Surviving J6 this time

I hated to jinx things by prewriting, but things seem much calmer in 2025.

If this were J6 instead of a 2009 protest I attended, how many of us would be getting a knock on the door from the FBI?

It’s interesting…aside from the dead-enders on the Left who think Elon Musk came up with a way to steal the election in all seven “battleground” states, the intrigue about J6 comes from the inside, where Democrats will try and figure out a way to object to accepting the Electoral College count despite the laws passed a couple years back after what happened in 2020.

Because of that, I’m not writing to you about a proposed bus trip to Washington, D.C. to hear President Trump rail against a system he believed cheated him then exhort the crowd to “peacefully and patriotically” protest. By all accounts, we and the “enhanced security” are not going to be treated to Kamala Harris addressing an audience of multi-hued protestors who surround the Capitol, and that’s good. Aside from a mild three-day protest that’s supposed to begin today and will “likely affect traffic in the area,” not much is going on for this edition of January 6. (The biggest impact may be a heavy snowstorm due to fall on the region on Monday.)

But I can’t go a whole lot longer without expressing my desire for justice for the initial J6 defendants and the truth about why our government was trying to set them up in the first place. Certainly, we ought to see pardons for all but the most violent J6 offenders, like the ones who just strolled through the Capitol briefly on a non-guided tour and didn’t cause much damage, but where do they go to get their livelihoods and reputations back - particularly the ones who already served their term in the clink? No one dropped the charges like a bad habit as the OG Trump 2017 protestors had done for them.

The problem is that we had two roughly consecutive terms of unrest - J6 right after the post-George Floyd summer of discontent in 2020 - and, in the compare and contrast, the treatment of those who participated in the “fiery but mostly peaceful” protests that summer of 2020 was dramatically different. While the President was the same, the results were vastly skewed: it was frightening for a time in 2020 wondering where the next powder keg would explode; on the other hand, once we got through a few stressful hours on J6 where no one quite knew all that was going on, what with all the barriers being breached, glass being broken, and bomb threats, the media simply adopted a narrative that “orange man bad” should be impeached on his way out the door and beyond and then everyone moved on.

Well, not quite everyone. First of all, the FBI was on the J6 case like white on rice, finding over 1,500 “most wanted” protestors to charge with various federal offenses to ruin their lives - meanwhile, those in the summer of Floyd had no such dragnet after them.

And of course, there were enough Americans who compared the record of the Joe Biden regime with that of Trump 1.0 and found the former wanting that no amount of mugshots, civil damages, and other trumped-up (pun intended) efforts - up to and including shooting at the bastard - to disqualify Donald J. Trump prevailed. The last barrier should go by the wayside Monday, as the idea of using the 14th Amendment to bar him from office as an “insurrectionist” falls flat when one considers neither Trump nor any other J6 defendant was ever charged with that crime.

(Of course, should they somehow succeed with Trump, the problem is that JD Vance was nowhere near J6. So there’s no prohibition on what he did and in theory, under the 25th Amendment, Vance could nominate Trump as his vice-President and use the Republican majorities in Congress to fill the position.)

Let’s hope there’s a lot less drama on this January 6. And if there is, well, we have the template on how to treat protestors, don’t we?

Until next time, you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.