The Arsonist and the Matchmakers: Trump, January 6, and the Politics of Forgetting

Word that Donald Trump has been alerted that he may be indicted for his role in the attempted coup of January 6th is most welcome. As I have said for years, I always doubt whether wealthy, white men will be subject to legal repercussions regarding their myriad crimes until it happens. Trump deserves to be indicted and he deserves to spend the rest of his life paying his numerous debts to society.

And let us be clear: the events of January 6th, 2021 were an attempted coup. A dizzying array of interests converged on Washington, D.C. at a planned time and a planned place in order to interfere with the certification of the 2020 Presidential Election and the transfer of power from Trump to President Joe Biden. This embodied a concentrated push to overturn the will of the American people. Some came to protest, some came to create a state of chaos that could run interference with democracy, some came to serve as Trump’s shocktroops, and some came completely believing they were part of a new revolution or “the Great Awakening” promised by the QAnon conspiracy theory.

This was not accidental. Many separates groups and entities planned and schemed to get at these goals. Some were part of Trump’s inner circle and were possessed of incredible and idiotic schemes. Including among them was Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow whose brain has been so scrambled by conspiracy theories and online nonsense that it’s a wonder he can dress himself. There were lawyers like John Eastman, of the Claremont Institute, who attempted to twist the law into pretzels in order to keep Trump in power. There were Proud Boys and Oathkeepers who came ready to fight.

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Behind all of them were an array of Right Wing billionaire donors and power players who have financed Trump’s ascent, his agenda, and a restless attack on democracy throughout the country. They rely on astroturfed groups whose concerns they play and coordinate for their own purposes. They paid for buses of insurrectionists to head to the Capitol. They flood the institutes and think-tanks with enough cash to keep them floating for decades and creating one scheme after another. And, unfortunately, as the January 6th Coup has been investigated, they have been largely unnamed and kept in the shadows.

I want to be clear, once more, that Trump should be held accountable. But to believe that Trump’s indictment will lead to the spotlight being focused on these donors and brokers is an absurdity. And here is why: Trump, himself, has no idea what actually took place on January 6th. He understands his role, the way in which his supporters were acting on his behalf, and that’s about it. The plethora of plans that were trotted out to win him over or push one strategy or another were largely gibberish to him. Remember, this is a former president with such a shallow intellect and nonexistent attention span that his presidential briefings had to include his name as many times as possible in order to keep his attention.

In the case of January 6th, Trump was an arsonist who rose that morning to find a mountain of matches laid out before him. His need for self-protection and denial created an environment where his supporters disbelieved the electoral results, and the donors and wealth class recognized the opportunity to further attack democracy. For Trump, any plans and ideas for what actually happened on January 6th probably sounded a lot like the squawking of adults in the Peanuts cartoon. He was not a mastermind. He is incapable of that, but the story that we have been presented with, both in the January 6th Commission and with countless media accounts, tells us that he was the focal point of it all and that any indictment of him will ultimately solve the problem.

This is a convenient fiction, and one that the powerful are desperate for. Trump was an aberration, the origins of our modern problems, and if he can just be pinpointed and answered, things can get back to normal. Unfortunately, the problems existed before him and they will continue after him, whether he dies in prison or in Mar a Lago. And continuing to believe any of this will yield a substantial reckoning with the wealthy and powerful behind the coup and the continued assault on democracy is much closer to the QAnon edict of “trust the plan” than it is a fundamental grasping of reality.

This doesn’t mean there is necessarily a coverup or a conspiracy. The truth about what Trump represents is a staggering horror that many simply do not want to wrestle with or confront. Denial is incredibly powerful, especially as it safeguards one’s one existence and reality. And getting Trump, or any of his lackluster cronies, on the witness stand will simply not lead to some blockbuster revelation of who funded and who planned what was an attempted coup. It will turn into an argument about whether Trump’s speech and his shallow conspiracies amounted to criminal offenses. And, in both case, these were only exemplary of a larger, deeper, and more substantial problem far away from the camera’s and the offices of the White House.

Instead, if we continue to hold Trump as the main focus of the January 6th tragedy, we will only turn away from those who are continuing to attack democracy in every state, every town, and in every election. We will do exactly as they wish we would and pay attention to the clown up front who is doing the only thing he knows how to do: clowning and commanding the attention to himself and himself alone.