Misinformation Twists the Tapestry of History

Have We Lost Our Compass Since January 6, 2021?

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 57 seconds

The certification of the January 6 election has finally occurred, and surprisingly, there were no objections this time. It’s difficult to forget the memories of that fateful day in 2021. I can still picture it vividly—Jan was busy working on the second floor of our home when her phone rang. “Turn on the TV,” urged the voice on the other end.

“What is that? Is that a gallows?” she asked, her voice trembling in disbelief. I barely had time to process her words before the screen was filled with chaotic scenes: people scaling the walls, breaking through the barriers of democracy.

We both sat there, frozen in shock, the unanswerable question of “why” suffocating the air around us like smoke from a smoldering campfire. It was a day that marked a profound shift, leaving us grappling with the weight of it all.

But four years later, the events of that day are being erased despite being permanently embedded in my mind’s eye.

Amber Phillips, the editor of the Washington Post’s 5-Minute Fix, recently discussed January 6’s lasting impact with Jill Lepore, a historian at Harvard University.

Once January 6 happened, we stepped outside the larger sweep of American history,” Jill Lepore, a historian at Harvard University, told me this summer. There has usually been a kind of trawling around along the coastline of the past. We’re out to sea now.

On Monday, she expressed relief there was a peaceful transfer of power in America but deep concern that the attack happened at all.

“I still think the ship has lost its keel,” she said. “A ship without a keel isn’t sinking. It’s just likely to drift and prone to tip over.

Charlie Warzel and Mike Caulfield wrote an article in The Atlantic titled “The Internet Is Worse Than a Brainwashing Machine,” explaining how “a rationale is always just a scroll or a click away.”

They write,

Misinformation is powerful, not because it changes minds, but because it allows people to maintain their beliefs in light of growing evidence to the contrary. The internet may function not so much as a brainwashing engine but as a justification machine.”

The live video from that day captured something profound and will forever be etched in my memory. Let the truth stand resilient, reminding us that facts are essential and we must not be a ship without a keel!