This hath all the distinctions of a house divided against itself—Thomas Paine
Imagine if Al-Qa’ida, rather than hijacking four commercial airliners and crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, was able to create a highly contagious, hallucinogenic virus that caused Americans to lose their ability to distinguish fact from fiction. A virus that caused a growing segment of our elected officials and media to sow disinformation and wild conspiracy theories in an attempt to undermine the Republic, one of which being that America’s system of electoral democracy, the very bedrock of our nation’s political culture and stability, was mysteriously and inexplicably “rigged” and a “sham”. What if these officials and their supporters went even further and actively conspired to tear down our democratic system in order to keep themselves in power? What if the virus induced a fever of fear, recrimination and hysteria, causing Americans to become more divided than they’ve been since the Civil War, driving a vicious cycle of polarization and radicalization and creating one of the gravest existential crises since the country’s founding?
A Netflix movie? I wish, though I can’t imagine having the stomach to watch it. In this case the truth is stranger and more frightening than fiction because there is no virus other than disinformation, made more virulent by the internet, unscrupulous politicians, media outlets and an apathetic American populace. And, most alarmingly, the main perpetrators of the crime conspired at the highest levels of the US Government, the very definition of an insider threat. Arguably, in the twenty years since 9/11, America’s societal divisions and political polarization have become at least as concerning for the security of our country than any danger posed by our foreign enemies. This polarization has let loose a monstrous genie of political extremism, violence, lawlessness, corruption and growing authoritarianism. In all of this, the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 stands out as the seminal event. The attack was the culmination of years of false verbal attacks made by Donald Trump against the integrity of our free and fair democratic electoral system, weeks of plotting by Trump and an inner circle of co-conspirators to overturn the November 2020 election, and, finally, the instigated violent attack on the Capitol in a last ditch effort to disrupt the certification of the election. Yet, in comparison to 9/11, which saw an outpouring of national grief, patriotism, and a yearslong national effort to protect the nation against another mass casualty terrorist attack, 1/6 garners little attention today. In fact, to listen to the Republican establishment, once a hawkish defender of our nation’s security, 1/6 wasn’t really such a big deal.
In the long-term view of democracy’s survivability in America, 1/6 was a big deal. In fact, because of the era of political uncertainty that it unleashed, historians will likely view it as a far more consequential event than that of 9/11. In making this argument I do not intend to trivialize or cause pain to anyone who lost a loved one on 9/11 or the wars that followed. As one who served in Iraq, I can attest to how much my life, and the nation’s changed after that day. In analyzing historical events, however, it is necessary to divorce personal connections and the emotions that come with them and look clear-eyed at the facts.
Close to 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, a number that would undoubtedly be larger if you factored in the first responders who later perished from exposure to the toxic environment at Ground Zero. In the War on Terror, or ‘forever wars’ that played out over the 20 years that followed 9/11 a little over 7,000 Americans died. For the sake of comparison, that’s roughly equivalent to the number of Americans killed during the three day Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War, or well less than half of the number of Americans killed during the five week Battle of the Bulge during World War Two, where approximately 19,000 Americans lost their lives. Estimates for the economic cost of the attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are in the trillons of dollars.
By contrast 1/6 resulted in six deaths and, according to the Government Accountability Office, cost the taxpayers $2.7 billion dollars, which paid for damage to property, Capitol police and other federal agency expenses and the cost of improved security. (This figure was likely calculated before the Trump administration agreed to pay $5 million in legal compensation to the family of QAnon supporter Ashli Babbit, who was shot and killed by United States Capitol Police while she attempted to storm the Speaker’s Lobby as law enforcement was evacuating members of Congress from the building. Trump has raised the idea of providing compensation for additional participants in the attack, who he has called “patriots”.)
9/11 was planned by a group of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the motive was retribution for perceived American attacks against Muslims worldwide; in the broadest sense the root cause was religious extremism. 1/6 was hatched by American President Donald Trump from within the White House, the motive was to upend a free and fair election in order to retain another four year presidential-term. Arguably the root cause here was political extremism since MAGA has long sought to justify its rule in Manichaean terms, i.e., a fight to ‘save America’ from destruction in which the ends justify the means. 9/11 was a surprise attack, only later did Bin Laden issue statements in an attempt to justify the act. Trump, by contrast, openly laid the ground-work for 1/6 with a constant barrage of false accusations that the American electoral system was “rigged”, signaling very clearly early on that he would only adhere to our democratic process when it was politically advantageous for him to do so. His numerous false statements on this front are well documented: even before the 2020 election, Trump had an established record of denying the legitimacy of elections that Democrats had won, (such as President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection: “a total sham”) or that he had underperformed in (his loss of the popular vote during the 2016 presidential race against Clinton: “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”) He intimated many times in the run-up to the 2020 election that he would likely claim fraud if defeated at the ballot box, most famously in a July 2020 interview with Chris Wallace, where Trump repeated his frequent, false accusation that mail-in ballots were “rigged”, said that he was “not a good loser” and refused to commit to accepting the results of the election regardless of who won.
The immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks saw an enormous burst of patriotism, national unity and political consensus that a strong response was necessary to dismantle al-Qa’ida’s global networks and seek justice. In a presidential act of leadership hard to imagine today, just six days after the attack President George W. Bush, speaking at the Islamic Center in Washington D.C., attempted to bring the entire country together by condemning violence and Islamophobia against Muslim Americans and appealing to universal human values, saying that “Islam is peace” and that America was “a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth.” Congress acted in a bipartisan manner to establish the independent 9/11 Commission to investigate, inform the public and implement lessons learned. As a result, the federal bureaucracy was restructured, to include the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, among other reforms. Of course, this moment was not without controversy and ambiguities which grew as the War on Terror ground on. Some argued that the Patriot Act, which expanded surveillance activities against terrorism, violated citizens’ right to privacy. Conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks swirled on the internet, but, by and large, most politicians, with the exception of Donald Trump and a few equivocating others, stuck sanely to the facts. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ground on and the problems mounted–growing insurgencies, corruption, headline grabbing atrocities and human rights abuses–the media, public and Washington grew more weary and critical of the wars. Though the wars remain controversial to this day, it is fair to say that, post-9/11, the government as a whole came together, investigated the causes of the attack and took concrete measures that reduced the odds of a similar tragedy in the future.
To compare these events with that of 1/6 is a stark study in contrasts, especially when one considers that the comparison is between a foreign-plotted terrorist attack and a domestic one against what should have been a routine presidential election. The events surrounding 1/6 were hyper-partisan and divisive from the very beginning since they sprang from our rapidly radicalizing, bi-polar political climate. Even before the attack on the Capitol, at least 11 Republican senators and senators-elect stated that they would object to the certification of the election unless an emergency audit was conducted to account for “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud.” On election night, having been advised by his Campaign Senior Advisor, Jason Miller, to message that “votes were still being counted. It’s too early to say one way [or] the other” who had won, Trump did the opposite, stating publicly “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election…We want all voting to stop.” The next morning, 5 November, he tweeted “STOP THE COUNT”, seemingly oblivious that such an action would have constituted a violation of State and Federal laws. Trump’s campaign managers and inner-circle advisors, including former Attorney General Robert Barr and Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly advised him that he had lost the election and that there was no evidence of fraud that would have affected the outcome, according to the final report of the House of Representatives Select Committee. Here it is worth quoting at length from Special Council Jack Smith’s report to reiterate the facts about Trump’s central role in the conspiracy and the crimes that were committed in the run up to and events of 1/6:
…substantial evidence demonstrates that Mr. Trump…engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power. Although he did so primarily in his private capacity as a candidate, and with the assistance of multiple private co-conspiritors, Mr. Trump also attempted to use the power and authority of the United States Government in furtherance of his scheme.
…when it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power. This included attempts to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force Justice Department officials and his own Vice President…to act in contravention to their oaths and to instead advance Mr. Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters’ violence to further delay it.
Though a few Republican leaders initially condemned the attack, by and large the Republican establishment–failing to clearly take a stand and censure Trump–paved the way for his political comeback. Having been impeached in the House for incitement of insurrection, Senate Republicans did not vote to convict Trump or bar him from running again. Even as the dust was still settling around the Capitol many Republicans were voicing patently-false and absurd counter-narratives which Trump would echo: the rioters were unarmed and peaceful, the Capitol police invited them into the building, the FBI, ANTIFA, and or the Black Lives Matter movement (take your pick) mounted a false flag attack, incarcerated rioters were “political prisoners”. In February 2022 the GOP officially declared the attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse”. No longer president, Trump repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was rigged, opined that members of the 6 January Committee should be jailed and obliquely hinted at possible political violence should he lose the 2024 election. By March 2024 the RNC was asking job applicants whether they thought the 2020 election was stolen; having won the 2024 election election denialism was a prerequisite for employment in the incoming Trump administration.
Despite his coup attempt and legal troubles Trump won the 2024 elections with nearly 50 percent of the popular vote, an astounding number when one considers that it can only be made up of two types of voters: those who sincerely believe the outlandish lie that the 2020 elections were stolen, thus justifying the violence of 1/6, or those who are too uninformed, apathetic or partisan to care. The final guard-rail broken, Trump, effectively above the law, set his sights on our system of checks and balances and rule of law as he moved swiftly to exact vengeance on his political enemies. Ironically, in the context of terrorism, Trump’s lobotomization of the FBI and attempt to do the same with the rest of the intelligence community, agencies that were the first line of defense in the fight against terrorism since 9/11, make Americans less safe today.
With Trump back in power Republicans set their sights on revising the history of 1/6. In January 2025 House Republicans announced plans to launch a subcommittee to reinvestigate the attack, this time with a focus on security and intelligence failures rather than who was ultimately responsible. This came within a week of President Trump’s announcement of clemency for nearly 1600 individuals that took part in 1/6. As of March 2024, the Republican effort to reinvestigate was at a standstill, reportedly because of a split between those who wanted to investigate the original January 6 committee itself and Speaker Mike Johnson, who advocated a narrower scope, probably to prevent the committee from borrowing too deep into conspiratorial rabbit holes. Having gone down the road of denialism in an attempt to cover up the crime, like the habitual liar that must concoct new lies to cover the old, the Republican establishment must now double-down on its lies and attempt to re-write the history of 1/6 to wash away its complicity in the event. How far they go remains to be seen. But their goal is clear: they now seek to make the entire nation complicit in this whitewashing of history by downplaying its significance, propagandizing that it is not worth remembering and intimidating those who originally investigated and sought justice for the crime.
Al-Qa’ida targeted the World Trade Center because it symbolized American economic power and global influence. Trump and his co-conspirators targeted our democratic process in its temple because it stood in the way of Trump’s petty ambition for power. While the 9/11 attacks cost more in blood and treasure, a little over 13 years after the attack, One World Trade center was open for business where the Twin Towers once stood. More than four years after 1/6 Americans can’t even agree on the basic facts surrounding the event. Until we achieve some kind of consensus and reconciliation as a nation about what actually happened on 1/6 the state of American democracy will remain uncertain. Sadly the MAGAfied Republican Party of today does not seem to have an interest in truth or reconciliation, since they are benefiting politically from the opposite. Does 1/6 constitute an anomaly in our history or a frightening new normal? Time will tell, but the Republican attempt to downplay the event while at the same time adopting Trump’s trademark election denialism seems to almost virtually assure that similar events or worse will occur in the future.
And this is the ultimate legacy of 1/6: it marks the moment America fell from a stable to a fragile democracy. The whole world is watching and understands this, probably better than many Americans. How does one measure the damage of such a techtonic shift? The task is nearly impossible since to perform it one would have to measure the value of liberty in America–truly a priceless commodity if there ever was one. It is a commodity that has been passed down and defended for generations, even well before our own Founding Fathers took up the torch, (I’m thinking of our debt to the early modern European Enlightenment here, something the Euro-bashing MAGA isolationists would benefit from reading-up on). Historically, America’s stewardship of the torch of democracy and the freedoms which spring from it–flawed as we all know our history is–was its greatest achievement. And this is why the legacy of 1/6 is so pernicious: Those at the highest level of the United States government charged with defending our democracy chose to kneecap it instead, trading away several centuries worth of political stability for chaos, all for one tawdry demagogue could not bring himself to concede that he had lost an election.
Overwrought? Perhaps, but take stock in how far we’ve fallen in the ten years since Donald Trump entered into our national politics. Public confidence in our election process has plummeted. Not so long ago, in post-Jim Crow and Civil Rights Movement America, election day used to be tinged with patriotism and civic pride. Third world countries might have to worry about disinformation, ballot stuffing, threats against election officials or a strongman nullifying an election, but these types of things didn’t happen in America. Our democratic system was too entrenched, politicians respected its normative boundaries, the media didn’t stray too far away from verifiable facts and the citizenry was engaged and informed enough to keep the worst of scoundrels out of office. Back then an election was just an election not a looming apocalypse. (Remember, Trump promised World War III if we didn’t vote for him.) Americans voted, watched the returns into the night, returned to school and work the day after, chatted a bit about the results, and then, miraculously, put it all aside to settle back into the routines of daily life. No longer. Will Republicans once again claim widespread voter fraud when they lose the next election? What about an extremely close election, such as that which occurred in 2020? Will candidates react with the necessary patience and forbearance in the heat of the moment or will they again resort to the scorched earth tactics? In such a scenario can the voters rely on Congress to certify the election results? All legitimate questions and all unanswerable in the current climate.
1/6 was merely the culmination of Trump’s corrupt and illiberal leadership. He and his accomplices have divided America beyond recognition and are attempting to replace our pluralistic, liberal political system with an alternate universe based on lies, cult of personality and the rest of the tools from the strongman’s toolkit. In doing so he has succeeded in persuading a sizable number of Americans to lose faith in democracy itself. Barring a dramatic turnaround, historians will likely view 1/6 as the watershed moment where America ceased to lead the democratic free world and slipped into the stasis of incessant factional strife, political instability or worse. I wish I could blame a complex foreign terrorist plot for all this, it would be comforting to know that a shadowy conspiracy was to blame rather than our own stupidity. But when it comes to the assault on democracy in America the truth is about as banal as a Trump rally. Trump’s confederacy of dunces–the Republican Party, MAGA fanatics, propaganda spewing right-wing media outlets such as Fox News, legions of zombie internet trolls and an ill-informed citizenry have brought us to this point. In doing so they have succeeded far beyond the wildest dreams of America’s most determined and dangerous enemies abroad.
Shawn Howard is a Marine Corps Veteran who worked as a CIA Analyst for over twenty years. He is the founder and President of American Veterans in Defense of Democracy (AVDD). All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author's views.