January 6, 2021 – a day that will live in infamy, correct? The second Pearl Harbor, the second 9/11? That’s the case if you believe what the Insurrectionist Democrats have to say about the unruly events of that unfortunate – but perhaps understandable – day at the Capitol.
The Democrats will not let go of Jan. 6 because it now appears to be the High Holy Day of their secular religion which carries an obsession with the 45th president of the United States that rivals praying to Mecca multiple times during the day. It can be safely stated that if “January 6” and “Donald Trump” were removed from the vocabulary of the Democrat Party, they would have as little to say as senile Joe Biden at a news conference.
We have heard all the lies and fantastical accounts of what happened at the Capitol that day. The Democrats and the lamestream media have woven these lies and half-truths into a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece of fiction. It was the greatest threat to the republic in our history. It was worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 where thousands actually died, a fleet was sunk, and buildings destroyed. It was worse than the Civil War. It was an attempted coup d’etat or their favorite word, an “insurrection.” The dictionary defines “insurrection” as: “An act or instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.” Is that what happened on Jan. 6, 2021?
If we look closely at the events of that day, we certainly don’t see evidence of any kind of an armed revolt against the duly-constituted government and how does a good revolt get off the ground without arms? There were no tanks or armored personnel carriers on Capitol Hill that day. I don’t recall seeing F-16 fighters circling the sky or missiles being fired at the Capitol dome. I certainly didn’t see an organized army storm the building, guns blazing. If this was an insurrection along the lines of what we have seen in other countries at various times, it just doesn’t fit the model.
It is true that President Trump called his supporters to Washington, D.C. that day, the day the electoral votes would be counted in the House of Representatives. The president was convinced – and is convinced to this day – that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and his supporters who observed mysterious late-night ballot drops, UPS trucks transporting completed mail-in ballots from state-to-state, ballots in suitcases being pulled out from under desks, election observers chased away, and ballots forced through scanners multiple times and other anomalies – overwhelmingly concurred. More than 100,000 accepted President Trump’s invitation, many travelling cross-country at great expense.
It is also true that there were certainly troublemakers, malcontents, and extremists in the crowd, as would be typical in any crowd that size. The president offered National Guard assistance to Speaker Pelosi for that day, but she refused.
We also know the FBI was quite active on Jan. 6 with agent provocateurs sprinkled throughout the throng, egging people on and encouraging them to storm the Capitol.
The president did not ask or direct anyone to crash Congress. He called on them to march “peacefully and patriotically” to protest, which is every American’s right under the Constitution. Martin Luther King also marched on Washington in 1963 and anti-Vietnam War demonstrators marched multiple times in the late 1960s and early 1970s, not to mention the famous Million Man March of 1995.
We also know that this crowd was largely unarmed and that many of those who entered the Capitol were waved in by Capitol Police. If they were invited in, they could not have been trespassing. Did some individuals get out of control and smash windows and such? Certainly, however, we also saw most people simply milling around inside the building, shouting slogans, waving flags, and probably sightseeing too. There are 14 hours of film on the so-called “insurrection” that the authorities refuse to release, probably because the film would debunk their narrative of a violent, bloody raid led by Trump supporters. And, yes, some individuals entered Pelosi’s office and sat in her chair (or possibly swiped her laptop ) or invaded the Senate chamber and sat in Mike Pence’s chair. That’s an insurrection? For that, people are rounded up, and tossed into jail without charge and subjected to solitary confinement and even, according to some accounts, torture? How about the Puerto Rican nationalists who shot up the House of Representatives in 1954, wounding five members of Congress? Why don’t we hear about that today?
The truth is that the only person who directly died at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was an unarmed Trump supporter, a military veteran killed by a Capitol cop named Mike Byrd. Other reports of Capitol policemen being killed were untrue.
The true lesson of Jan. 6 is much deeper and one has to dig deeply into recent American history and the angst and desperation of the American middle and working classes to understand why it happened. And, why it could happen again, perhaps with more devastating consequences.
John F. Kennedy once observed that “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.” JFK, of course, died violently and the bullet that killed him that tragic day in Dallas is said to have killed America’s innocence. JFK’s presidency was followed by two failed presidencies and an endless war in Southeast Asia that tore the fabric of the country apart while killing 58,000 of our best and bravest. That was followed by runaway inflation and near-economic collapse presided over by a third failed president, Jimmy Carter. And, after the eight-year happy reign of President Ronald Reagan, endless wars costing over $7 trillion were back under the Bush boys and Bill Clinton while America’s manufacturing base and millions of good-paying middle class American heartland jobs were shipped to Communist China. Desperation, depression, despair, and an opioid crisis began to descend upon working Americans from Ohio to West Virginia.
Is it possible to comprehend the fear and rage of millions of people who have lost their jobs, their dignity, and all opportunity? The fear and rage of those who have not seen a real pay raise in over 20 years? The fear and rage of factory towns turned into ghost towns? The fear and rage of parents who can’t come up with $400 for an emergency household expense? The fear and rage of families doomed to live in crime-filled cities and whose children must attend sub-standard public schools?
No, our ruling class does not understand these Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and have to decide on paying the doctor’s bill or the heating bill. The people who elected Donald Trump in 2016 in the belief that he would make their lives better. And, to a large extent, he did just that – only to be hounded and persecuted by the elites for the entire four years of his presidency. No, the most difficult decision our ruling elites have to face on a daily basis is whether their tennis club still has Grand Marnier souffle on the dessert menu.
America in 2021 is being held hostage by an out-of-touch oligarchical ruling class as insensitive to the needs of the people as the French monarchy and nobility back in 1789. At that time, they stormed the Bastille. The French Revolution that followed did irreparable damage to that nation, the Eldest Daughter of the Church, as tens of thousands were unjustly slaughtered as the revolutionaries went on their bloodthirsty rampage.
Do we want it to get to that point in the United States? Do we need to wait for a storming of the Bastille here? Unless the oligarchs in Washington and Silicon Valley start listening to the common people they scorn, January 6 may just be the tip of the iceberg.
Dr. James Veltmeyer is a prominent La Jolla physician and author of “Physician on a Mission: Dr. Veltmeyer’s RX to Save America.”He was voted ‘‘Top Doctor» in San Diego County’’ in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019. Dr. Veltmeyer can be reached at dr.jamesveltmeyer@protonmail.com
