What the hell just happened?
Did an angry, screaming mob really take over the U.S. Capitol building, at the very moment Congress was in the act of officially recognizing the recent election of a new president?
And did that mob move on the Capitol immediately following incendiary speeches from the current president, who told them at a nearby rally, that “we’re not going to take it anymore!” and, “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore?” And did that president’s personal lawyer really tell that same crowd to engage in “trial by combat?”
And did the president happily watch the carnage unfold as it streamed live on his television, while his lawyer attempted to phone one of those legislators now hiding in fear for his life, to ask him to delay the certification of the election?
And did members of that mob, which included an Olympic gold medal athlete, a retired U.S.A.F. lieutenant colonel, and a West Virginia state legislator, actually try to hunt down specific members of Congress, as well as the president’s loyal vice president?
Did members of that mob parade down the halls of the capitol building proudly waving the Confederate flag, the battle flag of the enemy in this nation’s bloodiest war, an enemy enlisted in the cause of slavery?
And did a policeman defending the capitol die after having his skull bashed in by a protester swinging a fire extinguisher?
And was a young woman (another Air Force veteran) shot and killed trying to lead a howling gang through a locked door into the deepest recesses of the capitol, behind the chamber of the House of Representatives?
And did all this happen in the middle of the plague year?
Yes, all of this happened…and more. Human waste was deliberately smeared along the hallways of the Capitol. In case we didn’t know whose side the “demonstrators” were on, one of them waved an enormous flag that stated simply, “Fuck Joe Biden.” Vandals posted gleeful selfies of themselves with their combat boots on legislators’ desks, or walking out with stolen souvenirs.
What are we to think of it? How are we to feel about it? What should we do about it? Was this, like the Whiskey Rebellion, just a pothole, however deep and jarring, on the long and still unbroken path of democracy—or is this the start of a long and painful Time of Troubles, or worse, like the burning of the Reichstag was in the Weimar republic? The answer, of course, is up to us.
I believe that day, January 6th, 2021, will endure in history books and in our collective memory as a watershed moment, more disturbing even than 9/11. The Al Qaeda attackers were never going to bring down our government—not directly, though they did their part in giving rise to the xenophobic component of our current rightwing paranoia. But what foreign terrorists could not accomplish, domestic ones can. One doesn’t need to look too far abroad or into the past to see functioning democracies destroyed from within. And on 1/6/21 we got a glimpse of what that would look like, here.
And yet life (and death) goes on. Restaurants are (half) open, streets are full of traffic, Netflix is streaming, people are still catching COVID and dying from it, and in record numbers. Walking around the streets of my town (Austin), you wouldn’t know that this country just dodged an existential threat to its existence.
And even in Washington, our elected representatives are apparently divided between those who, like me, are outraged, and a nearly equal number who live in an alternate universe where it is our president who is a victim—of a leftwing political and media attack. As Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) shrieked during the House impeachment debate, “Where’s the accountability for the left after encouraging and normalizing violence?” Apparently even the experience of having to cower in an “undisclosed location” as thugs trash your office building isn’t enough to change one’s opinion of the righteousness of Donald Trump. This does not bode well for the near future.
No one has a crystal ball. But as a nation we have to decide whether that funny little lump under our armpit is no big deal or whether we need to go see the doctor immediately. I’m voting for the latter. It doesn’t get more serious than this.
I’m looking forward to finding out more about what really happened, and didn’t happen, before and during January 6. Did some members of the Capitol police and even U.S. Congressmen give guided tours of the building to fanatics in preparation for the assault? Why were so many signs, especially on social media, overlooked or ignored? Why did it take so long for help to arrive? And what are we going to do about it? (My elected representative, Mike McCaul, R-Texas, chose to do nothing, voting against impeachment.)
We must impeach this traitorous president, in or out of office. If, like Bill Clinton, he was guilty of nothing more than lying about a little extra-marital hanky panky in a West Wing hallway, I would support letting it go in the name of weasel words like “unity” or “healing.” But this president’s crime is too serious.
We need to find and prosecute those who broke into the capitol, those who conspired to break into the capitol, and those who enabled them.
We need to vote, and fight to make voting more accessible to everyone.
And we need to continue to express the truth: that the election was legitimate and fraud-free. That our president and his cohorts helped to spread the lie that it wasn’t. That COVID is real and is killing people. That masks help to prevent it and vaccines will stop it. That the planet has gotten dangerously hot and that we have some control over how much worse it will get.
It’s going to be a long, tough slog. We are opposed by an American subculture that doesn’t simply disbelieve legitimate journalists and scientists. We have to deal with people who distrust the very professions of journalism and science and who believe they are intrinsically corrupt. People who are dosed with generous helpings of racism, xenophobia and nativism. All we can do about that is to continue to speak the truth, pursue the criminals, and treat our neighbors—all of them—with love and kindness.
The Garden of Eaton 