OPINION:
President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Congressional Democrats have planned to “commemorate” the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday by hosting several events that will revive the stories of those who experienced it firsthand. This shows poor judgment because, unlike the Sept. 11 attacks or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Jan. 6 was not a day that will nor should live in infamy.
The U.S. Capitol riots do not come close to rising to the level of such tragedies, and it is time Democrats and the media stopped mischaracterizing what happened as an “attack.”
The risk of doing otherwise is consequential because instead of uniting the country and moving it forward, which is what our leaders should do — it instead forces the nation to relive its most divisive moment in modern history, reminding Americans of how angry and powerless they felt — regardless of which presidential candidate they supported. This is not how a president unifies and leads a country. It is how to divide it.
From the very beginning, the Democrats and the mainstream media depicted the riot at the Capitol as an attack or a coup, even going so far as to suggest it compares to the British burning of Washington in 1812. Contrary to their narrative, there have been other, more serious incidents at the U.S. Capitol, including shots fired onto the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by a Puerto Rican independence movement in 1954 and the radical Marxist Weather Underground’s bombing in 1971, shortly after the group issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the U.S. government.
But Democrats never talk about those incidents. They only raise concerns about Jan. 6 because it serves their political interests to only frame activists on the right as dangerous.
Unlike the aforementioned attacks with guns and bombs, what happened on Jan. 6 was a riot that erupted as the culmination of several weeks of frustration in which hundreds of Americans who felt they had lost their voice, their vote and their country hit a breaking point —and demanded to be heard in the most ineffective and uncivilized way possible — by breaking the law.
The fact that those arrested, many of whom were previously law-abiding, patriotic Americans without criminal histories, felt desperate enough to engage in vandalism and violence as a last resort of expression is a sad commentary on our beloved nation. It is not a hallmark that should be celebrated, even if such celebration comes in the thinly disguised form of mourning or “commemoration.”
But some on the left do not want to move forward from this very unfortunate series of incidents.
This was never more apparent than on New Year’s Day when The New York Times editorial board suggested, “Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now,” suggesting that although it is an “understandable impulse” to move on from the “unthinkable trauma of Jan. 6,” that the “Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country” and “we should stop underestimating the threat facing the country … the sooner we do, the sooner we might hope to salvage a democracy that is in grave danger.”
The fact that appears to have escaped the authors of this depressing, one-dimensional monologue is that tens of millions of Americans, who voted for Mr. Trump, also have to “salvage a democracy that is in grave danger.”
By forcing the nation to relive the moments of Jan. 6, Mr. Biden and his allies are only stoking repressed frustration and anger, continuing the build throughout the country from both sides, heating up a problem that needs to simmer instead of hitting a boiling point.
When Mr. Biden took office, he promised to be a president for all Americans and do his best to unite the country. Enflaming emotions by forcing Americans to relive a low point that pinned Americans against another can only have negative consequences. Although Jan. 6 should not be forgotten from the pages of history, it should not be relived or “commemorated.” Mr. Biden would do well to make good on his promise and stand for all Americans instead of alienating them. It’s time for our nation to move forward — together — as best we can.
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