The Forgetting Engine

 

The picture above is the American flag being taken down by Trump's little 1/6 fan club meeting attendees who then raised a Trump flag. That image, even more than a Confederate flag being carried through the Capitol, was what filled me with rage that day. For the sake of Trump, the man, the tradition of peaceful transition of government was being interrupted. For the sake of a cult of personality built around the former host of Celebrity Apprentice, a man who ranted about how many times he needed to flush a toilet and claimed windmills caused cancer. 

It was violent. Over 140 law enforcement professionals were injured in brutal combat. The lives of elected officials were threatened. Some of the insurrectionists had deadly weapons. They weren't feds and they weren't antifa. They were people who heeded the call to come down to the Capitol by the promise "it will be WILD."  The rally started as the third "Stop the Steal" rally. Trump campaign money--$3.5 million of it, went into those rallies. 

Campaign money. Because the election was over, but Trump was still campaigning. (He claimed just recently he wasn't still campaigning--for some reason.) The popular vote was over, but he knew the ones that mattered were those electoral votes. So maybe the decision of the people (who were they, anyway?) could be overturned. And he sat on his ass and watched the violence play out that day unwilling, uninterested, in turning it off because it was what he wanted. 

I'm not forgetting about it. I've been collecting observations of the Trump phenomenon, sometimes humorously, and sometimes not, as a kind of "never forgetting"--a form of documenting the atrocities. What happened 1/6 was violence against truth, against the rule of law, against democracy. And it was very fortunately not successful--but only just. 

A society that is healthy remembers its history. A public that is informed understands what is going on right now. And a democracy with a future must be eternally vigilant against threats to its nature in the form of burying history and obscuring reality.

You just have to remember. No nation can afford to slip into a kind of dementia, grasping for the labels of things that we've seen before: bigotry, fascism, demagoguery, having the words on the tip of our tongue and then gone on a flash. 

We are invited to forget. We are invited to believe lies. We don't have to accept that invitation. 

Elise Stefanik on Meet the Press invited us to forget and believe lies. She referred to the convicts from 1/6 as "hostages" and complained about their treatment, echoing our twice-impeached, four-times indicted former president. She also lied about the integrity of the 2020 election and wouldn't commit to certifying the 2024 election results. The so-called "hostages" in many cases plead guilty. They know perfectly well why they are where they are--they weren't just renditioned off the street without due process. It's an insult to actual hostages to pretend that. It's an insult to our democracy to lie about our electoral process. 

It's an insult to pretend this wasn't an audition for some position in a future Trump White House. Which means that Elise Stefanik is two things--a very ambitious person and a very lousy one. 

Mitt Romney surprised me with a comment he made regarding Joe Biden's speech on Friday. The Senator said:

“As a Biden campaign theme, I think the threat to democracy pitch is a bust,” Senator Mitt Romney of Utah wrote in a text message to a New York Times reporter. “Jan. 6 will be four years old by the election. People have processed it, one way or another. Biden needs fresh material, a new attack, rather than kicking a dead political horse.”

The threat is real. Romney had been consistent previous about his understanding of the threat, but the need to assert his Republican bona fides apparently overwhelmed him.  It's not a "dead political horse" so long as the 2024 Republican front runner remains a live threat to our republic, which he absolutely out loud plainly states he will be. 

This is called "changing the subject." This what people sometimes do when they uncomfortable or afraid of a topic. Maybe Mitt Romney is uncomfortable or afraid of what happens when Democrats and Independents take the topic seriously. Maybe it's uncomfortable to think about what his party is while still being a member in any kind of standing. 

That's his problem. Remembering stuff is mine. 

Our media fails us when they invite and promote the opportunity to forget. They drop the ball when the vital dots aren't being connected to a real narrative of events. When they change the subject because ratings confuse what's entertaining with what is important. And the thing is--broken journalism becomes barely existent journalism when it forgets what it's for in the same way that a broken legal system that lets the wealthy and politically connected skate is barely existent. 

Memory persists. But the forgetting engine still goes "Whirrr...."