Begging Your Pardon

Who attempts to overthrow a government without weapons? Why would the alleged leader of an insurrection authorize military force to protect the government, and why would the alleged insurrection victims countermand that authorization? How do people who listen to speeches about democratic procedures and election integrity in one location transform into enemies of the Constitution after walking a mile and a half to the east? Who believes that interrupting a vote would overturn a government? If there was an attempted insurrection, why would a notoriously creative and aggressive prosecutor fail to find any basis for filing insurrection charges?

If you never asked these questions, it is because you weren’t supposed to. Even to ask them was to show sympathy for The Insurrection.

With the re-election of Donald Trump, and especially with his expected pardoning of the January 6 protestors, we can clearly see that the legal prosecution of those protestors was always part of a larger social prosecution, the formalization of the “insurrection” narrative, which was meant to enforce what could be said and thought about the 2020 election and the four years before it. When its legitimacy was most in doubt, bureaucratic power appealed to the most primal drivers of social identity: honor and shame.

Although prosecutors admitted that the charges, arrests, and trials were meant to “send a message,” the legal process was itself an awkward implementation of a message that did not originate with the prosecutors. There had already been a coordinated effort by media, government, and other institutions to frame January 6 as an “insurrection.”

That framing was never organic; it was manufactured. Indeed, it seems to have been fully formulated and ready to deploy on the day of the event. It certainly did not emerge from journalistic investigation and reporting.

Here is how quickly it took hold. Americans—at least 50,000 souls—traveled to Washington, D.C., that day to attend a peaceful civil rights demonstration, a rally to demand integrity in election processes. When they arrived home that night or the next day, they found fellow citizens—including their friends, colleagues, even family members—persuaded that they had been shamefully irresponsible at best, and at worst had become dangerous enemies of democracy.

The immediate and intended effect was to make sure that questions were never asked. So effective was the propaganda that many people still don’t realize that they have acquaintances, friends, teachers, students, co-workers, or family members who were in D.C. that day. Most people, when they see the threat of social ostracism, job loss, or public mockery, are smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

If someone did own up to attending the election-integrity rally, the typical and knee-jerk response was condemnation, not curiosity. The most common question was not, “What did you experience?” but “How dare you?” This is not natural. It is the result of a psychological operation to instill conviction and outrage, diverting attention away from obvious questions: about what we really know, how we know it, and whether we have reason to be skeptical.

Even today, after years of accumulated evidence, videos, and testimony, many who fell under the sway of this psychological operation, those who believe the insurrection narrative, would be surprised to learn some basic facts about January 6.

For instance, Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, between the White House and the Washington Monument, was anything but inciting. It was long, rambling, and boring. Many who were present hoped the president would reveal new information—about evidence of fraud, or about his vice president’s intentions for ratifying electors—but after half an hour of recycled, familiar arguments, it was clear there would be nothing new.

He spoke for more than an hour and much of the crowd left before he was done, walking east to the Capitol. Toward the end of the Mall, a scattering of light barriers had been pulled aside, and police directed people to approach the building. There was little police presence around the Capitol itself. Given the size of the anticipated crowd, the lack of formal crowd control was conspicuous.

As one got nearer to the Capitol on the west side, one could see people climbing scaffolding and hear yelling. Even closer, and there was an acrid smell of teargas, which was enough to make most people keep their distance. Why did the teargas start? Was it a desperate attempt of an understaffed security to quell a riot? Or was it a calculated provocation? Natural questions to those who smelled it—but questions never asked by the experts who narrated the “insurrection” for the rest of the nation.

There was a strange energy on the west side of the Capitol, but it was not a mood of revolution. A friend likened it to stepping onto a movie set with a troupe of paid actors. He witnessed activist “theater kids” dressed in black changing costume into Trump gear, and sensed a difference between the organic crowd at the rally and the melodrama of paid provocateurs. The scaffolding, flashbangs, colored smoke, and flags seemed staged for cinema, and my friend felt like an “unwilling extra” for a Hollywood production: Insurrection Day: A National Disgrace.

On the east side, there was no rioting, but plenty of people gathered on the two sets of steps, some conversing with police. Police eventually let them in. Some of those people, a combination of tourists and peaceful protestors, were later arrested, charged, and jailed for trespassing. All to send a message: How dare they threaten Democracy?

Pardons could have come from Trump in January of 2021, before he left office. Perhaps better for the nation, they could have come from Biden any time over the past four years—if he had been truly interested in seeking unity, healing, and peace.

Although too many people have suffered unnecessarily in jail, the pardons will have greater national significance by coming four years too late. Trump’s 2024 election was in no small part a referendum on the insurrection narrative. Those who went to D.C. on January 6, 2021, can no longer be asked to feel shame. Indeed, those who demanded they feel shame are hoping we forget—some are even asking Biden for preemptive pardons for themselves.

Pardoning the January 6 protestors in 2025 formally completes the rejection of the manufactured narrative. It permits us to raise questions that have been too long avoided. It should prompt the masses who fell victim to psychological warfare to wonder what made them so vulnerable to manipulation. And it redirects the burden of shame to those—whoever they are—who tried to control a nation by manufacturing an ignoble lie.

Image by Tyler Merbler, via Creative Commons. Image cropped.