The Meaning Underlying the January 6th Morality Play

 In the 1959 comedy film, “The Mouse That Roared”, the fictional tiny European nation of Grand Fenwick must come to terms with an economic crisis that is threatening to bankrupt the country.  The cunning Prime Minister devises a plan sure to restore economic well being to the country.  They simply declare war on the United States.  Apparently, the Prime Minister is sufficiently familiar with recent examples of American foreign policy to understand that, by going to war with the great superpower of the West...and losing...such a scenario would usher in great sums of foreign aid to the former, and formally vanquished, adversary.  Problem solved.

Needless to say, things don’t go exactly as planned – which is so often the case in many plans of international machinations – even with, and perhaps especially for, the United States.

This comedy reminds me so much of the “news” and associated historical drama that is being imposed on all of us now by our mainstream media.  I am speaking here of the so-called January 6th “insurgency”.  The idea that our government was somehow, if the manufactured hysteria is to be believed, in any danger of being overthrown by such miscreants as a guy in a buffalo headdress and other protesters armed with little more than some flag poles and pepper spray, must be perpetually maintained in the forefront of our collective consciousness.  We must believe, for example, that the danger was sufficient to justify the death of one of the unarmed protesters at the hands of one of the capital police “defenders”.

Furthermore, we must also engage in a sort of collective memory loss not to understand that, since the advent of English common law some thousand years ago, incidents of illegal trespass were routinely, and sufficiently, dealt with by a local constabulary.  More significant uprisings – peasants storming the castle walls with torches and pitchforks, perhaps – might require a slightly more significant show of force, but none more than is prudent, given the logical odds.

We might remember, for example, the statue of a Texas Ranger that once stood in the airport concourse at Dallas’ Love Field.  The statue was said to commemorate an incident in which the Texas Rangers were called upon to quell a local disturbance surrounding the promotion of a prize fight in Dallas.  Citizens were subsequently dismayed to find that only one Ranger was dispatched to deal with the incident.  Upon inquiring as to why only one Ranger was sent, the legend has it that the reply to the townspeople was simply, “There was only one riot”.

Of course, this was all just folklore, but it did serve to establish the kind of respect that was once routinely paid to law enforcement officials – for better or worse.  The point is that we wanted to believe that the people protecting us were made of the kind of stuff such that we would never call into question their courage and integrity.  Such legends reinforced the expectation that they always would; a standard to measure them by.

Contrast this with the response of the Capital law enforcement officials to the January 6th trespass incident, to label it more accurately.  That “riot” required not just a military-style response, but the creation of an entirely preposterous fantasy narrative regarding the overwhelming power of the trespassers.  Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, call your agents.

This leads me to wonder if any elemental meaning inherent in the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address might have been fundamentally changed had he added just one word:  “... and that government of the imperfect people, by the imperfect people, for the imperfect people, shall not perish from the earth.”  Of course, this is all nonsense; not just because such an addition would only serve to detract from an otherwise beautifully poetic speech, but also because it would not have added one bit to the understanding of popular governance that Lincoln and every other great historical figure foundational to our form of government held – not just then, but for many years prior, and for many years since.

No one believed that perfectibility was a necessary condition for the government to grant, and willingly maintain, the supremacy of the people as the power by which “...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...”  (from the Declaration of Independence, which I hope everyone knows).

And yet, it is the exact opposite of this – bear with me here – that forms the significance underlying the true understanding of the meaning of January 6th and it’s continuous attention draw:  the committee hearings, the endless news coverage, etc.

We also must understand that this event represents the culmination of the Trump presidency and the disdain that the Washington elites and their media lap dogs have for him and all those who voted for him – instead of one of their many career politicians who so epitomize rule by the progressive leftist elite.  

In essence, the morality play that is being played out on our evening news and in the halls of Congress in response to this whole episode is an affirmation of a surreptitious belief that has become absolutely thetical in the minds of the academic, media and ruling elite in this country:  that the great unwashed masses can simply never be trusted to vote according to the sensibilities of the superior political left – which means, we must either become a people of the government, by the government, and for the government or that we must continuously and aggressively be politically marginalized by whatever means is necessary.  

This belief system has actually long been the reality of our political system – I can’t say for how long this has been the case; at least for the time that I have lived.  The power brokers of both parties which form the basis of everything in and of Washington, D.C. continue to work hard to make sure that this reality is perpetually secure.  

That is, in a nutshell, what the entire January 6th hand-wringing and defamation industry is all about.