Wishing the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters - and their ringleaders - a miserable little Christmas

According to a wartime Christmas standard that has gained new resonance in the throes of the pandemic, we’ll all be together one day “if the fates allow.” But for some of our least deserving fellow Americans headed home for the holidays, it’s not fate making the allowance so much as an uncharacteristically forgiving federal judiciary.

Take Adam Johnson, a Florida man best known for stealing furniture from a California woman. Johnson pleaded guilty last month to federal charges of entering and remaining in a restricted building in a case that was not exactly a whodunit: He was famously photographed in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 with one hand waving at the camera and the other clutching a lectern from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Johnson could face imprisonment for participating in the worst breach of the Capitol since the War of 1812, but he won’t face anything so draconian as a yuletide away from his family. That’s because while he awaits sentencing, a judge allowed him to traverse the state to spend the holidays with relatives.

He isn’t the only American being shown such Christmas kindnesses by the government he tried to overthrow. Bloomberg News compiled an astounding list of accused Capitol rioters excused from bail restrictions for holiday travels within and among these tenuously United States — with the assent of judges and often without objection from prosecutors. The crimes alleged against this jolly crew include forcibly entering the Capitol, interfering with election certification and assaulting police officers.

At a time when officials in California and beyond are promising the strongest possible repercussions for robbing, say, a Nordstrom, it’s worth wondering whether we’re mustering an appropriate level of rage at those who ransacked our democracy. Countless people accused of offenses with no particular implication for our country’s continued existence are populating jails without the wherewithal to be released, let alone personally cart their stocking stuffers across America.

The fact that these merry carolers are out of jail in the first place is another sign of extraordinary leniency compared with those accused of more common crimes. By May, more than two-thirds of the overwhelmingly white people charged in the Jan. 6 attack had been released from custody, according to a Guardian analysis. That’s close to triple the typical release rate for disproportionately minority federal defendants.

Washington, D.C.,-based U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who authorized Johnson’s holiday travels, tellingly marveled at his feeble-mindedness, credulity and “clownish behavior.” Johnson’s behavior certainly wasn’t dignified, but “clownish” is a forgiving assessment of the charges against him and over 700 other rioters, more than 40 of whom are from California. This wasn’t a case of too many guys with floppy shoes and rainbow wigs piled into a Volkswagen. It was an armed insurrection.

Walton’s analysis and the broader unearned mercies being showered upon the rioters spring partly from the sense that they were a rabble of dimwitted yobs misled by demagogues from Donald Trump on down. The trouble is that many criminals are misled, but fewer are punished accordingly.

Moreover, retribution against the rioters is all we have as long as their ringleaders haven’t been held to account. That’s a travesty that could begin to be corrected by criminal referrals from the House’s Jan. 6 committee — and follow-up prosecutions by the Department of Justice.

Not quite a year after the riot, our fading outrage also speaks to a national character flaw that is particularly dangerous at this moment. It’s why the lyrics of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” a veritable dirge written during World War II, were soon prettied up at the insistence of performers such as Frank Sinatra — how “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” became “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” Even at our darkest hour and greatest peril, Americans yearn to avert our eyes from the muddle and gaze upon the stars.