This post needs to serve a record for my children who witnessed it without fully understanding what they were seeing.
It has been 48 hours since the darkest day in American history since 1861.
Not even "a day that will live in infamy" or a clear blue sky day in September can compare. On December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001we were attacked from enemies outside the country. In those attacks the Japanese sought to sideline us from the war to come and al Qaeda sought to humiliate the "Great Satan". Neither of those enemies had aspiration to overthrow the government of the United States of America. Not even the Confederacy, who broke the union of states, tried to overturn it; instead they tried to leave it. On January 6, 2021, we were attacked from within.
On January 6, 2021, a group of people, refusing to accept the rule of law in a lawful election, and at the urging of the President of the United States, marched to the Capitol and then decided to take matters into their own hands. They stormed the barricades and entered the US Capitol, the "people's house." In the last 48 hours almost every single news outlet has referred to these people as rioters, a mob, insurgents, terrorists, insurrectionists, or seditionists. Only the children of the President referred to them as "patriots." Let that sink in.
In a nation built on the rule of law you must being willing to accept that law, even when you disagree with the outcome. In this case, the results of the 2020 election were contested, rightly or wrongly, by the President and his team. Following the law they took their case to the courts, including the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, and had their case refused and/or dismissed 63 out of 64 times for lack of evidence. The rule of law, like it or not, was upheld. However, that did not stop the President from disaffecting millions of people with a drumbeat of lies that the election was stolen from him even though the facts didn't bear that and the evidence was never produced.
In the weeks leading up to the certification of the Electoral College results, people were encouraged to come to Washington, D.C. to have their voice heard. However, some herd a different message. The Radical Right heard the invite and they knew what was a stake for their agenda. They knew, at no other time in history would they ever be this close to overthrowing the existing government in order to remake it into their own image. January 6 was an all of nothing gamble, because if the President came through for them then he would declare Martial Law and suspend certain rights, and certainly overturn the results of the election. The Radial Right gambled and lost.
While they broke into the Senate and House Floors of the congress, the President hid in the White House. While they roamed the halls looking for Senators and Congressmen to hold them accountable, those elected officials, who not just 20 minutes prior had also been trying to undo the election result themselves, ran. They hid. They hid in fear and from the ugly truth that maybe, just maybe, their actions may also make them complicit in the actions of the mob. To date, not a single member or Congress is on record as to having left their safe and secure location to have joined the insurgents. When there is personal risk at stake they opted out.
Almost hysterically, once the terrorists got inside and couldn't find anyone (perhaps to hold hostage or worse), they had no clue what to do. The President bailed on them, the Republicans who supported objecting to the Electoral College count ran and hid, and no cavalry was coming to the rescue for the revolution. Not being able to overthrow the government they did the next best thing, they ransacked offices, defaced some statues, took selfies and helped get five people killed. In the end, the revolution wasn't that funny.
What we witnessed on Wednesday, was nothing less than sedition. As a result, politicians, doing what they do best are trying to either backtrack or extricate themselves from the events; all culpability going somewhere else. Other politicians, smelling the blood in the water, are seeking to eviscerate their opponents and certainly lay the blame on the President. Pundits are trying to lay blame on "other actors" and even empathetically understanding the mobs frustration without connecting it to the lies they were told. I imagine in the days ahead there will be more of the same; rhetoric, spin, damage control, and other efforts to keep the people cloistered in their collective algorithms. Perhaps we are not out of this nose dive yet.
Our family watched. My children took a real interest in what was happening and it made me proud knowing that they cared and they knew it was wrong. Just over a year and half ago we were guests of our Congressman and we toured the very places that were defiled the other day. I hope that in the years to come, whenever they read this, that history repudiates the acts of treason we witnessed with justice for all the actors. I hope that in the years to come my kids understand that when I took my oath "against all enemies, foreign and domestic" that what I saw on Wednesday were enemies, not Americans.
Not since 1814 has an enemy entered the U.S. Capitol. What I witnessed on Wednesday sickened me to my core. We looked like no less than a Third World Country in need of rescuing from a First World Power who upheld democratic values. There is no irony lost here.
