Q Takes the Capitol, a New American Journal graphic by artist Walter Simon, depicts this golden calf of the Shaman of Qanon in his bison horn headdress, flying a flag with the slogan, “Quo unus nostrum it, eo universi imus.” The saying is inspired by the coming of age at sea saga “White Squall” using a lame slogan from the Albatross ship’s bell, “Where we go one, we go all.”

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

COULTERVILLE, Calif. – At least the sun is shining in the new year in the great state of California, even as dark clouds still block the sun on democracy in Washington, D.C. on this fifth infamous anniversary of Trump’s insurrection to overthrow the United States government on Jan. 6, 2021. He accomplished it anyway in November 2024, taking back the White House in January 2025, and now American democracy hangs by the thinest of threads.

The American people will have one last chance to take it back later this year in the mid-term elections, if they can muster the collective will to stand up to Trump and retake the House and Senate and impeach him again, this time convicting him and removing him from ever holding any office ever again.

Meanwhile we all watch in horror from afar as one democratic institution after another falls to the narcissistic whims of America’s first fascist dictator. Make no mistake about it. That’s what this is, people.

Congress is a shell of its former self. The Supreme Court has fallen as low as it has ever been, caving in to the fear and giving Trump most of the power he demands. Our military is no longer led by a Department of Defense, and now carries the name War Department, carrying out an illegal war in Venezuela and threatening a takeover of Cuba and Greenland.

CBS News, the once great broadcast news network of Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Bill Moyers, is long gone now, purchased by a right-wing corporation determined to turn it into another Fox News. Even National Public Radio (NPR) now spends most of its days kissing Trump’s ass. After Trump prompted Congress to end its federal funding, instead of standing up to him, it now sounds like just another small time commercial radio station full of corporate ads and correspondents afraid to risk getting kicked out of the White House and off Air Force One.

At least our great national newspaper of record, The New York Times, still stands, although even they sometimes soft-pedal some of Trump’s decisions and actions in the in-house editorial on this anniversary, still stopping short of calling him what he is.

“It was a day that should live in infamy,” they write. “Instead, it was the day President Trump’s second term began to take shape. Five years ago, on Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, hoping to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. After the sun set that day, Congress reconvened to certify Joe Biden’s victory. The rioters lost, and so did Mr. Trump, who had summoned them to Washington and urged them to march to the Capitol. The Trump era seemed to have ended in one of the most disgracefully anti-American acts in the nation’s history.”

But it was not to be.

“That day was indeed a turning point, but not the one it first seemed to be,” the Times writes. “It was a turning point toward a version of Mr. Trump who is even more lawless than the one who governed the country in his first term. It heralded a culture of political unaccountability, in which people who violently attacked Congress and beat police officers escaped without lasting consequence. The politicians and pundits who had egged on the attack with their lies escaped, as well. The aftermath of Jan. 6 made the Republican Party even more feckless, beholden to one man and willing to pervert reality to serve his interests. Once Mr. Trump won election again in 2024, despite his role in encouraging the riot and his many distortions about it, it emboldened him to govern in defiance of the Constitution, without regard for the truth and with malice toward those who stand up to his abuses.

“Tragically, America is still living in a political era that began on Jan. 6, 2021. Recognizing as much is necessary to bring this era to an end before it has many more anniversaries. All this would have been hard to conceive for many Americans five years ago. Disgust was bipartisan for a time because so many episodes of that day seemed unforgettable.”

NYTimes Editorial Board: Five Years After Jan. 6, Lawlessness Has Triumphed

We All Watched on TV

Those of us who still value the rule of law and were appalled at the scene unfolding on live television that January 6 will not soon forget the lawless melee inside the citadel of our democracy. Incited and egged on by Trump at the Ellipse and on Twitter, more than 2,000 insurrectionists, led by right-wing terrorist group leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, forced their way into the Capitol, some let in by corrupt Capital Police officers and Republican staffers. They overturning barricades and smashed windows, chanting “hang (Vice President) Mike Pence” and tried to find and kill Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The victims who suffered the worst violence were the police officers protecting the Capitol, mainly the D.C. Metro Police, yet many police officers and members of the military, and many who call themselves Christians, still support this fascist bastard.

“Fight like hell,” he told the mob. We must fight like hell to get our democracy back.

Who Do We Blame?

At first Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Twitter banned Trump from their platforms in the wake of the violence, then gave in and let him back on after Elon Musk bought Twitter, took it private and changed the name to X. There is no doubt that social media shares the blame for helping him to get elected the first time, and then allowing his comeback.

At first Senator Mitch McConnell concluded that President Trump committed impeachable offenses and believed that Democrats’ move to impeach him would make it easier to purge Trump from the party. But within days, under threat of violence from Trump’s most ardent and violent supporters, he surrendered his influence and his principles, and history will judge him harshly forever.

At first the Justice Department went after the insurrectionists. But President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland was too afraid of the political fallout to bring Trump to justice in a speedy trial, even as he was urged to do so by the House Select Committee charged with investigating Trump. Garland dragged his feet, waiting until the 2024 election was upon us to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Trump, and by then it was too late. He too will be judged harshly by history.

On the first day of his second term, Trump granted clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged or convicted in connection with Jan. 6. The group included hundreds of defendants found to have assaulted law enforcement officers, including Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio, who helped organize the attack. The president has also pardoned supporters, like Rudi Giuliani, who tried to overturn the 2020 election results with fraudulent electors.

The message of the pardons was clear. If you break the law to protect Trump, you will be supported. If you uphold the law to restrain Trump, you will be persecuted.

“Again and again, Mr. Trump dares the system to stop him,” the Times writes. “He does so knowing that the same system that failed to hold him to account for Jan. 6 is unlikely to do so now.” In Trump’s second term, “he has governed as if Jan. 6 never ended. The damage to the nation is severe.”

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Originally written as a syndicated column for The Progressive Populist newspaper.

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