January 25, 2021
I believe the single most dangerous feature of our political discourse is not the rare call to arms or the toxicity of our rhetoric, but the constant and ambitious gaslighting. For the unfamiliar, gaslighting is a psychological manipulation tactic, most commonly by lying about events in the past, to delegitimize the victim's understanding of reality. The quintessential example of gaslighting is an abuser denying that the abuse they perpetuated ever occurred. In our political discourse, it generally takes the form of insisting that events inconvenient to our own belief system did not occur, or insisting that a political opponent said something they did not say, and so on.
I'm driven to write about this issue because of the unbelievable lies being broadly perpetrated by the mainstream left about the events of January 6, insisting that the Capitol riot was incited by Donald Trump and other Republicans. This lie is so pervasive that it led the House of Representatives to impeach the President over his alleged "incitement" of the riot, even though his term was to end in two weeks time. As I write this, the Senate is preparing to try the former President for this alleged crime, which on its face is entirely absurd. I cannot believe that this needs to be clarified, but the only purpose of impeachment is to remove the sitting President, as is outlined in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.
All this desperation and effort to impeach Donald Trump, for a crime he objectively did not commit. For all the media hype, all the Twitter feuds, all the legislative panic, I'd have thought that there would be a single soundbite of Trump where he calls the crowd to storm the Capitol building. No such clip exists. As a matter of fact he specifically said "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building, to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard," which if we were at all honest with each other as a nation would put to death any claims about him inciting a riot.
I wonder if the same propagators of this lie care to levy the same accusation against the Democrat politicians who encouraged the groups responsible for the 2020 riots, which lasted for many months and left countless American cities with a collective $2 billion of property damage, and dozens of corpses (described in detail and cited in my September 23 article). You and I both understand that they do not care to levy this accusation against anyone but their political adversaries, which demonstrates my point about gaslighting.
Sedition is defined as "incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority." Nothing in that definition could be used to describe the actions of the few Congressmen who opposed the certification of the 2020 election, including Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Despite this, they have been branded as seditionists by their political opponents. I wonder if it was sedition when Democrat Congressmen objected to the certification of... every Republican Presidential victory since 2000. I've yet to hear it. Even when these objections occurred in 2001, 2005, and 2017, and even without the justification that exists in 2021, it was not sedition, it was the exercise of a right given to Congress by the Electoral Count Act.
The lawful behavior of Congressmen is not sedition or insurrection, the President calling for peaceful protest is not sedition or insurrection, and though the riot that ensued could be fairly called sedition or insurrection, by the standard of insurgency it was weak. These are the incontrovertible facts of the matter. If our new President was as interested in unity as he says, he would insist that Congress halt this absurd trial to eject the previous administration. I continue to hope he will, but I certainly won't hold my breath.