Seven Days in December
A few days before Christmas last year, I wrote an essay called Seven Days in December. The title was an homage to Seven Days in May, a book from the early 1960’s about a military takeover of the United States government. It later became a movie starring Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Eva Gardner and Fredrich March (movie trailer). Rod Serling wrote the screenplay from the Fletcher Knebel novel.
The generals were plotting to take over the country, creating a national “crisis” to use troops to control communications and transportation. Some Senators were “in” on the plot, encouraging the military to move against their political rival, the President. It was a dark story and literally a dark movie, shot in black and white. It was left to the loyalty of a lowly Colonel to the United States Constitution over “his general” to save the nation.
The reason I wrote the essay was the fear that somehow Donald Trump, after losing the election, would try to launch a similar action to stay in power. I wasn’t “making up” the concern: there were news report of a meeting in the Oval Office about declaring an “Insurrection” and using it to rescind the results of the election. Former General Mike Flynn was in the middle of the plot and the meeting descended into a screaming fight among the Trump aides. It happened.
Insurrection for Real
We all know what we saw on January 6th. We all felt how close our nation was to a major turning point: when the mob took over the Capitol, and disrupted the Constitutional certification of the vote. And within days we found out how close the mob was to “capturing” Vice President Pence, Majority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the legislative leadership. It was a matter of minutes, even seconds. If they were seized, the course of our national “experiment in Democracy” would radically change.
The House of Representatives select committee on January 6th began their investigation this week. We listened to four police officers describing a “medieval” battle for control of the Capitol building, the battle we all watched. They told us about the hours of hand-to-hand combat, and their personal costs from that struggle.
There are those that, like Holocaust deniers, want to pretend that January 6th really wasn’t that big a deal. They want us to dis-believe our own eyes and ears, saying that the crowd was simply exercising free speech; and those that broke into the building were just “a few crazies”. But that’s not what we saw and heard on that fateful day.
So it is incumbent on this committee to document what actually happened. In this age of “fake news” and the “Big Lie”, we need clear evidence of what occurred. After World War II, the Allies carefully filmed the death camps, because they knew that their horrors were unbelievable. So too, we need documentary evidence of January 6th to dismiss those who pretend nothing happened.
Thousands of Questions
(Questions – Buffalo Springfield)
But there are so many other questions that need answered. If an “essayist” (sounds so much better than “a blogger”) in Pataskala, Ohio, could warn of “insurrection” seventeen days before January 6th, how was the national leadership caught so unaware. Or were they unaware at all; was there an actual plan for the certification to be disrupted? Were the actions of January 6th spontaneous, just a reaction to the goading of the Trump speakers on the Mall? The crowd around the Capitol was estimated at ten thousand or more, drawn to Washington directly by the President. Is it more incredible to believe this just “happened”? Or was there more organization behind this event?
There are five areas of questioning that the January 6th committee must address.
- What caused the attack on the Capitol?
- Why was the Capitol unprepared for the assault?
- What kept help from arriving at the Capitol for so long?
- Where there any political interference in aiding the Capitol defense?
- What steps need to be taken to prevent future assaults on the Capitol?
The Battle Continues
Each of these questions has dozens of sub-questions, all leading back to the fundamental issue. Was January 6th an orchestrated attack on our Democracy, planned by the Trump Administration, or was it the “accidental result” of the throwing gasoline on the mob’s fire?
We need to know: the whole nation needs to know. Because the January 6th Insurrection isn’t over, it’s going on in the State Capitol buildings of dozens of states. Who can vote, when they can vote, how they can vote: all are being restricted because of the “Big Lie” and in spite of the results of the 2020 election. To paraphrase Senator Teddy Kennedy: the battle continues, and the work to win goes on.
