A Grand Old Party

GOP’s January 6th Revisionism Proves the Party is Over

July 2021

BY TIM MUNKEBY

I am sorry.

I have to apologize to the Republican party, the GOP, the Grand Old Party.

When I first watched the videos of the January 6th fiasco at the U.S. Capitol, I thought “those people intended harm” as I saw windows smashed, and so forth.

At the time, I condemned this in my mind because, I thought, spurred on by the impeached, defeated president at the time, these people were attempting treason on his behalf.

But I now realize, thanks to some clearly astute Republicans, they were just trying to find a good spot for a picnic…and what better spot than inside our Capitol?

Now, I know they were just having a grand old party, probably singing campfire songs. We can’t believe what we see or hear on TV, or with our own eyes and ears.

The shouting that sounded like angry threats and hatred could be dubbed in. Obviously! Any violence we thought we saw was, I’ve now been told, committed by actors, played brilliantly by members of the FBI and Antifa—just like those skilled child actors pretending to be separated from their parents and sequestered at our border.

I found this out thanks to Fox News, from a pseudo-foxy blonde.

And now, I’ve learned the Capitol revelers are being victimized by our courts! For what? Having fun?

I’m actually rather surprised that Trump and the GOP are now blaming the courts. I was sure they hadn’t known that the Judicial Branch existed, which is totally understandable. The Constitution, in which the Judicial Branch is mentioned, is an old, outdated document and hard to read and comprehend. I mean why three branches of government? All we need is one!

So, I do apologize. You can’t blame some patriots for simply having a grand old party.

*   *   *

Ok, so I almost feel a need to apologize again—this time for using sarcasm here to comment on the attempted obfuscation of such a momentous attempted breach of our Democracy. John Knowles, in his novel A Separate Peace, called sarcasm a weapon of the weak. But, as has been pointed out to me, my apology is more satire than sarcasm, described by Webster as “biting irony to expose vice or folly.”

I realize there are people out “there” (way out there) that don’t think this insurrection, this storming of our Capitol calling for the lynching of the vice president, the killing of Congress, and the attempted rupture of our Democratic election process, was “vice.”

Of course, that belief is folly.

And so are the accusations by Republicans that Antifa, or the FBI, or the Girl Scouts, or whoever, were behind the insurrection.

Folly, yes. But better put: another big lie. A blatant attempt to change history.

Crazy.

When I first saw the marauders carrying Nazi flags, using them as weapons, I was confused. What the hell? Then it struck me: they were trying to change history as well. The Holocaust deniers share the same Kool Aid as the flat earthers, the Birthers, the QAnoners, the 9/11 conspiracy theorists…

And then I saw those proudly waving the Confederate flag, recasting the Civil War as a protection of family and heritage rather than a traitorous attempt at extending the bondage of Black people.

As for those unfurling their Trump flags? Oh yes, right, Antifa actors again.

The most ironic attempt at re-shaping history, even as it was happening, was the waving of the American flag as a symbol of patriotism as insurrectionists stormed our Capitol to interfere in the fundamental process of our democracy: the free election of our president.

Patriots!? Crazy!

Of course, much re-telling of history as fiction, as myth, occurs by most, if not all, colonizing countries, with America at the forefront. The Indians, the indigenous Americans, recast as savages as the U.S. government slaughtered men, women, and children, stole land, and broke treaty after treaty committing immense atrocities. What were you told, as history, in school? Actual, truthful, or recast?

What will be interesting, over time, is how Trump and his current Republican party will be encapsulated in history books. Of course, it depends on whose version of history you’ll read: one by actual historians who tell the truth or one by a current political party whose entire foundation is based on a lie.

That’s not to be confused with the other big lie, the one that’s been struck down again and again, by our courts and the U.S. Department of Justice. Even Republican renegade state commissions have been unable to find any support for the big lie that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.

Obviously, if you want to change history, you try to do so because don’t want to look bad when the books are sent to the printer. If you’re afraid you might be somehow punished for your role in the January 6^th insurrection, you want history to say it wasn’t violent. That it wasn’t treasonous.

And if you insist on discounting the hundreds of videos taken at the scene that day, then Trump and his supporters aren’t to blame. Nope, cleverly dressed thespians did the damage, or left-wing radicals, government agents, or those damn Democrats—nope, wait! The Capitol Police attacked themselves!

But not Republicans. Simply crazy!

Trying to change history while we sit and watch it happen should be considered crazy. But apparently, for those who swallow Trump’s poison pill without question, reality is altered.

And I do believe Trump is poison. Recent cases in point:

* The rise of homegrown Nazi extremists, white supremacists, domestic terrorists

* The refusal to wear masks on planes and attacks on flight attendants, potentially exposing passengers with sickness and even death

* Attacking elderly Asians

* Voter suppression

* Mass shootings

It goes on and on. All because of Trump’s rhetoric and actions, aped by the GOP.

And if you don’t think this is all crazy, you have swallowed Trump’s poison pill.

I do believe that history will not be kind to Trump, House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and their lemmings, no matter their repeated attempts at rewriting history. I don’t understand how a politician with as much influence as McConnell will gleefully proclaim that his main goal and purpose is to obstruct President Biden at any cost. No matter who or how many it hurts. Just as he did during President Obama’s administration.

Sound like a patriotic way to serve our country?

*   *   *

Yes, I am sorry.

I’m sorry that the GOP is once again propagating, shamelessly, a big lie—in hopes that its faithful will once again swallow it whole. Kool Aid for everyone, to help wash it down.

Remarkably, some will no doubt stomach every poison pill Trump and his ilk offer up. But those who don’t, or won’t, have come to realize that the once respected GOP party, the [not so] grand old lemmings, are bumbling over an historical abyss.

Crazy, crazy times.

Tim Munkeby can be reached at

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