Personal Reflections on the Political Events in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021

January 6, 2021 was a day after which incoherence and hypocrisy ran rampant and political protest became anathema, at least for the corporate media, the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and for a vocal segment (probably a minority), of the American citizenry. Most Americans are probably confused given that the United States is a nation born of political protest, articulately if hypocritically crystalized in the Declaration of Independence and in the writings of all the “founding fathers”. Being mistaken (possibly) has become synonymous, according to the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and the corporate media, with lying, but only when done by others. Conversely, lying, when engaged in by the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and the corporate media, merely involves misinterpretations.

January 6, 2021 must be seen in context to understand why it occurred.

· First, the country was in the midst of rioting, arson and looting justified by the Democratic Party and corporate media as an appropriate response to police misconduct.

· Second, electoral safeguards in jurisdictions under Democratic Party control had been minimized, purportedly due to the Covid 19 pandemic, facilitating electoral fraud in a manner unacceptable in most of the world (i.e., eliminating voter identification requirements, mass mailing of ballots and permitting people other than the voter to turn in ballots).

· Third, the corporate media and the principal social media platforms had adopted an aggressive political posture interpreted by many, perhaps most, as indicative of a political bias, which culminated in depriving one of the principal candidates of access to the public, a practice traditionally criticized in the United States when engaged in by other countries as autocratic and antidemocratic.

· Fourth, for four years the Democratic Party and corporate media had been delegitimizing the 2016 elections as fraudulent on a massive, 24/7 basis, and justifying active “resistance” to the government that assumed office in January of 2017.

The 2020 elections were anomalous in that early in-person results veered in one direction only to be reversed at the last minute when “mail-in ballots” more susceptible to manipulation appeared, in some cases, under questionable circumstances. Allegations of irregularities were virtually ignored, dismissed on procedural grounds, in contrast to the massive four year-long investigations of foreign meddling in the 2016 elections, and persons who honestly believed that the elections had involved electoral fraud where accused of lying, i.e., of knowing that no electoral fraud had been involved but intending to reverse the results by making knowingly false claims. Indeed, anyone who failed to accept the results was branded a traitor, an insurrectionist and a political opportunist who needed to be permanently deprived of the right to participate in future electoral activities. The Democratic Party, on assuming power, immediately initiated related criminal proceedings and Congressional investigations which have resulted in criminal referrals.

The contrast in positions concerning the legitimacy of and appropriate reaction to the 2016 and 2020 elections is startling. The massive, organized resistance to the 2016 elections was deemed not only legitimate but necessary while corresponding attitudes with respect to the 2020 elections were deemed criminal. It is now treason to believe that elections won by the Democratic Party are not legitimate based on perceived electoral fraud, or at least to act on that belief by active protest. It is politically incorrect, racist and xenophobic to believe that safeguards against electoral fraud are necessary although the same safeguards with respect to “vaccination” are existentially necessary. Interestingly, right now, the Republic of Kazakhstan is mired in political violence with real insurrectionist taking over and destroying government buildings and engaging in arson, looting and mayhem, activities the same Democratic Party led United States government that is prosecuting January 6, 2021 “insurrectionists” finds a legitimate exercise of democratic rights.

I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat and frankly, like more and more citizens, abhor both major political parties, but I am certain that electoral fraud is always present to some degree in democratic elections everywhere, not just in the United States. I “know” that there was immense bias against the electoral aspirations of Republicans, and especially Mr. Trump, in both the corporate media and by the owners and operators of all major social media platforms and indeed, active intervention precluding dissemination of accurate information that negatively impacted Democratic Party electoral prospects, and that such activities dwarfed any “meddling” by anyone in the 2016 elections. Because of the absence of any meaningful investigations into electoral irregularities in the 2020 elections, neither I nor anyone else has the ability to positively determine whether active electoral fraud was sufficient to impact the results, but am certain that corporate and social media “meddling” was a major factor. Consequently, for me, January 6 is and will henceforth be a day for reflection on how utterly manipulated the United States citizenry is on political matters, how blatantly hypocritical the corporate media, Democratic Party and traditionalist Republicans are with respect to the electoral process, and how little they think of our cognitive abilities as they hammer us with incoherent and contradictory narratives.

I do not believe that the January 6, 2021 protests in front of the United States Capitol were anything to which the founding fathers would have been opposed, or that they involved treason or insurrection. They were legitimate political protests at the appropriate place which, based on the relaxed standards for protests accepted in conjunction with Black Lives Matter riots, got out of hand, albeit without the arson, murder and mass looting that characterized the latter. Most participants, those that were not outside or government provocateurs, were patriotic Americans exercising what they perceived to be their patriotic duty, and in that sense, perhaps the most important civil right is the right to me mistaken in their conclusions. If mistakes are to be criminalized as treason and as grounds for the loss of political rights, then let it be done across the board. That would politically ostracize virtually the entire political leadership of the United States.

Probably not a bad thing.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at www.guillermocalvo.com.