From behind that bias-blocking veil, evaluate what you may have just heard or read about the events of Jan. 6, 2021 , and measure it against what you previously knew. An angry crowd overran the US Capitol that day in an attempt to block the congressional certification of the presidential election. The candidate they supported said last week that the protesters who had gathered in Washington on that day “didn’t come because of me” but rather because they thought the election had been rigged against him. He added, seemingly about himself, that “ nothing” had been “done wrong,” on Jan. 6, which he called “a day of love.”
That is, place yourself behind a veil of ignorance, which renowned political philosopher John Rawls devised to help pursue objective, clear-sighted, and just analyses.
Assume for a moment you don’t have a particular set of political beliefs or an allegiance to either major party. Presuppose that you don’t have strong feelings for or against either current presidential candidate or about those who ran in 2020.
He has also recently maintained that his only part in the day’s events was to give a speech on the Ellipse. He frequently stresses that he asked members of the crowd to express themselves “peacefully and patriotically.”
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Now consider what you do know with certainty. For starters, to reach the Capitol building, the crowd pushed its way through security barricades, battling with police as they did. Further, that police were pummeled, assaulted, and bear-maced, and that at least 140 officers reported being injured in the violent clash that ensued.
The figure in question is certainly correct in saying the angry crowd believed the election had been stolen. But you also know the big reason they held that belief is that he repeatedly insisted that he, and not his opponent, had won. He said that even though top members of his administrative and political teams, from his attorney general to his deputy acting attorney general to his election security chief to his campaign manager to one of his best-known consultants, had told him there had been no results-changing fraud.
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Factor that this person urged his supporters to attend the Jan. 6 rally, writing: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild!” And that he followed that with three more reminders or promptings.
Now, weigh the dueling aspects of his speech on the Ellipse. This person did say, in the first third of a long speech, that he knew the crowd would make their voices heard “peacefully and patriotically.” Shortly before that, however, he complained that Republicans too often fought “like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back” and that “we’re going to have to fight much harder.”
Then, after offering his “peacefully and patriotically” remark, he repeated the claim that the election had been stolen, saying that “over the past several weeks, we’ve amassed overwhelming evidence about a fake election.” That wasn’t true. As he wrapped up the speech, he told the crowd that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
You, like millions of other TV viewers, watched or have since seen the riled-up crowd push through security barricades, assault the police, and invade the Capitol. And that as they did, some called for the execution of the vice president because he had refused to go along with his boss’s desire that he send some Electoral College slates back to state legislatures as part of a scheme to overturn the state-certified results.
As the crowd overran the Capitol and battled with police, this person did urge them twice, by tweet, to “Be peaceful” and “Stay peaceful!” and to respect law enforcement. But he waited for more than three hours after the melee started before finally telling them to leave the Capitol.
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Now, from your politically disinterested position, ask yourself several questions.
Why did this crowd wrongly think that the election had been rigged? Would they have come to Washington, D.C., if their favored candidate had accepted what his own top advisers told him and conceded defeat, rather than falsely and repeatedly claiming he had won? Would they have come if he had not urged them in multiple tweets to attend the protest?
Further, would the crowd have burst through police barriers, assaulted officers, and overrun the Capitol if they hadn’t just been told that if they didn’t fight like hell, they wouldn’t have a country left?
If you are still in doubt, ponder the fact that an attention-grabbing number of former members of this person’s administration have called him unfit for the nation’s highest office. And that his former vice president has declared that in pushing his plan to overturn the real election results, his erstwhile boss had tried to put himself over the US Constitution.
A final question: Shouldn’t Americans who care deeply about our Constitution and who understand that the continuation of our democracy isn’t chiseled in granite cast their votes with the events of Jan. 6 prominent in mind?
This column is not restricted by our paywall. If you think it could help other readers make sense of what is now being said about Jan. 6 and would like to email it to a friend or family member who isn’t a Globe subscriber as a civic conversation starter, please do. I’d be honored.
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Scot Lehigh is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at scot.lehigh@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeScotLehigh.