Insurrect? Correct!

Be there, will be wild!

Dear J6ers,

Happy 5th Day of Love! And congratulations on the pardons!. What a relief that must be, finally being absolved for something you maintain never happened, or happened but was noble, or happened but was actually Antifa, or happened and was beautiful and should honestly be commemorated with a federal holiday and maybe a coin.

Every August 5th, Sweet T. and I make a pilgrimage to Asbury Park and Bradley Beach to revisit the places where we met and got married. We walk the boardwalk, stand where we once stood, and marvel that younger, stupider versions of ourselves made decisions that didn’t completely immolate our future. Anniversaries thrive on ritual. They like landmarks. They want proof that something mattered and didn’t immediately collapse under the weight of its own bad ideas.

Which made me wonder how you mark January 6th.

Do you retrace your steps from the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse to the Capitol, following the sacred path of grievance, entitlement, and cardio you hadn’t planned on doing that day? Do you pause reverently at the barricades that briefly considered their role before opting out, or at a particular window that offered just enough resistance to feel symbolic? Can you see the blood-stained faces of the police officers you hugged and kissed that day? Do you recall the just-met friends who helped you build that makeshift gallows to hang Mike Pence? Can you picture the spot where you wiped your feces on the walls in the halls of Congress? Is there a favorite stairwell where you like to stop and think, This is where history misunderstood me!?

Or is it a quieter observance now?

Do you open the closet and take down the red MAGA cap — the one probably made in China, the one that smelled faintly of factory dye and moral certainty when it was new – and dust it off, smooth the brim, notice the sweat stain that aged better than the ideology attached to it? Does it come out once a year, like Christmas decorations or an old bowling trophy, before being rehung carefully next to coats you don’t really wear anymore but can’t quite part with?

If traveling to DC is inconvenient—gas prices, ankle monitors, life—do you make do with photos and video? The Congressional hearings, that episode of Frontline, grainy body-cam footage you insist was edited by people who hate America and possibly joy itself? Do you point at the screen the way other people point at wedding videos and say, “That’s me!” except with more shouting and fewer bridesmaids?

Is there cake? There should be cake. Sheet cake feels right. From Costco, ideally, with “HAPPY J6 DAY!” piped on slightly crooked in red, white, and blue frosting. Do you light candles? Do you sing The Star-Bangled Banner or God Bless America, like at the end of The Deer Hunter?

Sorry I haven’t written sooner (or ever), but I spent over a dozen years talking to truck drivers three hours a day, five days a week on satellite radio, so statistically speaking I almost certainly met a few of you. We joked, argued, whistled past the graveyard together. Back then, conspiracy theories were a hobby, not a lifestyle brand. Patriotism didn’t require a uniform. Anger was seasoning, not the whole meal. Then something curdled. Patriotism got stripped down and sold back as grievance. Flags became costumes. Rage became identity. January 6th became your anniversary — the day fury finally got dressed up, put on its good shoes, and went downtown to destroy democracy.

Anniversaries usually come with something to show for them, though, and five years on it seems fair to ask what exactly you received in return. You were promised restoration, respect, a country handed back to you cleaner, simpler, greater. Instead you got indictments, footage that will never stop circulating, friendships that quietly expired, family members who shun you, marriages that went bust and now — thanks to a generous act of political mercy — pardons that ask everyone to move along without ever explaining what the hell it was all for. And when is the president going to reveal all that evidence that you were right all along?!

And now here we are, in the present, enjoying the long tail of it all. Health care costs tripling. Energy bills doubling. Grocery prices soaring in a way that makes eggs feel aspirational. Jobs harder to find, easier to lose, and increasingly replaced by software that doesn’t need lunch breaks, health insurance, or a sense of purpose. AI humming along cheerfully while entire professions evaporate, as if they were always just a suggestion. No safety net, because government was the enemy. No collective relief, because someone, somewhere, might get something they didn’t “earn.” Just everyone standing alone, staring at bills, refreshing job boards, and wondering why the promised golden age feels suspiciously like a subscription service that keeps raising the price while removing features.

I won’t pretend there isn’t a soupçon of schadenfreude in all this. But it’s tempered by another German word – weltschmertz: that world-weary sadness that comes from realizing how thoroughly a lie can loot the people who believed in it most.

So happy anniversary. Take the hat down. Put it on. Take a picture next to the cake after you blow out the candles.

And tell me: did you get all you wished for?

Warmest regards,

Chris T.

Libtard from the Northeast