For four years the words “January Sixth” have acquired a particular aura in the American imagination. It’s normal. January 6, 2021 was a historic day: a president-elect encouraged a mob of his followers to storm the Capitol to stop the confirmation process of the election that he himself had lost a few weeks earlier. What has happened in very broad strokes since then you already know. That president, Donald Trump, was prosecuted in one of his several criminal cases for his actions that day, many of his followers were sentenced to prison, he launched himself again to occupy the White House again, he called the condemned insurrectionists “hostages.” ” of the judicial system, among many other things he said about that day, and, finally, he resoundingly won the elections on November 5.
Yesterday, also January 6, the date dictated by the United States Constitution to confirm the result of the elections always held on the first Tuesday of November, the shadows of four years ago were present. But the ghosts of the crowd approaching the Capitol and entering just moments after an express evacuation of the Senate floor were chased away by the rapid, but still tedious, ratification protocol. And so, after completing in half an hour a process that took, thanks to the determination of the legislators, about 14 hours the previous time, January 6 once again was probably the most boring day of the American electoral cycle.
Security was reinforced like never before, the perimeters hyper-vigilated and the surroundings of the Capitol empty. On this occasion the script was not going to give surprises. Kamala Harris returned to the spotlight for virtually only the second time since she lost decisively in November; As vice president, she also presides over the Senate and the responsibility of ratifying her own defeat fell on her shoulders. He did it stoically and smoothly.
The formality of the certification, with its archaic language, could make anyone breathe easy thinking that normality has returned. In reality, the fleeting return of a January 6 adjusted to constitutional instructions leaves us only one step away from the possible rewriting of the historical turbulence of the previous one. The elections are now further away than Donald Trump’s confirmation ceremony – January 20, mark the date on your calendar if you haven’t already – and one of his many promises for that first day back in power is to pardon to the “martyrs of January 6th”, as he calls the hundreds of those convicted, for more or less serious crimes, to more or less long sentences.
But hand in hand with these pardons is the pen that seeks to rewrite the episode. Trump has already said that that day, in which 150 police officers were injured – three later died -, one person was shot dead outside the House of Representatives and the mob ransacked the headquarters of the US Government, was a “day of love” and defense of democracy. It was not them, says Trumpism, who sought to stop the certification of a fair election, but rather those who sought to stop the consummation of a robbery and who, furthermore, were later unjustly persecuted for it. Although a large portion of the country’s population believes this version, especially considering the mountains of evidence easily available on the internet, it is difficult to think that this alternative interpretation of events will become hegemonic; but facts for Trump are a malleable thing.
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