Joyce Vance: Speaking Truth About January 6 Events

One of my personal sheroes, Attorney Joyce Vance, speaks truth to power today in her piece in Civil Discourse on substack.com. regarding the events that took place at the Capitol of the United States five years ago today. Lest we forget…here are excerpts from her essay.

Donald Trump is the President no one has ever said “no” to in a big way. Not Congress, not the Court, and certainly not the people around him in the executive branch. It didn’t happen even after January 6, 2021, which seems to have greenlit the fact-averse, law-free, and profoundly antidemocratic behavior that has come to characterize his second term in office…

Now, with the fifth anniversary of January 6 upon us, we live in a world where the president has pardoned the “patriots” convicted for planning an insurrection and storming the Capitol. Trump has made sure that no one faces accountability for January 6, least of all himself. He has nothing but praise for the people who overran the Capitol—they’re the good guys, the heroes. His people.

On the very first day of his second term, Trump granted pardons to some of the most dangerous among them, convicted felons like Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, beginning with these words: “This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.” In all, more than 1,500 people received pardons or commutations on Trump’s first day in office…

…there was no moment where Donald Trump was forced to face the truth of what he had done to the country. He has never publicly apologized or even acknowledged he was wrong. There was no moment like the surrender at Appomattox or the withholding of restoration of citizenship for a time for Trump, as there was for leaders following the Civil War.

That’s no way to fix a democracy and keep it whole.

So, we will go through this same painful exercise every year on the anniversary of January 6, remembering and reciting the facts, until we get it right. The people who mobbed Congress are not praiseworthy people, heroic victims who fought a last stand for a lost cause. Trump is not the leader of a legitimate American political movement. We must keep on saying it. We have to refuse to let Trump’s narrative prevail. In the time of Trump, be a warrior for the truth…Take people out to lunch and talk about it. Refuse to sit on the sidelines.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

*******************

I vividly remember the attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, because I watched it in real time – a reality show orchestrated and directed by Trump, with a worldwide viewing audience. Ratings out the roof of scenes never imagined in the minds of most American citizens. And yet, we are asked to suspend belief, forget what we saw and heard, forgive the person responsible even though that person never once asked us to forgive him.

Not this American.

I’m in it with Joyce. I hope you are, too.