Mike Pence. He promised to deliver that message to his loyal followers at a rally next weekend instead, drawing a huge sigh of relief from most Republican officials in Washington who just want to keep a low profile and put the unpleasantness behind them.

The sight of violent Trump supporters invading the Capitol a year ago may have been shocking but it was not surprising. It was the direct result of the government allowing right-wing political violence to smolder for years until it burst into a conflagration on Jan. 6.

While far-right terrorism is the story of America — Native genocide, slave codes, Klan terror, anti-Asian pogroms, racist mass shooters today — there was a specific path to Trump’s coup that might have been avoided if the government had taken the threat seriously.

Freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to hold governments to account is regarded as a critical pillar of democracy. In the United States, it’s supposed to be safeguarded by the First Amendment.

However, especially in recent years, the US government stands accused, maybe more than ever, of allowing increasing attacks on press freedom and the abuse of state power to trample on any notion of journalists being truly able to do their job if they wish to hold the powerful to account – and go against the government line.