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Repentant J6 Participant Hits Uncomfortably Close to Home [1]

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Date: 2022-07-13

Do you know a Stephen Ayres?

During today’s hearings of the J6 Committee, we heard even more shocking revelations about the conspiracy to subvert our democracy. At the end of each hearing, I’ve thought “I can’t believe how crazy this is...” only to find that the next hearing brings even more unfathomable things to light. Today was no exception. But this time I found the testimony of Stephen Ayres especially interesting.



I know nothing about this guy, and today is the first I’ve ever heard of him. But what made his testimony so compelling to me was that it felt like I do know him.



As he responded to questions, he offered a bit of information about himself. He’s a working class father and husband who puts his family first and takes pride in his country. He definitely made a poor choice when he decided to enter the capitol building with the rest of the mob. But he seemed to be speaking honestly and forthrightly. He seemed like the kind of person who, when he sees my 82 year-old father-in-law heading into the grocery store, would probably hold the door open for him. A decent average guy to whom in most situations we would likely give the benefit of the doubt.



He seems just like many people I know, some from within my own family. That concerns me, and I’ll tell you why.



I saw two differences between the conservatives that I know and Mr. Ayres:



First, none of the ones I know were sufficiently motivated to take the time and spend the resources to travel to Washington, D.C. to participate in the events there, while Mr. Ayres apparently was.



Second, Mr. Ayres says that he now understands that he was lied to and misled, and today no longer believes that the 2020 election was stolen, while many of the ones I know continue to believe those lies. (Comments by Mr. Ayres suggest that the sources of information he was consuming were likely similar to those preferred by those I know.)

For Mr. Ayres, it seems that it took some severe outcomes (being arrested, convicted, losing his job and his house) to awaken him to reality. Thankfully, none of that has happened to those that I know, but I’m not sure what it will take to wake them up.



They’ve always been conservative people. They and I would rarely agree on policy, whether it’s about taxes, business regulation, guns, immigration, etc. and that’s okay. The problem isn’t that we don’t agree with each other. The problem is that we aren’t participating in the same reality. Faced with clear and incontrovertible facts and evidence, they cannot seem to let go of the lies and come back to Earth.



There are millions who are like the pre-January 6 Mr. Ayres. Their electoral choices can have very real consequences for all of us if they prevail. Sure, they’ll vote, but they have little if any trust that any election in which their candidate loses could be legitimate. And if they don’t believe that elections are sufficient to achieve their preferred outcomes, it looks like they’re okay with “alternate” means (as are many of those they’ve elected to public office). That is frightening. Elections are our alternative to violent conflict, and in a functional democracy there must be opportunity for citizens to consider possible policies and to vote for those who they believe will advance those policies.



But there cannot be the “contest of ideas” that is democracy if only one side is relying on truth and facts. We cannot debate the best way to put out the fire when one side is talking about which hydrant is closest to the site or how many fire engines to deploy while the other side is questioning whether or not fire even really exists.



Today Stephen Ayres left me wondering — is there any way for those still in the cult of Trump to “break the fever” as he has done without having their lives ruined to the extent that his was? How can they be brought back into a common reality with the rest of us? If they cannot, how do we and they successfully and peacefully coexist?



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