Right side of history is in play

You might hear the phrase “wrong side of history” tossed about a lot as we observe the fourth anniversary — and first for certifying another presidential election — since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that grew out of a Donald Trump D.C. pep rally. The one in which the next president of the United States urged his followers to go to the U.S. Capitol because “you don't concede when there's theft involved.”

Wrong side of history for apologists of thugs who busted into the Capitol and tried to keep Congress from certifying Electoral College votes that gave Joe Biden the win. Wrong side of history for Republicans who voted against impeaching Trump a month later for inciting the crowd. Wrong side of history for supporting Trump altogether, regardless of when.

“Senators, we are in a dialogue with history, a conversation with our past, with the hope for our future,” U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., told the U.S. Senate at Trump’s February 2021 impeachment trial for his role in the Capitol attack.

A lot of us can find comfort in knowing we are on the right side of history if we think the concept of wrong is defined by a mob rush that results in Capitol police dying, the Confederate flag paraded through the halls of Congress, threats on the lives of congressional leaders and the U.S. vice president, excrement smeared on walls, invasions of congressional offices and other general violence that interrupted a constitutionally mandated transition of power.

It is why Liz Cheney, the conservative firebrand drummed out of her Republican Party and threatened with prosecution for the crime of telling the truth about Donald Trump, said in June 2022 as the House Select Jan. 6 Committee met: “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Thus, a U.S. president would be on the wrong side of history when, before the mob he riled up went on its attack, he gave them a free pass by saying, “we don't have a free and fair press. Our media is not free, it's not fair. It suppresses thought, it suppresses speech and it's become the enemy of the people. It's become the enemy of the people. It's the biggest problem we have in this country.”

In other words, the news media will lie about what happens anyway, so do what you will. Don’t believe it? See how people describe in 2024 what they saw on live television in 2021, what became for apologists a First Amendment-protected activity that turned rioters into political prisoners held hostage.

To be fair, Donald Trump said on Jan. 6, 2021, that he would join the crowd in a peaceful and patriotic march to the Capitol to make their voices heard. But, right before that, he said, “you have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”

He added, “we will never give up, we will never concede.”

All of that history. Here is some perspective about the right side of history. Before Iowa became a state, it was inhabited by the Arikara, Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Iowa, Kickapoo, Mascouten, Missouri, Omaha, Osage, Otoe, Potawatomi, Sauk, Sioux, and eventually the Meskwaki people.

When white settlers took over, the U.S. government forced remaining native people to relocation camps at Fort Des Moines in 1843. A Johnson County, Iowa, history published in the 1880s tells of white settlers going to the Iowa City railway station to say goodbye to their departing friends, as if the natives were heading home after some happy visit.

We know it was a happy event because the winners wrote the history. A visit to the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama and Toledo might yield a different spin.

This illustrates a hard fact for those feeling confident about how shocked future generations will be about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the decision to acquit Trump in a second impeachment trial and his once unthinkable return to the White House: You lost.

We are not talking, here, about the 2024 election. We are talking about the battle for what seems to be known as normal, moral behavior. We are talking about the opportunity to write the right side of history.

Signs were out there that this was coming. As early as one year after the attack the Wall Street Journal ran a piece called “Stop Calling Jan. 6 an ‘Insurrection,’” arguing that violence was committed that day but that it did not meet the legal definition of insurrection. Republicans want the FBI to investigate Cheney. Corporate bigwigs who abandoned Trump after Jan. 6, 2021, are back with hats in hand, wads of cash, and begging to return to the room where it happens.

In Iowa, Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst distances herself from calling Jan. 6, 2021, an insurrection. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wants to know if undercover U.S. Department of Justice operatives were at the Jan. 6 events. Suggest, deflect.

In early 2019, Jacob Levy, professor of political theory at McGill University in Canada, wrote for Vox.com that predicting the right side of history was a senseless quest. “The problem isn’t the belief in moral right and wrong but the belief that history manifests and reveals them in some natural way.”

We may be hanging on to a fleeting hope if we think history automatically will condemn Donald Trump; Jan. 6, 2021, and support our notions of right and wrong. People we presume to be condemned by history get to write it now and they, for certain, will make sure those opposing them are the ones who are on the wrong side.

Lyle Muller is a longtime, retired Iowa journalist, former editor of The Gazette and a recipient of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Distinguished Service Award. In retirement, he is the professional adviser for Grinnell College’s Scarlet & Black newspaper.