The fist is still in the air: Little Lies of January 6 Capitol riot scarier than ever

The images from that day are back on our screens and phones, a nightmare on a sickening, unstoppable loop.

Screams, shouts, fistfights — and gunfire. Police battling red-hatted, placard-waving insurrectionists. Breaking glass. Smoke. Members of Congress and other workers scurrying for a place to hide.

And that picture again: Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, raising his fist like a pretend 1960s revolutionary in a $7,000 suit, aiding and abetting the worst attack on American democracy in memory.

The scenes are difficult to watch. Yet they remain essential: We cannot forget how the Jan. 6 riots happened, and why, and who provoked them, and what they mean for self-government for ourselves and our children.

We now know the riot was just one part of a serious, organized effort to overturn the outcome of a free and fair presidential election. Memos circulated for weeks, turning complicated fantasies into action plans for putting Donald Trump back in the White House.

The fantasy included stopping the electoral vote count in Congress on Jan. 6. The riot was a part of that.

The plans were illegal, unconstitutional, illogical and wrong. All were drafted in the service of what we’ve come to call the Big Lie: the assertion, unsupported by any evidence and refuted by every known fact, that Joe Biden somehow stole the 2020 election.

We might have hoped the Big Lie would die after Jan. 6. It has not. It has been reinforced by dozens of Little Lies, told by little liars who have consistently put party and personal ambition ahead of the nation, and history.

You’ve undoubtedly heard or seen these lies. The Jan. 6 protest was actually peaceful dissent, we’re now told. It was provoked by secret leftist agitators, not Trump supporters. The U.S. Capitol Police were complicit in their own agony.

The rioters now in jail are modern-day freedom fighters and patriots. It wasn’t an insurrection. The system worked. Let’s move on, they say.

Trump is at the center of these lies, of course. But he can’t sustain them alone. Each time a politician or would-be officeholder genuflects before the disgraced president, or refuses to denounce the Jan. 6 violence, or stays silent in the face of deceit, the lies are amplified, leaving democracy at greater risk.

Hawley is at the center of the little lies, as this newspaper ably demonstrated just a few days ago. But Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, who voted to sustain a challenge to the electoral vote after the riot, plays a role as well.

Three Kansas representatives — Tracey Mann, Ron Estes and Jake LaTurner — also voted to overturn the election. So did five of Missouri’s six House members, including Sam Graves and Vicky Hartzler. None has ever apologized.

They all know better. Their shameful votes can never be forgotten, ignored, or swept away.

Attorneys general Eric Schmitt in Missouri and Derek Schmidt in Kansas aided legal efforts to cancel millions of votes in other states. Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft still refuses to say what he knows is true: There was no significant voter fraud in 2020.

State legislators in Missouri and Kansas have joined the silent chorus, refusing to denounce the Jan. 6 riot and its aftermath while considering bills making it harder to vote, and easier to throw out the results. And, of course, millions of Americans still believe the Big Lie, and the Little Lies.

Why? Is Trump that important? Why would men and women so readily discard their self-respect in abject service to such a man? Why would someone seek high office, then debase himself for Donald Trump?

Can America survive the influence of an anti-democratic strongman who has convinced a sizable part of the country to ignore what their own eyes tell them?

We do know this: Unless Americans repair the damage by embracing reality, and electing honest people of good will to office, the cowardice of the Little Liars will continue to threaten democracy.

“I think (Trump’s) actions and the actions of those people who continue to defend President Trump will not be judged well by history,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said Tuesday. She’s right.

And she’s right to say so. Cheney, a Republican and a member of the Jan. 6 House committee, has more courage in the finger she’s wagging than Josh Hawley and his fellow fist-wavers will ever know.

Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters failed to destroy self-government in the United States a year ago, but they came scarily close to success. Representative government was rescued by the many judges and election officials who take their jobs seriously, and would not be bullied. We are forever in their debt.

But the bleeding hasn’t stopped, and the danger goes on. Watch the video from a year ago. It can happen here. It has happened here. Unless we purge the lies and liars from our politics, it will happen again.

This story was originally published January 5, 2022 at 8:57 AM.