On Jan. 10, 2021, I submitted an article to another publication titled “President Trump Takes a Hit for the Team.” The article appeared on Jan. 12 of that year minus only the last sentence.
It read as follows, “If we the people refuse to apologize, refuse to back down, refuse to submit, January 6 may one day be celebrated as a mid-winter 4th of July.”
I understood the publisher’s prudence. At the time we all labored under the belief that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had been struck dead by a fire extinguisher-wielding “insurrectionist.”
That, of course, proved to be a lie, one of many. As Tucker Carlson showed last week, the helmeted Sicknick was captured on video doing his job a half-hour or so after his alleged murder.
Carlson showed enough video evidence to provoke some national soul searching, including an extraordinary apology to conservative Americans from lifelong Democrat writer Naomi Wolf.
“I owe you a full-throated apology,” wrote Wolfe about the media coverage of January 6. “I believed a farrago of lies. And, as a result of these lies, and my credulity – and the credulity of people similarly situated to me – many conservatives’ reputations are being tarnished, on false bases.”
During the week that began with Carlson’s videos and ended with the vile treatment of liberal journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger by Democrats on the House weaponization committee, I had something of a revelation.
That week I spoke to two separate groups of Midwestern business leaders in my role as a contributor to a regional business magazine.
The people to whom I spoke are the kind of people who make America good. They work hard. They marry. They raise families. They volunteer and coach and go to church on Sunday. Most probably vote Republican.
What they cannot do, however, is speak out about anything more controversial than the holding call that allowed the hometown Chiefs to win the Super Bowl.
They can express no opinion publicly that defies the woke orthodoxy on a wide range of subjects from COVID to climate change to crime to race to sex to guns to gay rights to trans-anything.
After the election of 2020, the woke establishment added election fraud to the list of taboo subjects. After Jan. 6, 2021, no person who valued his or her job in corporate America dared defend the protesters or question the show trials they endured.
I understand their silence. My role with the magazine is to pry the “Overton window” open just a little bit. Were I to force it open wide I would cost my tolerant publishers their publication and me my monthly column.
These corporate citizens do not even have that luxury. As I explained to the smaller group, “You are all one awkward tweet away from career oblivion.” Heads nodded in assent.
Many in corporate America cope with their captivity by choosing not to know any more than they have to. They have found their almost literal “comfort zone” and prefer not to be disturbed.
Had I raised questions over lunch about the Soviet-style incarceration of Jacob Chansley or the libelous treatment of Matt Taibbi, I would have been met with blank stares.
The people who make America good, I realized, are not the people who make America great. The people who make America great are the ones who defy the orthodoxy and suffer the consequences for doing so.
This includes liberals like Naomi Wolf, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and certainly Elon Musk. The real heroes, though, are the ordinary citizens who risk their careers to resist, none bolder than those came to D.C. on January 6 to have their voices heard.
Unlike their betters in polite America, the J6 patriots had sussed out the rot of the ancien regime and saw it as their civic duty to speak out against it. At least four died so doing.
The Democrats excite themselves by comparing January 6 to Sept. 11, 2001, or even Dec. 7, 1941, but a more apt point of comparison might be July 14, 1789.
On that steamy day, Parisian rioters stormed the Bastille. Although they behaved far worse than the January 6 crowd – they actually killed people – the French subsequently made July 14 their national holiday.
America doesn’t need another national holiday in January. What we do need, once the rot is cleared, is a day of truth and reconciliation. And January 6 is as good a day as any.
Jack Cashill’s newest book, “Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities,” is available for pre-order.
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