Two Years Ago Today
The Infamous January 6th Insurrection
Two long dangerous years have passed! The plotter-in-chief of a coup remains at large, spreading his contagion and continuing to plot his return. Or, at minimum, his pathology of conniving has empowered like-minded, would-be successors who might best pardon him from all federal crimes—as he sets the stage to be absolved of state financial and electoral crimes. Such a mind does not know laws but operates only through threats, coercion, and intimidation.
Looking back not two but six years to January 2017, we psychiatrists and mental health professionals felt we had the education, training, understanding, and—we realized in a daunting moment—the responsibility to begin immediately to warn against “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” When he lost to Joe Biden four years later, we further knew that new dangers were beginning. Though we could not foretell the specifics of what happened two years ago today, we correctly predicted the probability, type, and magnitude of precisely the kind of serious violence that would spread and ensue because of the psychopathology of Donald Trump.
The coup, we must remember, might have succeeded:
· Had the lone Capitol Police officer not diverted the mob away from Mike Pence as he was being ushered away;
· Had the interns not themselves rushed away the electoral vote boxes from the mob;
· Had Donald Trump himself led the mob as he planned to do, but for the Secret Service refusing his orders to take him to the Capitol;
· Had the mob gotten their hands on Pence and pursued their loud threats to hang or to kill him;
· Had Pence gotten into the limousine, as he was repeatedly urged to do to be whisked away from the Capitol;
· Had the mob been able to get their hands on Nancy Pelosi or others they were stalking; or
· Had even more people been bludgeoned, shot, or killed.
Mental health experts knew from the start that he was capable of allowing and orchestrating all this to happen, so that he might declare Martial Law, initiate a Constitutional Crisis, and engender a street Civil War. Not only that—but he will seek ways, personal or vicarious, to try again.
Two years later, the nation has still not addressed the mental health phenomenon that led to January 6, 2021. The time is overdue for understanding and addressing the core feature of the most infamous presidency in American history: (a lack of) mental health.
Rachel Maddow in her podcast ULTRA, gave us a detailed history of Insurrectionists that even historians were dumbfounded by. Listening to RM lay out the blueprint of a previous plot to upend Democracy is almost unbelievable. The plotting and planning by elected officials, a well known Catholic priest, government officials, militias and Nazi officials who were the puppet masters of Americans is mind blowing. I kept thinking as I listened to how the Jan6 planners (many of whom on January 6, 2023 are entirely focused on changing laws in the House to protect themselves as a malignant Speaker is being decided) must have known this history and simply used the earlier event as their exact blueprint. However the present day planners came up with this scheme, the outcome is nearly identical - officials charged and acquitted; the pitbull prosecutors tasked with rounding up the traitors are seemingly being subverted by higher ups (DOJ?) while the Boehberts, MTG’s, Perry’s and the entire QAnon/Republican party aka traitors mock the ‘good guys’, their constituents, Democrats, voters and our Democratic system of government. They are broadcasting their continued plans to blowup our system of government. They are intent on gaining power to inflict pain on anyone who doesn’t step in line. They are ‘gunning’ for what they see as ‘the other’- black/brown citizens, the poor, LGBTQ communities and non- Orange Jesus Christians. WE NEED ALL HANDS ON DECK MORE THAN EVER!
Error: Mike Pence did NOT get into the limousine and was thus able to finish the certification. Had he been taken away, the halting of the certification might have succeeded.