Where Do We Go From Here?
January 6th is supposed to be a boring day in American politics. Most people never even knew there was anything special going on that date every four years.
The events of yesterday have changed that forever.
From now on January 6th will be known as the day an insurrection occurred in Washington DC at the Capitol Building.
As Congress was assembling to go through the ceremonial process of counting Electoral College votes and making President-elect Joe Biden’s victory official for the umpteenth time, outgoing-president Donald Trump was whipping a mob of his cult-like supporters into a frenzy.
Just down the street from the seat of legislative power of America, and by extension the will of the American people, Trump continued to spout his never-ending grievance with the electoral process that saw him set to be unseated in less than two weeks time.
His vitriolic misinformation scheme has ensnared voters and elected officials alike, and yesterday we saw the effects of placating the insecure, supposed “big man”, Gordon Gecko wannabe.
After the soon-to-be-ex-president retreated to the safety of the White House, with its gated walls and armed protectors, the shallow gene pool of his sycophantic supporters descended on Congress like ravenous locusts, interrupting the genuflection of senators and congressmen trying to curry favor with Trump and his deranged base of support within the Republican Party.
Those legislators and their colleagues found themselves being hid away as the right-wing terrorists broke into the Capitol, hell-bent on delaying the electoral tally, which was only ceremonial and holds no real procedural power in the election process.
They laid siege upon the building for hours, breaking windows and doors, rummaging through congressional offices, and stealing anything that wasn’t bolted down to the floor. They took selfies and live streamed their treason, showing the world that they believed that one mentally ill man-child is above everything else the United States stands for, including the very constitution they claim to love.
Despite Trump’s best efforts to stop the Electoral College votes from being counted and his defeat once again confirmed, including refusing to activate the National Guard even after one of his supporters was shot and killed inside the Capitol, order was eventually restored and the count happened anyway.
Now that the world has seen the state of American politics at its worst since the Civil Rights era, how can we hope to restore the faith in the institutions that have held power and influence around the globe for the better part of a century?
How can we salvage what is left of our governmental identity when one party has sold its cancer-ridden soul to an orange demon in exchange for corporate tax cuts?
I wish I had the answers and the wisdom to tell you what to do. I wish I could grab these authoritarian, far-right fascists and their supporters by the face and yell compassion and a sense of duty into their hearts. I wish I could pour away the poisonous Kool-Aid that a third of the population has already drunk.
Wishing won’t make it so, however. It’s like screaming into a hurricane.
All we can do is try to correct our mistakes and push out the leprous thugs who are busy tearing themselves apart and flinging their appendages about in mad acts designed to infect all those around them.
As the great American poet Nikki Giovanni wrote, “Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.”
