We Must Never Forget January 6th. — Jeff Shaw, Fighting Matters

Today's the fifth anniversary of one of the worst days in American history. On January 6th, 2021, an angry mob of more than 1600 people breached the US capital, trying to stop the results of a free and fair election from being certified by Congress. Along the way, they committed hundreds of acts of violence, assaulting more than 140 US capital police, three of whom died. They tried to find lawmakers of both parties to murder, including memorably chanting that they would hang sitting Vice President Mike Pence if they could only catch him. And yet, these acts of violence aren't even the worst part in my view. The worst part is uh threefold. First, you're probably thinking, of all the days in American history, why is this one of the worst? Wouldn't we pick something like Pearl Harbor, something like September 11th? But when we think of the worst days in American history, we usually think of being attacked from without by a foreign enemy, by a terrorist group, by radicals. Here we were attacked from within. And the second reason is that they weren't just attacking human beings, although they were, and we should remember that. They were attacking the foundation of democracy, which is that we get to decide who our representatives are, and when those representatives switch over, the transfer of power is peaceful. The current regime has never committed to the peaceful transfer of power, and memorably, the current president when asked during three different presidential elections if he would commit to the peaceful transfer of power, refused repeatedly to do so. Notably, after 1600 of these people were convicted in courts of law by juries of their peers in the American system, he issued blanket pardons for all of them. If you have any doubt about whether this group of people were truly peaceful protesters, consider that dozens have been re-arrested for crimes including child sex abuse, receipt of child pornography, six of them have been charged for sexual assaults involving minors, two have been charged with rape. Many of these people have argued that these blanket pardons for January 6th should cover the other offenses that were committed elsewhere, not on January 6th. It remains to be seen what the courts are going to say. But let's just say that's not good. Currently, on the White House website, there is a page that is a delightfully fact-free alternate universe version of the events. And in that, they try to criticize the the the woman who was then speaker of the house for saying, I take responsibility. Because the implication of using these state resources for propaganda of this is to say, look, someone took responsibility, it wasn't us. And for me, the worst thing about this whole ordeal is that the regime will never take responsibility for anything. If you're going to be a good person at all, you know, whether you're in government or not, tragic things happen. And someone has to take responsibility. And in America, we usually call that person the president. But these are not usual times. We can't forget January 6th, and we can't let the narrative be twisted into something that goes against the evidence of our eyes and ears. It was one of the worst days in American history, and we can't ever repeat it, and we can't ever forget it.