Continued Confessions

But where to begin?

I honestly am at a loss this morning to know what is important and what is noise. It definitely seems to me that there is a hell of a lot of noise about inconsequential matters, and perversely very little fire about the real problem. Not that I am an expert in any of the areas currently jamming the airwaves such as politics or history or even race relations. But I do have the advantage of having lived a long time on the periphery of all those topics. It seems to me that an awful lot of what is touted as factual is indeed only spin, and with that in mind I will proceed with one topic I have thought about recently.

I got another edition of Imprimis (January 2025 Volume 54 Number 1) and the headline article is entitled “What We Know and What We Don’t About January 6” by John Daniel Davidson, a senior editor at The Federalist. I read the article carefully but realized that it was just more propaganda. For instance, the author begins by mentioning the pardons by the incoming President on Inauguration Day of the people “convicted of offenses related to January 6, 2021” and then he notes the “preemptive pardons” for which he says there is no historical precedent by the outgoing President. He then dismisses the January 6th Report as “too deeply biased to give much help.”

Well, I have read that Report from cover to cover and find it incredibly thorough and extremely well-documented. Just to correct the author on one point he attempts to make: He says that the Capitol was breached at 2:13 p.m. (which is corroborated by the Report) but then he says that the first tweet from Trump occurred at 2:38 p.m. and was about supporting the Capitol Police and to Stay Peaceful. However, the Report has Trump’s first tweet at 2:24 p.m. and it is chilling:

Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!

We all saw the noose that had been set up outside and watched the Shaman and others roaming the halls looking for Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. I, personally, take the January 6th Report as a sacred historical document, with the footnotes to verify every point. Perhaps the fact that Kevin McCarthy had wanted Jim Jordan and Jim Banks to be appointed to the Committee has some bearing on why the radical right-wing now dismisses its work. I’m thankful that Nancy Pelosi stood her ground and refused to add those two. The Republicans who did serve on the Committee—Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger—definitely had their eyes opened about this subject. They both know the dangers inherent in the cult of Trump.

Anyway, I’m going to wrap up today with the hope that the 6,600,000 purported readers of this publication of Hillsdale College could possibly do some fact-checking for themselves. I’d be happy to cite book and page for anyone who is interested, but somehow I don’t think anyone will take me up on this offer.

So I’ll have plenty of time to start a new book I’m eager to read: Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart. I have to get a copy soon because I’m wrapping up Clarence now and adding him to the pile. And with the weather turning warmer, I’ll hope to be out and about a bit more—move it or lose it at my age!

RESIST ALWAYS

TTFN