An Exceptional Situation: January 6 and the New State of Suspension

Justin E. H. Smith in his Substack Newsletter:

Often it seems a shame that those in opposing camps do not take time to stop and appreciate what they have in common: their certainty.

This shame has been particularly evident since January 6, in the work of all the hermeneuticists newly dedicated to interpreting that day’s events and what they portend for our republic. Was it a gruesome death-throe of Trumpism, or was it just the beginning of our own anni di piombo? Was it a proper fascist insurgency, or mostly just larping? Now that it has happened —whatever it was— should Trump be impeached for a second time, and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley punished and ostracized, or should the Democrats focus, as Biden seems to want to do, on other pressing matters and let bygones be bygones for the sake of national unity? Are Trump’s suspension from social media and Parler’s disappearance from big-tech platforms justified, or is it an unacceptable state of affairs in which private media companies make largely arbitrary and inconsistent decisions as to who can be heard, rendering themselves in effect more powerful than democratically chosen leaders?

More here.