“What hath God wrought!”

About the potential of January 6 pardons, as well as a few reflections regarding my NPR feature

Did you know that on January 6, 1838, Samuel Morse presented the telegraph to the public for the first time ever?

It was in Morristown, New Jersey, the birthplace of Fran Lebowitz and Gremlins director Joe Dante, where good old Sam decided to showcase his passion project that harnessed the power of electricity to send messages over a wire. The messages needed to be simple, so he and a few partners developed a communication style consisting of dots and dashes that represent letters and numbers. Morse code, they called it. Kinda like if you see a video of somebody posting under a desk now, we all collectively call those V-Toks, right?

….RIGHT?

this is a V-Tok gosh dangit

A few years later, in May of 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first official telegram over the line, with the absolute craziest possible message imaginable:

“What hath God wrought!”

What hath God wrought, indeed. The telegram was, of course, the precursor to long distance phone calls, emails, text messages, YouTube, TikTok, Vine, Zoom, you get it. A case can certainly be made for it being one of the absolute most important inventions ever made, especially if you value a fair and free press. The faster information can travel, the more accessible it becomes.

Therefore, it stands to reason that January 6 should be remembered as one of the most significant days in American history - a monument to THE precursor to what you’re reading now, or what you watch on my TikTok.

would you subscribe to this man’s YouTube channel? (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)

Yet much like what happens when you actually research Samuel Morse (and his pesky little obsession with being unapologetically pro-slavery), the words “January 6” tend to bring a bit of the old stomach bile up my throat - and it’s likely they do for yours as well, since January 6 isn’t a day that represents freedom of information. It’s a day that represents a complete erosion and erasure of what it means to actually be an American.

It’s been four years since the January 6 insurrection - the worst possible ending to the worst possible presidency, and an event that some seem to forget happened while the votes for the 2020 election were being certified. As a result of the complete clusterfuck that was essentially the entire MAGA movement storming the Capitol, over 1,500 people were charged with crimes relating to the full fledged riot. Justice served, right?

We know the answer to this.