Blame Shifting: "One tragic day."

Mike Pence said, "January 6 was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol." Sometimes bad stuff just happens. Not his fault.

Facebook banned Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection. Not their fault.

I write in praise of clear nouns and active verbs.

Mike Pence's speech at the Lincoln-Reagan Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire Republican Committee used a careful bit of indirection and avoidance that caught the eyes of commentators. There was no noun that created that "dark day" in his speech. There was no active verb. Dark days are weather events. They happen. There's nobody is at fault.

Pence followed that memorable phrase with an outright lie, saying, "thanks to the swift action of the Capitol police and federal law enforcement, violence was quelled, the Capitol was secured." It was not swift. It was delayed for hours, which was obvious at the time and a point that caused frantic calls to the White House by senior Republicans, on the record. Swift action was delayed by inaction or on instructions from the White House. Pence knows this. He was there.

There was a third bit of slight-of-hand imbedded in his short comments.  

"You know, President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office, and I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye-to-eye on that day."  

And then, his voice rising with anger and indignation, finally a villain he can name: 

“But I will always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years, and I will not allow Democrats or their allies in the media to use one tragic day to discredit the aspirations of millions of Americans.”

Pence is not charismatic in the way Trump is, but he is a skilled political practitioner, using the passive voice, a magician's indirection, and a shifting focus to change the narrative. Pence is blaming no one by name, he is isolating January 6 as an isolated event, and he positioned himself as a hero.

And that same day, we reconvened the Congress and did our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

In fact, January 6 was a culmination of a long process, begun before the election to cast doubt if Trump lost. On election day Trump declared early victory, and then articulated the process in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot. This effort is ongoing. The insurrection had an active agent, a noun that motivated an active verb: President Trump. Pence was no bystander. He was an enabler and validator.

Trump tried to overthrow an election. Pence normalized a president attempting to overthrow an election by smiling and supporting Trump while he did it. The authors of the Constitution assumed that the character and ambitions of people in positions like that of Mike Pence would stand in the way of tyrants; eventually they did, when Pence had no other plausible choice. Trump's demand of Pence was laughable in its absurdity, a claim that a Vice President could essentially chose the next president. 

Having validated Trump by his beaming silence throughout the lead-up to January 6, he established for history that a good partisan can accept anything so long as it is not absurd on its face. Pence set the new standard. You can overthrow an election so long as the legal basis for it can be stated with a straight face to the people who will carry it out. But even if the coup d' état fails, the victims of it don't blame you by name, and they praise you for everything except the incidents on the single day of the failed insurrection. Lesson: Next time, do your homework. Get the right partisans in the right places in the states, and have them claim fraud or confusion. Give a Vice President something to work with.

In the meantime, Pence is protecting himself. He has an alibi for January 6, so the unfortunate darkness came on that one day alone.

Facebook is taking the same approach--shifting blame. They announced they are extending for two years Trump's exile from Facebook that began immediately after the January 6 insurrection, saying,

Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols.

His actions; what happened on January 6 was on Trump, they said. This is convenient, but incomplete. Facebook enabled Trump right up through the day of the insurrection. Facebook is designed to amplify anger within groups of like-minded people. It is an echo chamber with feedback, and it led to the squeal everyone with a microphone and a speaker box has encountered and can anticipate. The insurrection itself was a bug in what is otherwise a Facebook feature. 

A significant number of people in America tell pollsters they expect a political storm to sweep away our leaders through violence. This need not "just happen" in a future dark day. Keeping our democracy requires plain talk. It can be done. It needs to be done within Trump's party. Comments from outside Trump's party are worse than worthless--they are understood as attacks on Republicans, not defense of democratic values. Liz Cheney showed that it can be done. Mike Pence did not.