Facts Are Stubborn Things: Reflections on the Anniversary of 1/6/21
Today at morning meeting, Stone Humanities Instructor Horst Rosenberg shared with our community his reflections on the first anniversary of the Capitol insurrection.
Back during the autumn, we got to hear Mr. H share some important words about stories.
Just the same way that your math teachers will tell you that the universe is made of a series of mathematical relationships or your art teachers explain beautifully how capturing our perception of lightwaves enriches our experience as human beings, historians tell you that stories are the basic building blocks of our individual consciousness and our society.
I’ve been thinking a lot about stories this past week. Last week, the first anniversary of the insurrection, gave me some time to reflect on what kind of stories Americans tell about themselves now. Last January 6th was among the saddest days of my life. It pains me so much that you all, who are not old enough to have voted in a presidential election, who have few memories beyond the past one or two presidents, had to have events like these form an early example of what American governance looks like.
What happened on January 6th happened because of stories. It happened because a large portion of our neighbors, our families, our friends, decided that a story that made them feel good was more important than a story that was true. In a time of immense societal fragmentation, when we can all shape our realities by consuming only those ideas which comfort us, it is more important than ever to state that facts are stubborn things.
Let us acknowledge what is true: Donald Trump lost an election which was more fair and more free than any in American history. The security of the election was beyond reproach. Voting by mail is a historically secure and fair way of expanding the franchise to all who wish to vote. More Americans in terms of absolute numbers participated in this election than in any in our history. In spite of the incontrovertible evidence otherwise, a growing community of toxic skepticism, based not in a healthy search for truth but in the cynical promotion of oppression and fear, banded together. They formed a mob which breached the US Capitol and caused the deaths of nine people.
It would be far more simple to say that this is because of President Trump. Or because of the internet, or social media, or the stress of the pandemic. Any of those stories would provide an easy target of blame and a neat explanation of how, for the first time, Confederate battle flags flew under the Rotunda which was built in the term of Abraham Lincoln. The problem I have with that is that facts are stubborn things. As sad as I was last January and still am today, as much anger as I am not yet done processing, I can’t say, as a historian, that any one of those factors was really the reason behind this mob violence. I can’t say it because this mob which erected a gallows and bayed for the blood of the Vice President it had voted for, has always existed. Between the American people — all of the American people — and the ballot box there has always stood a group ready to do violence rather than accept an election in which every voice is heard. From the first quill stroke of our Constitution which said “We the People” but left out the words “white” and “male”, to the men holding the hoses and unleashing the dogs on the Edmund Pettus Bridge; from Confederate President Jefferson Davis (whose statue still stands in the Capitol building) to the concerted efforts happening right now in state legislatures around the country to make voting harder for people of color and the economically disadvantaged, we have always, always, had a January 6 mob among us.
That story must be the one we tell; that story that makes my insides squirm; that story I can’t tell without crying. Because while false stories can cause immediate outcomes, true stories can effect bedrock change.
Your generation, a rising generation, is soft. You are more in touch with your emotions, more in tune with the vocabulary of your identity, and more easily provoked into outrage than any generation I’ve ever encountered. That softness is your strength. Your emotional intelligence gives you radical empathy. Your commitment to expressing every facet of your own identity is the syntax of speaking Truth no matter what the audience. Your ability to ignite your indignation for the sake of what is right is one of the highest forms of love.
The January 6th insurrection lost in the short term. The Confederacy lost in the short term. The enemies of school integration lost in the short term. Every one of these hydra-headed monsters comes back though; in ways so subtle, so ingenious, so seemingly patriotic that they may look impossible to fight. Yet fight them you must, for all our sakes. Your constant vigilance and your unique gifts can ensure a future not just for this country but for the very idea of freedom. In the middle of the Civil War, 60 miles west of here, Abraham Lincoln reminded our country that national tragedies are times to “take increased devotion” to the work of repair, the work of justice, and the work of Truth. Yours is a generation of Truth. If you speak it, if you listen to it, if you never, never look away from it, we have hope. That hope lives or dies with your willingness to tell the truth about the things you’ve experienced. Every week or so someone asks me how it feels to work with Gen Z. Every time I tell them, the kids are great, we are safe in their hands.
That story is true for me. Thank you for making it true.
-Horst Rosenberg, Stone Humanities
See Also: The Stories We Choose To Tell;