Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives recently said that the faces must be blurred of those persons that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Those people attempted to disrupt the counting of electoral college votes in their failed effort to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election. Johnson said he wanted to have their faces blurred on the tapes that are under his control because he wants to prevent those rioters from being prosecuted by the Department of Justice for the crime of breaching the Capitol, attacking police officers, and endangering the lives of members of Congress and their staffs.
There is so much wrong with what Johnson said that I hardly know where to start. First, MAGA Republicans initially insisted that those who breached the Capitol were members of Black Lives Matter and some small group they refer to as Antifa. If that was the case, why would Republicans want to blur their faces? Surely, they would like to have proof to support that theory.
When that theory collapsed, MAGA Republicans as recently as last week insisted that the attack on the U. S. Capitol was “an inside job carried out by the FBI.” If so, why blur their faces to protect them from prosecution? You would think they would want to capture the faces of FBI agents to prove that point.
There is only one reason why Johnson and his sycophants want to obscure the faces of the rioters-insurrectionists-traitors of democracy. Those persons were part of the MAGA movement operating at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald Trump. That means the legislative body of the federal government is willing to protect people who broke the laws of this country to shelter them from the consequences of trying to overthrow that very government.
Can you imagine what Mike Johnson would have said if the people who conducted non-violent protests in Washington, D.C. following the death of George Floyd had attempted to march on the Capitol building? Donald Trump wanted those marchers to be shot by members of the U.S. military even though they were peacefully demonstrating in the streets and not on the steps of the Capitol.
This is an unbelievable demonstration of the unequal application of justice. This is also a glimpse of what a second Trump presidency might entail; the fervent persecution of political opponents and critics, and the issuance of pardons to friends and allies no matter how grievous their illegal conduct. Right here in Ohio, Senator J.D. Vance is calling for a Department of Justice investigation into Robert Kagan, a Washington Post reporter who wrote about the dangers of Donald Trump becoming a dictator should he be reelected. So much for the freedom of the press in this MAGA world. Either you agree with and enable everything Trump says and does, or you face criminal investigation by the federal government. Trump has said he wants to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1792 to deploy the military inside the United States to suppress any large protests some groups might want to conduct to oppose his future policies. He has also promised to issue presidential pardons to members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, militant groups whose leaders now sit in federal prison because of their role in the events of January 6, 2021.
This is the future that awaits us if men like Mike Johnson, J.D. Vance, and Donald Trump are successful in the 2024 presidential election. Democracy and the rule of law as we have known it will be gone, and a fascist and authoritarian regime will take their place.
When asked in 1787 what kind of government the Continental Congress had created when they issued the U.S. Constitution, Benjamin Franklin is said to have responded, “a republic if we can keep it.” It seems we are on the brink of losing our republic at the hands of persons who are placing the agenda of one man, Donald Trump, over the norms and traditions of this country. Whether or not that happens depends upon that most basic of American phrases: “We the people.” The future of this country is in our hands and, more precisely, our votes in November 2024. If we fail, 2024 may be the last free election this country will see for quite some time.
R E C E N T:
A brief primer on the history of Palestine
The Hamas Attack
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The Rev. Dr. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, is interim executive minister, Cleveland Baptist Association, American Baptist Churches, USA. He served as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, New York, from 2011 to 2019.
