Two days before the Fourth of July 2021, 71-year-old Waco attorney David Bass, dressed in an all-white suit, sought to repeat a patriotic ritual conducted at the steps of the McLennan County Courthouse over the past decade or so in which criminal defense attorneys read aloud the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. As Bass said two years ago, the words of the Founding Fathers need annual review at the very least because "we live in unusual times." But this year, because of the stifling noon-day heat, post-pandemic holiday getaways or perhaps the widespread malaise that has left some Americans feeling less than patriotic, not many defense attorneys showed up for public reading duties.
And so attorneys and non-attorneys ranging from a young woman in a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt, to a community organizer with Waco Immigrants Alliance, to a former county court-at-law judge, to an attorney wearing an oversized Fourth of July party hat and whose most infamous case involved a Williamson County man who sent a chocolate candy bar in the shape of a penis to a McLennan County Sheriff's employee each stepped forward to share in the public readings. Witnessing this edifying bit of patriotism and civics in the crowd of a dozen or so: two bearded, middle-aged men, one distinguished by his red, white and blue Waco Tea Party gimme cap, the other by a red T-shirt with the sketch of a tree and the inscription: “Thomas Jefferson: Tree of Liberty Refreshment, Inc. The Blood of Patriots and Tyrants, 1776, est.”
Somewhere amidst neighborhood parades, backyard barbecues and evening fireworks, the Fourth of July should demand of all meaningful meditations on what our nation has gone through recently and how it stacks up alongside what the Founders expected of subsequent generations. Example: For years in Waco, every Fourth of July I pondered the 2001 Independence Day brawl on the east end of the iconic Waco Suspension Bridge in which a self-acknowledged white supremacist (complete with tattoos of Adolf Hitler and the phrase "white power" on his legs) stabbed four black teens in what he later claimed was a mob attack (though he walked into the situation with three friends of his own, begging the question: Who constituted the mob that evening?) All of this occurred one bridge south of the Washington Avenue Bridge where Sank Majors, a 20-year-old black man accused of assaulting a white woman, was lynched less than a century earlier. One newspaper headline about the 1905 hanging: "Judge Lynch on the Bench: Texas mob, 800 strong, executes summary judgment on prisoner." The 2001 violence, erupting by rockets’ red glare, eventually sent the white supremacist away for life (thanks to prior felony convictions for burglary and cocaine possession) but also contributed to greater awareness of local racial disparities and fueled broader efforts by city leaders to encourage and invest in the redevelopment of East Waco, heavily populated by African Americans and not surprisingly often left behind amid the growing revitalization of downtown Waco just across the Brazos. The 1870 Waco Suspension Bridge and the 1901 Washington Avenue Bridge link the two.
And certainly the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on our nation's bustling symbols of commerce and military might was on many minds during Fourth of July 2002 celebrations, the first in which foreign enemies threatened to disrupt America's anniversary of national independence. To quote a July 4, 2002, editorial in the Waco Tribune-Herald: "Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans have become familiar, although not comfortable, with the contradictions of the new reality. The United States is the world's oldest representative democracy. It has survived to enjoy 226 Independence Day celebrations due to the firm foundation laid down by the nation's founders: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' The stirring words in the Declaration of Independence launched a bold experiment in self-governance that has proven capable of withstanding wars, economic depression and internal strife. America, a nation governed by generous people, is not perfect. People are not perfect. But with a unified commitment to continue to live up to the principles spelled out in the nation's birth certificate, the United States will prevail over terrorist enemies who do not believe in nations that derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." President George W. Bush, by then viewed as a fellow McLennan Countian by virtue of his nearby ranch, set a similar tone during a Fourth of July 2002 ceremony in West Virginia honoring veterans: "Unlike any other country, America came into the world with a message for mankind – that all are created equal, and all are meant to be free. There is no America race; there's only an American creed: We believe in the dignity and rights of every person. We believe in equal justice, limited government and in the rule of law. We believe in personal responsibility and tolerance toward others. This creed of freedom and equality has lifted the lives of millions of Americans, of citizens by birth and citizens by choice. This creed draws our friends to us. It sets our enemies against us, and always inspires the best that is within us. In this 226th year of our independence, we have seen that American patriotism is still a living faith. We love our country; only more when she's threatened."
So for anyone who loves our country and is versed on foundational principles ranging from the peaceful transfer of power set in 1801 (and after a knock-down, drag-out presidential campaign) to the rigorously informed citizenry Thomas Jefferson insisted democratic governance demanded to be its very best, a dilemma naturally arises on the Fourth of July 2021: How does one commemorate and celebrate founding principles overshadowed by a riot or insurrection or tourist frenzy or what-have-you that just six months ago overwhelmed the U.S. Capitol, sent elected lawmakers fleeing for their lives and impeded, if only for a few hours, the constitutional certification of our nation’s presidential election? Ignore it and set off a few more firecrackers?
We can’t even agree what we all saw on TV on Jan. 6. Some of us saw a justifiable citizen protest exploding in rage over what QAnon disciples, Republican “patriots” and MAGA apologists tell us was a presidential election stolen from a long-awaited political messiah who put Americans first and sought to “make America great again.” Others of us saw a spectacle grounded in white grievance, paranoia and hatred whipped into a mad frenzy by a demagogue desperate enough to unleash a mob to do what state and federal courts and his own otherwise subservient vice president and attorney general refused to do – overturn enough election returns so this president could remain in power.
Therein lies a clear and present danger. When the president of the United States doesn’t respect election returns compiled through the extraordinary efforts of thousands of moms and pops staffing polling places, and in the middle of a deadly pandemic, when he won’t bow to an orderly transition of power after what the president’s own Department of Justice insisted were free and fair elections, when he presses self-styled patriots from all over the nation to head for the U.S. Capitol where election results are to be formally recognized, and to "fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore" – well, then American patriotism has been prostituted for despotic ends.
One is reminded of English essayist, lexicographer and wit Samuel Johnson’s 1775 truism: Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. When a president literally wraps himself in the U.S. flag, some of us simply see an American unabashedly demonstrating his patriotism. Others of us see a charlatan successfully playing naïve souls for selfish ends. Some of us wax eloquent in our adoration of the flag, even as we utter hollow or unthinking allegiances to what that flag represents. Others of us see something disgraceful in those who during the 2020 election lowered their U.S. flags at home and ran up Trump flags in their place. Some kept those royal blue Trump flags flying well after the election was done, indicating how they felt not only about the outcome but our country.
A relevant question any day, not just on the Fourth of July: Is the burning of the U.S. flag –
something — lately identified, fairly or not, with nationwide Black Lives Matter protests over the death of former Texan George Floyd at the hands of police and the continuing scourge of racial injustice across America – anymore profane than protesters enraged over a supposedly stolen election using poles with U.S. flags attached to beat into submission police officers trying to defend what some of us regard as the citadel of democracy? Can patriots reasonably claim to respect the rule of law and the thin blue line when they practice, cheer or condone what erupted on Jan. 6? Some 140 police officers were injured in the unrest. And does the Declaration of Independence at the heart of Fourth of July celebrations vindicate or condemn those forces storming the Capitol? Does the “American Scripture” of 1776 affirm them as idealistic and enlightened revolutionaries in the Jeffersonian mold or stamp them as mindless rabble dispatched by a manipulative, conniving rabble-rouser-in-chief?
The pride and the passion
The cries of "1776" amid the spray-choked, flag-waving unrest; President Trump's tweet hours into the violence proclaiming ominously that "These are the things and events that happen when sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long"; and, then, in ordering his supporters home, his exhortation that they cherish the experiences at hand: "Remember this day forever!" – all these beg to move the Sixth of January into the same liberty-loving sphere as the Fourth of July. And yet one comes up short if seeking definitive, thought-out, long-term principles behind the rebellion, given that the party of this president on occasion of the 2020 national convention nominating him for re-election voted to forego any timely and updated political platform beyond a general commitment to “continue to enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda” – and that any effort to amend the 2016 platform “will be ruled out of order.” In short, leave all such niceties to the man. Nor does one easily glean high insurrectionary ideals from court documents and social media posts, the latter often posted amid the near-orgasmic glee of the Jan. 6 havoc. Much of what surfaces is pent-up rage over President Trump’s electoral loss and various forms of white grievance and maniacal patriotism, perhaps best summed up in the rush of invincibility 57-year-old Stacy Hager of Gatesville, 40 miles west of Waco, acknowledged upon scaling Capitol walls amid what he described as flash bombs bursting during the Trump-roused attack. To this euphoric feeling Patriot Hager added online, according to a subsequent arrest warrant affidavit: “We waited twice to regroup before reaching the second wall designated with a third bullhorn guy yelling a steady drone of ‘Patriots move forward.’ This was the wall that divides sane and insane, civil and disobedient, frantic and mayhem, relative safety and imminent danger.” Charges now facing Hager include disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building as well as violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol Grounds. Flip-flopping alt-right media personality Anthime Gionet, 33, alias “Baked Alaska,” later arrested in Houston, displayed similar gung-ho confidence amid the violence, conducting a 27-minute livestream video while urging some 800 others onward. At one point, he declares: “We are in the Capitol building, 1776 will commence again.” Later: “America First is inevitable. F--- globalists, let’s go!” Still later, in accusing a police officer of shoving him: “You’re a f--king oath-breaker, you piece of s--t” and “You broke your oath to the Constitution.”
And consider the video evidence indicting 30-year-old Ryan Nichols of Converse, Texas, who climbed the Capitol steps with a bullhorn and declared, “If you have a weapon, you need to get your weapon!” In another video, he yells: “This is the second revolution right here, folks! […] This is not a peaceful protest!” And there’s Troy Smocks, 58, of Dallas, who posted on Parler, the social media platform of Trumpers: “Today, January 6th, 2021, We Patriots by the millions have arrived in Washington, DC, carrying banners of support for the greatest President the World has ever known. But if we must… Many of us will return on January 19th, 2021, carrying our weapons in support of Our nation’s resolve, to which the world will never forget. We will come in numbers that no standing army or police agency can match.” (Jan. 19 was the day before Inauguration Day.) And there’s this spirited day-after reflection by Mark Middleton, 52, a Republican Party precinct chairman who along with wife Jalise lives in North Texas but may soon take up new quarters for allegedly assaulting Capitol police officers: “Afterwards [the rally at which President Trump and other Republican leaders pumped the crowd], patriots marched all the way to the Capitol, chanting and singing the national anthem. The atmosphere makes you feel proud to be an American, ask anyone that was there, I guarantee you that’s what every single person will tell you. As we approached and gathered at the back of the Capitol, even after people occupied the high and low grounds, national anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, chantings for Trump, USA and singing of patriotic songs, singing hymns and praying are all that you hear. Then came the tear gas.”
Later Middleton adds defiantly, betraying the same logic President Trump employed about elections and the size of his campaign rallies: “You CAN’T convince me there was no voter fraud found when I stood on the street for 20 mins and still couldn’t see the end of the crowd!”
Further confounding messaging of the Sixth of January that may be revolutionary or insurrectionary or anarchic or something else entirely is the religion factor, particularly white evangelicals' overwhelming and unquestioning faith in President Trump who, for all his personal failings and obvious ignorance of Christianity, is perceived as a divinely anointed savior and strongman who can press for a long-awaited return to a more wholesome, less conflicted America. In a newly released survey of 1,248 adults from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., conducted in the wake of the Jan. 6 unrest, Baylor University researchers gleaned findings indicating “that religious belief, religious identity and religious participation are all positively and strongly correlated with believing in popular contemporary falsehoods," said Paul Froese, director of Baylor Religion Surveys and a professor of sociology. "The link between religiosity and conspiratorial beliefs is in part correlated with political partisanship." The Baylor findings suggest biblical literalists, self-identified “very religious” people and weekly church attenders are significantly more likely to believe the 2020 election was rigged, COVID-19 vaccines are untrustworthy and top Democrats are involved in sex-trafficking rings — this last-mentioned one of the most notorious and foundational of QAnon conspiratorial themes. Indeed, the mixing of QAnon conspiracy theories and religion should be a wakeup call for religious leaders of the work ahead. Consider ever-provocative North Texas real estate Jenna (or Jennifer) Ryan's tweet after flying to Washington, D.C., on a private jet and participating in the Capitol attack: “The truth of the matter is that Q was correct. Evil people will have their day. God's timing is perfect.” During an interview with my Trib colleague Carl Hoover, Froese added one further damning insight that no longer seems hard to believe: "Biblical literalists often don't read the Bible."
Some of these findings materialized in the Jan. 6 rally, including a protester’s makeshift sign that showed an image of Jesus peeking around its edge along with the quote, “I saw what you did with those ballots,” and other demonstrators’ flags reading: “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.” One protester wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the latter slogan carried a sign that read, "Every legal vote counted, every illegal vote removed." Another: "In God We Trust, Stop the Steal!" Nor is all this politicization of the Christian faith strictly limited to white evangelicalism: Engaging, Waco-based Christ the King Baptist Church televangelist Ramiro Pena, a former Baylor University regent who famously supported Trump in 2016 (citing abortion and border issues as reasons in his interviews with me), served in the Trump White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative headed by prominent prosperity pastor and white televangelist Paula White. Rev. Pena was present at the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally that ultimately dispatched Trump supporters to the U.S. Capitol. The night before the rally, the reverend posted a video of himself near Trump Hotel on the streets of Washington beseeching supporter prayers ahead of the rally and insisting that he felt “the angels of the Lord around us right now.” A few days after the insurrection, he somberly offered online sentiments from home about Isaiah 9:6 and "the government of Jesus" taking hold in people's lives. And less than a month afterward Rev. Pena was offering worshipers discounts of up to 66 percent on pillows marketed by beleaguered My Pillow founder, diehard Trump supporter and election fraud conspiracist Mike Lindell "when so many in the cancel culture have chosen not to sell his products anymore in their big box stores." Later this year Rev. Pena is to share the stage at a Pena Ministries event with prominent white evangelical author Lance Wallnau, who has long viewed Trump as an "Isaiah 45 Cyrus," a king envisioned as doing God's work – a theme Rev. Pena has stressed as well, notwithstanding inconsistencies in a constitutional democracy supposedly done with kings and tyrants.
Given the enduring influence of our most recent former president, one could argue that what we have witnessed in Texas this year highlights Trumpian ideals (and Texas remains one of the top states generating Jan. 6 insurrectionists and rioters thus far formally charged). In a likely bid to run for president as Trump’s Republican successor, the governor of Texas is now crowdfunding to build the former president's border wall (despite the U.S. Constitution’s reserving such matters to the federal government); defying federal gun laws as a “Second Amendment sanctuary state”; demanding voter rights be rigorously restricted in the name of election integrity (despite the Republican Texas Secretary of State’s insistence that Texas had “smooth and secure” elections in 2020); and pressing for more ways to circumscribe the teaching of critical race theory when a bill doing just that (and which the governor signed on June 15) didn’t go far enough for him. Race indeed surfaces as a factor in much of this apparent idealism, reflected even beyond the updated stats analyzed by the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats showing that of the 532 Capitol arrests thus far, 93 percent are white and 86 percent are male. Some of the specific voting initiatives under attack by Trump-supporting Texas legislators in 2021 were those favored by pandemic-wary Texas minorities in the 2020 general election, including drive-through voting in heavily populated Harris County as well as early voting hours on Sundays popular among churchgoers in African-American communities who after services travel to the polls.
Perfect example of all this spilling into hypocrisy: Conroe-based attorney Brandon Creighton, Republican author of a 2021 bill in the Texas Senate discouraging the teaching of critical race theory in schools, authored in the 2019 legislative session a bill making it harder to remove old statues and monuments commemorating the “Lost Cause” of the slave-holding Confederacy – statues and monuments erected generations ago to reinforce Jim Crow laws marginalizing African Americans after the Civil War was lost and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments supposedly became the law of the land. However else one considers these two Creighton bills, they offer conflicting stands in supposed Republican grievance over "cancel culture" and jointly seek to appease the white paranoia now driving the Republican Party. Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than a March Twitter dustup in which North Texas real estate agent Jenna Ryan, responding to someone’s Oprah Winfrey meme showing the talk show host pointing and exclaiming, “You goin’ to jail,” returned fire: “Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I'm not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong.” (The arrest warrant affidavit based on a Facebook live video shows Ryan chanting, at the front of the Capitol, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and “Here we are in the name of Jesus!” and, once inside the building, joining in a chant, “Fight for freedom! Fight for freedom!” and yelling, “This is our house!” At one point, she pauses to tout her real estate business.) One of the few intensely radioactive right-wing causes left to die by the Texas Legislature in the wake of all this: a movement to put on the ballot the question of whether Texas should again secede from the nation – a proposition that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott very likely (and correctly) considered unworthy of anyone seriously contemplating the White House and leading the country one day. That said, I can confirm an observation that African-American historian and Harvard University professor Annette Gordon-Reed offered during a Fourth of July 2021 C-SPAN interview about a recent visit to her native Texas: "When I was growing up, I recall seeing the Confederate battle flag only occasionally. In the past few years [when] I was in Texas, and I was going around in the country, riding around and visiting, I saw more Confederate flags on that trip than I'd probably seen in my entire childhood growing up in Texas. I mean, something has happened where the Confederate identity – it may mean something different now because it's attached to current-day political things. Maybe that's what it is.”
Revelations at the QAnon altar
As the world marvels at our impotence and self-delusion, Americans grapple daily with an information age corrupted to the point that both ends of the political spectrum employ “cancel culture.” Right-wing media in particular such as talk radio and renegade "news" networks long on opinions and short on news deliver misinformation confirming the biases of many whites unwilling to experience epiphanies about themselves and their place in a changing society – epiphanies that might guide and reassure and benefit them about the steep challenges ahead for all Americans. (Not that right-wing media alone are guilty; defenders of critical race theory are now under siege largely because of the New York Times’ 1619 Project and its wrong-headed claim that slavery was “one primary reason the colonists fought the American Revolution.”) To quote celebrated American-born journalist Anne Applebaum, the situation is perilous for democracies precisely because democracies depend on constituents who are more discriminating than their sometimes fickle and deceptive political leaders: "Thanks to a global epidemic of nihilistic trolling, manipulative disinformation and addictive outrage, modern democracies are facing an existential challenge: It’s not merely that their citizens don't agree on politics, they don't agree on the nature of truth itself." Applebaum's insight – offered here in endorsement of another writer's book, Jonathan Rauch’s “The Constitution of Knowledge” – holds special relevance: She obviously understands how the embrace of such concepts as human rights and civil liberties and equal and just application of the law are integral parts of our complicated national DNA, reinforced through serious media publications and history classes and political campaigns and even on such occasions as the Fourth of July — and thus can easily be taken for granted in certain situations warranting vigilance and discernment. As one who has spent much of her career in Eastern Europe, she also understands the perils that face budding democracies anything but certain in the long term, including how some media dynamics can contribute to their downfall. Her own take on the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, expressed in a tweet posted just before the Fourth of July: "No doubt about intentions and motivations. They wanted to stop the vote count and believed that Trump had told them to do so."
There's no denying the addictive qualities of latter-day media confections. Some of my own acquaintances now follow the mystical QAnon oracle supposedly originating from a deeply placed, well-informed source in Trump circles. It offers ambiguous reassurances and preposterous alarms, including crazy and crazier predictions and claims. One: that President Trump, with U.S. military backing, would not only be sworn into a second term on Jan. 20 despite his November electoral loss but that he would have senior Democrats arrested and executed. In the wake of this obviously failed prediction, the oracle then claimed Trump would be sworn back into office with military backing on March 4, the original swearing-in date of presidents till passage of the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In the wake of that obviously failed prediction, Trump now will be reinstated as president come August. One wonders how many failures QAnon must serve its followers before it rates the same contempt serious news media rate among this crowd of true believers and willing dupes. After a retired Texas sportscaster of my decades-long acquaintance succumbed to such falsehoods and began reveling with others in Trump's sure return to power despite the 2020 election (along with warnings to fellow believers to stock up on food and fuel for the brief period of Trump’s transition to power), I asked how on earth a journalist such as himself could fall for such claims, to which he replied: "Oh, I'm no journalist. I was a sportscaster!"
Shortly before the Fourth, 49-year-old Trump supporter Anna Morgan-Lloyd wept before a Reagan-appointed federal judge for briefly mixing amidst the chaos and conspiracy in the Capitol. Like many protesters, her own words on social media had indicted her. She beamed on Facebook the afternoon of Jan. 6 that it was the “Best day ever.” At another point she noted: “I’m so glad we were there. For the experience and memory but most of all we can spread the truth about what happened and open the eyes of some of our friends.” A couple of weeks later she was recognized while applying for a firearm permit back home in Bloomfield, Indiana, where 96 percent of the residents are white.
“I would just like to apologize to the court, the American people and my family,” Morgan-Lloyd said in court during the June 23 sentencing. “I went there to show support for President Trump peacefully, and I’m ashamed that it became a savage display of violence.” Her attorney added: “Once Mrs. Lloyd understood the destruction and lawlessness of many who entered the U.S. Capitol, she was upset, contrite and remorseful. Though she did not defile or destroy any property, she acknowledges that her presence may have given comfort to those who committed acts of violence and acts of destruction.”
“I felt ashamed that something meant to show support for the president had turned violent,” Morgan-Lloyd elaborated in a remarkable confessional letter to the judge. “This is not the way to prove any point. At first, it didn’t dawn on me, but later I realized that if every person like me who wasn’t violent was removed from that crowd, the ones who were violent may have lost the nerve to do what they did. For that, I am sorry and take responsibility. It was never my intent to help empower people to act violently. I take responsibility for my actions on January 6th. I will do what the court requires of me to try to set things right. I will cooperate with my probation officer fully.”
This confession Morgan-Lloyd wrote at her attorney’s urging suggests an awareness that the riot was at least partially grounded in white and Christian victimhood. She cites books and movies recently consumed, including “Just Mercy,” “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” and “Schindler’s List” – again at her attorney’s suggestion – to demonstrate her improved perspective on America. “I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country, things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street. As an American I feel very lucky to have been born in this country. As someone who is part-Native American, I feel my roots strongly. I would never want to live anywhere else. It’s not perfect, but I believe it can and will get better for all people.”
Impressed by Morgan-Lloyd’s remorse and guilty plea to a single charge of unlawfully entering the Capitol (winnowed down from several charges), U.S. District Judge, Texas native and Army veteran Royce Lamberth granted her three years of probation, 40 hours of community service and a requirement she pay $500 in restitution. "This wasn’t a peaceful demonstration,” he declared. “It was not an accident that it turned violent. I also think some of these defendants in these cases are not going to do what you did. Some of them are not going to say they did anything wrong." The judge was especially rankled by some federal lawmakers comparing the riot to a "day of tourists walking through the Capitol."
A day later Morgan-Lloyd, the very first person sentenced over the Jan. 6 unrest, cheapened her apologia by appearing on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s TV show, claiming not only that she did nothing wrong on Jan. 6 but that during her brief time in the Capitol she saw no violence “and I don’t believe it.” While Morgan-Lloyd struck me as exceedingly guarded in what she said on air – her stated disbelief possibly refers to her astonishment at the violence, not denial of its happening – her decision to nonetheless play unwitting victim on a show famous for inflaming right-wing sensibilities may have thrown under the bus other Capitol-storming patriots now also seeking mercy and judicial understanding. Indeed, at one point Ingraham claimed Morgan-Lloyd was "forced to deliver that Soviet-style confession at the behest of her attorney" and acknowledge before Judge Lamberth her "white privilege" as well as her guilt. Other federal judges will surely take notice of this post-legal charade and be more reluctant to play patsy to defendants who express remorse in court and contemplate victimhood in right-wing venues and insurrectionary echo chambers.
Fake news & fake Elvis
Among those playing this same game are alleged law-and-order lawmakers who voted against
the bipartisan commission to investigate the violence and follow-up legislation to beef up Capitol security and pay for damages incurred by rioters. Among them: Recently elected Republican Congressman Pete Sessions of Waco, who wisely cleansed his Facebook page of a photo of his merrily welcoming “Stop the Steal” protesters to the Capitol shortly before the riot. To confound matters, he later launched a series of attack spots targeting Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for maintaining protective fencing around the Capitol complex, even as reports of additional possible attacks by domestic terrorists streamed in. Maybe what’s left of his Boy Scout scruples to “tell the truth” prompted Sessions to balk at vindicating the Jan. 6 rioters, even as he ridiculed a bipartisan commission producing anything but tainted findings “before we know the real truth” through courtroom testimony and judgments. Fair enough. But can Sessions and his colleagues even handle real truth anymore? Can their supporters? Any citizen who knows our nation’s tumultuous history and founding documents knows the storming of the Capitol is not an event to be dismissed and ignored, even if a Republican colleague from Georgia incredibly likened the violence to “a normal tourist visit.” Photos by a Roll Call photographer show this same lawmaker frantically barricading House chamber doors on Jan. 6.
Congressman Andrew Clyde has indeed gained infamy for likening Capitol Hill rioters to tourists during a recent House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing; far more telling is his contention that what we all saw on Jan. 6 was not a proper insurrection: “The only insurrection I have witnessed in my lifetime was the one conducted by members of the FBI with participants from the DOJ and other agencies under the banner ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’ High-ranking employees from these federal agencies and members from an independent counsel coordinated and fed a false narrative for over two years that the 2016 election was stolen and illegitimate. Democrats were on the news almost every night saying the evidence is there, and the mainstream media amplified the fake news. This was indeed a very coordinated and well-funded effort by a determined group of people to overthrow our duly elected president, Donald J. Trump.”
Between Congressman Sessions’ let’s-not-rush-into-this rationale and Congressman Clyde’s dismissal of the Jan. 6 violence as a proper insurrection, one finds those who would rather file the whole business under “Much Ado About Nothing” and return to normality, if that’s even possible. Arguably among them: Chris Grider, 39, owner of a nearby Eddy vineyard and now facing a seven-count federal indictment for his role in the unrest. Recently, court documents suggested he wasn’t content to be grateful for his hard-won Feb. 22 release from detention pending trial. To pursue family vacation travel, he pressed an already lenient federal judge to further relax court restrictions, including the wearing of an ankle monitor while out on bond.
U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson stressed how fortunate Grider is to be back home with his wife, children and winery till trial: “As the court explained during the detention appeal hearing in this case, the decision to release Grider pending trial was an extremely ‘close call’ given the nature and circumstances of the alleged offense and the weight of the evidence against him. And although the court ultimately determined that Grider’s detention was not required, that decision was contingent upon the court’s imposition of conditions of release that would reasonably assure the safety of the community while Grider awaited trial – conditions that included GPS monitoring and a curfew.” Considering pivotal actions by Grider unwittingly leading to the death of determined QAnon follower and fellow Trump devotee Ashli Babbitt – shot dead trying to climb through a smashed-out window to the Speaker’s Lobby, a window smashed out with a helmet Grider had been carrying and reportedly lent to another protester – Grider would be wise to spend more time back home in rural Central Texas pondering his legal defense than contemplating family outings. (Incidentally, Grider and his family have recently revived some of their winery’s festive weekend gatherings in Eddy with headliners such as Elvis impersonator John E. Cobb.)
Meanwhile, Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, a zealous Trump loyalist and former dentist, has taken to using congressional hearings and other opportunities to pointedly ask who “executed” Ashli Babbitt, which should prompt this equally pointed question: Who climbs through a smashed-out window while peacefully protesting? In pressing this inquiry, Gosar and others picking up on this theme arouse and inspire perennial misfits and malcontents who now see Babbitt as a revolutionary martyr – a notion that has gained sufficient currency that Kmart markets a T-shirt emblazoned with the jarring image of a black and white U.S. flag and the words: “Ashli Babbitt: American patriot.” Such marketing, rhetoric and fact-free spinning is sure to only outrage federal law enforcement, including prosecutors, possibly even judges. It’s not good, either, for Chris Grider, who appears to mirror most protesters loose in the Capitol that day – unaffiliated with self-styled militias such as the Oath Keepers or right-wing street-fighting gangs such as the Proud Boys and, rather, just a white guy from Central Texas loyal to President Trump and unthinkingly swept up in forces he may not have fully understood. That said, some scholars steeped in the psychology of riots such as Matthew Radburn and Clifford Stott now reject the popular “mad-mob theory” of riots as inadequate and claim that “when people riot, their collective behavior is never mindless.”
Nor is continuing rhetoric by the former president alleging a stolen election helping his most devoted insurrectionary supporters, none of whom seem to attract his attention, let alone his sympathy, during his rants and raves of personal victimhood, such as at last week’s rally in Wellington, Ohio, which happens to boast two residents now facing possible trials and prison time for Jan. 6 unrest. “You’re seeing judges going out of their way to reference these concerns about Donald Trump, the ongoing baseless claims about the election,” says Washington-based NBC reporter Scott MacFarlane, almost single-handedly covering the legal milestones of alleged rioters and insurrectionists on a one-by-one basis. “These are the judges who will be sentencing Jan. 6 defendants or officiating jury trials.” MacFarlane also reported last week that attorneys for alleged Jan. 6 conspirator Thomas Caldwell, 65, sought a change of venue for his case well away from Washington, D.C., for reasons including “yellow journalism” and fans at a Washington Nationals game booing President Trump.
In a nation lost to crazed partisanship and rampant misinformation, perhaps society is better off drawing conclusions from what scholars, security experts and real journalists uncover. The University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats tracks charges filed against the alleged rioters (now numbering more than 550). Among its findings: This is a violent mass movement rather than merely an insurrection concocted by right-wing organizations; 88 percent of those charged (presumably including winemaker, veteran and former teacher Chris Grider) are “unaffiliated with pre-existing militia/extremist organizations and groups.” Trump is seen as their leader. Many insist they were only following Trump’s call to action. So who’s really to blame if these defendants are to be believed? Trump or those who took him seriously and literally? As the University of Chicago study notes, a woman from Texas claimed she entered the Capitol Rotunda because “He said, ‘Be there,’ and so I went and answered the call of my president.” A business owner from California said she “felt called upon by President Donald Trump to travel to D.C. to change the outcome of the election,” which she believed was stolen. And the colorful Navy veteran and QAnon shaman who invaded the Capitol in horns, a bearskin headdress and war paint said he was there along with other patriots “at the request of President Trump.”
One suspects we’ll soon see some stunning transformations in court. Jacob Chansley, the aforementioned, attention-commanding QAnon shaman, gloated after the unrest: “The fact that we had a bunch of our traitors in office hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker, I consider that a win.” Last week his lawyer filed a brief noting examples of Chansley’s sterling citizenship and model behavior in the melee, including “the defendant attempting to thwart a theft from a breakroom in the Capitol; the defendant extolling everyone to be respectful and peaceful; the defendant saying a prayer; the defendant permitting selfies to be taken of him outside the Capitol while hundreds walk by and into the Capitol; the defendant helping law enforcement clear out the Capitol after then-President Trump finally publicly requested everyone to go home.”
Then again, Scott MacFarlane's reporting on cases suggests the hearts and minds of many other protesters haven't changed much – and that trials may well offer further insight into political impulses driving the Jan. 6 violence. "A lot of the recent arrests are people accused of damaging media equipment, trying to set it on fire, breaking it – tens of thousands of dollars of equipment," MacFarlane reports. "One case stood out in particular – Joshua Haynes of the Roanoke, Virginia, area. Reading through his court filing, the feds say he was interrogated by agents June 14, nearing the six-month anniversary of the insurrection, and prosecutors say Haynes told agents that those who assaulted police were heroes for trying to stop election fraud. In the court filing, they also allege Haynes bragged of breaking media equipment, of kicking the fake news' [ass], of running off some CNN reporter. It gives you some insight into what federal prosecutors say is the mindset of some defendants this many months after the insurrection." My own perusal of the Haynes court filing reveals another common thread in those participating in or sympathetic with the Jan. 6 riot: "Haynes stated that he was deeply upset with the contrast between how the events that occurred on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol were being handled and how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots that occurred in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in 2020 were being handled. Haynes told the interviewing agents that he believes that those who participated in the unlawful events at the U.S. Capitol were being treated unfairly, and that those involved with the rioting and vandalism related to the BLM movement were not being held accountable." For the record, thousands of protesters and rioters were arrested early on in the summer 2020 demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd's death, and on a wide range of charges; by contrast, most of those invading the Capitol were allowed to leave the mayhem and rubble and return to their homes before their own social media posts and big mouths led to their questioning and arrests, again on a wide range of charges.
More to come?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Brian Hughes of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab in American University’s Center for University Excellence raise disturbing possibilities from the Jan. 6 violence – that its success in briefly forcing “a bunch of our traitors in office to hunker down” (to quote QAon shaman Chansley) and briefly halting certification of votes favoring President Trump’s challenger may well encourage radicalized but otherwise disparate forces to come together again. The researchers suggest “there are increasing indications that the typically fractious world of the extreme far right is becoming more unified toward an objective of overthrowing the country’s prevailing political and social order.” The Jan. 6 riot – complete with astonishing lapses in preparation by Capitol police leadership and smartly executed paramilitary tactics by such groups as the Oath Keepers – now qualifies as “an example of a victory that almost was and might still be. It has empowered and emboldened its admirers while offering an opportunity to exercise the common terrorist tactic of studying and learning from failed actions.” Defendant Joshua Haynes reportedly said much the same when federal law enforcement visited him on Flag Day about his role in the melee, noting that "if the country continues to go in the direction that it is now going, then what happened on January 6, 2021, would not be an isolated event."
Yet such remedies are challenged today by not only a vicious and unending whirlwind of beguiling misinformation eagerly consumed by a massive and undiscriminating segment of our population but a decided loss of virtue in the people that George Washington so deeply feared. If his landmark 1796 Farewell Address has any relevance today, it’s in remembering that it was crafted in the context of the Whiskey Rebellion that violently defied the first tax of the new federal government, one elected under the recently ratified Constitution and ironically addressing federal debt: “The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.” That’s a critical distinction to consider when reflecting on the rousing Jan. 6 cries of “1776!” and “America First!” and “Our house! Our country!” It's a distinction that refutes the inclination of Americans who believe free and fair elections driven by the will of the people are occasionally insufficient in a constitutional republic, that one must then resort to rebellion and violence utterly contrary to the republic, the very sort of flag-waving defiance mirrored in Central Texan Stacy Hager's identification with that long-ago anti-tax rebellion in western Pennsylvania that, to quote eminent American historian Gordon S. Wood in "Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic," reached the point where citizenry "hoisted their own flag, set up mock guillotines, erected their own extralegal courts and talked of marching on the federal garrison in Pittsburgh to seize weapons." As Hager himself put it on a Facebook site apparently launched after the Jan. 6 insurrection, a credo identifying with both rebellion and flag, "The Whiskey Rebellion Flag not only represents the fiery nature of the American people but it shows how the government can't be trusted with its power. The sparks that led to this rebellion were of the same flint as those that triggered the American Revolution. To this day, the Whiskey Rebellion flag is seen as a reminder that we must remain vigilant against an oppressive government." (For the record, historians remain divided as to whether the familiar Whiskey Rebellion flag sold in stores – the one featuring an eagle holding a ribbon in its beak with 13 six-pointed stars in the backdrop – is genuine as a rebellion flag or actually associated with the federal cause.)
The question that should percolate in the minds of Americans proud of our high ideals and hard-earned rights this Fourth of July and ever afterward pivots on whether the fine distinctions and constitutional safeguards of an enlightened class of Americans generations ago can hold sway amid the din and misinformation and animosity and self-delusion driving a latter-day movement of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, conspiracy theorists and simple-minded human flotsam now that they collectively clinched a measure of success on the Sixth of January. The problem eclipses anything George Washington could have imagined, even in his visionary Farewell Address, yet this renders his parting words no less relevant today. Even Jefferson and James Madison – who, amid ideological rifts late in Washington's presidency, more often wound up at odds with the old man – acknowledged late in their own lives the absolute importance of Washington's admonitions and cautions to his fellow citizens and even encouraged their exposure to new generations at Jefferson's cherished University of Virginia. Madison, so-called “Father of the Constitution” who also shepherded to ratification the Bill of Rights, praised "the sound sentiments" characterizing Washington's Farewell Address and included it among other foundational guideposts that he recommended including the Declaration of Independence (obviously brimming with Jefferson's heaven-storming idealism); the so-called "Federalist Papers" (written for newspapers of the day by Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, pressing for ratification of the Constitution); the resolution of the General Assembly of Virginia in 1799 (authored by Madison) condemning the Alien and Sedition laws as unconstitutional, given the First Amendment; and Washington's 1789 inaugural speech (bolstered through editorial suggestions by Madison).
Given Madison's reading list for the proper education of Americans about the young nation before them (to which I would add the later but vitally important "Democracy in America" by inquisitive and refreshingly frank Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville and some visionary writings by Thomas Paine), it's interesting to note that, of that august founding company of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and himself, Madison remained the most optimistic about the future, even seeing potential for good in the creation of political parties – yet another development that Washington feared and cited in his Farewell Address. Washington wrote that the consuming spirit of political parties "serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection." Indeed, in its longing for an America that never quite existed if one factors in segregation of blacks from whites as well as feverish paranoia about communists amongst us that extended to our neighbors in the post-war prosperity of the 1950s – a reborn America that would pivot on the marginalization of some and a denial of changing demographics and global dynamics – today's Republican Party under the malevolent spell of Donald Trump neatly represents just what the Father of Our Country predicted before wearily retiring to Mount Vernon. Washington warned that parties, for all their potential for good, "are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion." And our idealized and often flawed memories of the past touted by a political party obviously bankrupt of real nuts-and-bolts ideas? To quote former New York Times and Wall Street Journal reporter (and onetime newsroom colleague) Jackie Calmes in her book, "Dissent: The Radicalization of the Republican Party and Its Capture of the Court," published last month: "When one major party comes to believe the other is the threat to that mythic way of life – because that other party, the Democrats, includes minorities, immigrants, feminists, non-Christians – then democracy is too big a gamble, in adherents' views. So Republicans gerrymander political districts. They pass restrictive voting laws to limit turnout of that other party's supporters. And if Republicans still lose, they reject the result or, worse, turn to force or countenance those who do."
All of which possibly complements a point attorney David Bass made at the steps of the local courthouse the Friday before an overcast, humid Fourth of July weekend in Waco: The Declaration of Independence lists, and at length, offenses committed by the British crown against American subjects – and the Bill of Rights so vigorously demanded by the Anti-Federalists consequently arms citizens to a significant degree against overarching governance. Even so, I asked my friend how Americans should approach the Fourth of July a year after outraged protesters spilled into the streets over racial injustice that remains well out of reach for many persons of color and six months after the Capitol was stormed by the president’s mostly white supporters over what they maintain was a stolen election. “They should take heart in knowing where we came from and learn from our past and learn that this was a country that was built on laws that are shared by everyone,” Bass said. “And while people might say reckless things, say untrue things, and do reckless and illegal acts, that doesn’t change the bedrock principles of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence. It just shows that the country has to be resilient and it has to be educated and it has to be literate and well-read. It has to do those things, and that’s why we’re doing this today – to try and remind people of that because, as criminal defense lawyers, we’re always hopeful that will be the way people see this country and see themselves.”
