The three most important days in American history since the Civil War have been: Dec 7, 1941. Sept. 11. And Jan. 6.
We don’t use years for the last two. They aren’t dates on a calendar; they are scar tissue. So many of us lived through those tragedies and still remember them in terrifying detail.
When you hear sounds like that, your brain goes to your family, especially your children.
Five years ago at the U.S. Capitol, I was honored to have been asked by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to gavel-in the day. And then I saw the place overrun by a mob determined to bash every barrier or person who stood in their way. When you hear sounds like that, your brain goes to your family, especially your children.
Five years later, the glass broken in the Capitol that day has been repaired. The marble steps have been cleaned. And Donald Trump has pardoned all the insurrectionists.
We Americans have a tendency to move on. To not look back.
But in this case, I won’t do that.
I am the son of a cop. I am the brother of cops. Outside my office hangs a monument to honor the Capitol Police who defended us that day.
Before running for office in 2012, I spent a career in a courtroom standing up for “We, the people.” But you don’t need a badge on your chest to know that Jan. 6 was a moral crater for our nation. You don’t need a law degree to know that in a civilized society, you do not choose the criminal over the constable.
By claiming that Jan. 6 was “a day of love,” Trump is attempting to gaslight our nation on an industrial scale. It is the same playbook fringe theorists used after 9/11. They insisted there were no planes. They said it was holograms, missiles, a controlled demolition.
Common-sense Americans didn’t buy that nonsense then, and we cannot whitewash history now.
Let’s set aside politics and engage in a hypothetical for a moment. Recall George W. Bush standing on that pile of twisted steel at Ground Zero, holding that bullhorn? He bucked us up as a nation. He gave us a spine when ours was fractured.
Now, imagine if he had been the one to incite those horrific attacks.
Imagine if he had held a rally in Battery Park just minutes before impact. Imagine if he had pointed at the Twin Towers and told a seething, armed crowd to “stop the steal” and “fight like hell” or we won’t have a country anymore.
If we don’t right these wrongs, we don’t risk a repeat of Jan. 6. We get a Jan. 7.
That is what happened on Jan. 6. Our president directed an attack on another branch of government.
It’s important that we move smartly into the future.
But if we don’t acknowledge a past wound, it stays poisoned. If we don’t right these wrongs, we don’t risk a repeat of Jan. 6. We get a Jan. 7. And an 8. And the country we are barely holding onto now will slip through our fingers.
Our democratic republic is more important than who you voted for. Our job as Americans — our civic sacrament — is to reject the comforting lie. Even when it comes from our friends.
So we remember. We don’t look away from that day. We treat Jan. 6 with the same reverence, the same sorrow and the same resolve as the day the Twin Towers fell. Because the moment we forget is the moment we, as a country, fall.
