An hour and a half later I was still sitting on the sofa watching, transfixed by the audacity. A couple of times I felt myself choking back tears. There were thousands of American citizens storming the Capitol building, overpowering the Capitol police, then parading around inside the Senate and House Chamber, taking selfies of themselves sitting at the Speaker’s podium, thinking themselves triumphant. Earlier in the day I had heard snippets of President Trump’s 90 minute speech to this same crowd, exhorting them to save the country, feeding them a series of toxic lies about how the election had been stolen from them, how he had actually won in a landslide! After whipping them into a frenzy, he slipped into his motorcade and escaped back to the White House to watch what would happen from the safety of the West Wing. When the Vice-President refused his unconstitutional request to reject the votes of the Electoral College, word travelled fast through the marching crowds. I sat and watched overcome by two consistent emotions, anger and sadness.
Of course, as soon as the optics became horrifying enough, a tidal wave of lies began flooding social media from Trump supporters claiming that it wasn’t them at all. It was really Antifa radicals dressed up to look like Trump supporters who were responsible. The old false flag Trojan Horse trick. It took all of two minutes of Google searches to discover that the alleged Antifa infiltrators were not. But, it won’t matter to the hard core apologists. The slimmest of fig leaves is all they will need to absolve themselves and their leader of guilt. Perhaps the worst part of the whole spectacle was the pathetic video produced by the White House in response to it all, a 60 second whine-fest, spewing more stolen election horse-shit with a big wet kiss to his patriots and the affectionate suggestion that they all go home now.
Winning.
Later last night my daughter sent me this charmingly concerned text, “What are your thoughts tonight?” This was her way of checking up on me. Big things were happening and her Dad was strangely silent. I replied along the lines of, “I can’t put enough coherent thoughts together at the moment to say anything. It is generally a bad thing to write while overcome with sadness and fury. Then I sent her a cartoon to change the subject...
Later last night it was time for the clever memes to begin raining down, the tiresome and predictable but what about, if this was BLM??!! Words cannot express how much I loathe this sort of lazy commentary. Whoever can make the biggest logical leap with the wittiest phrase wins. I’ll leave that short form silliness to the armchair philosophers.
Finally, as I lay awake in the darkness last night, I thought about a phrase that my Dad said to me one time years ago...character is destiny. His view was that how your life turns out is a function of your defining character traits. If you are a thief, someone or something will end up stealing your life from you. If you are violent, you will eventually be a victim of violence. If you are a manipulator, you will eventually be manipulated. When I think of Donald Trump, the first thing that comes to mind is that his defining characteristic is...lying. If you tell enough lies in your life, you become a lie. Set aside for a moment any positive accomplishments of his administration. For a second, put aside your views on immigration, trade, abortion etc. What Donald Trump will ultimately be remembered for is his shameless and pathetic actions since Election Day 2020. The man who promised us nothing but winning, winning and more winning, ends up not only losing reelection, but both houses of Congress in the bargain. He has single handedly destroyed the Republican Party for a generation.
Many of you disagree with me about all of this. I know. Nothing I say or write will change your minds. That’s ok. A few days ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a Trump guy. I asked him the following question: “Suppose an audio tape was produced that had Barack Obama on the phone to the attorney general of Florida asking him to find him 11,000 votes so he could overturn the election in his favor. What would your reaction be? I dare say it would send you into a spittle-spewing rage, and rightfully so. But I haven’t heard one word from you about Trump’s call to the AG of Georgia.” If our outrage with presidential behavior is dependent on the president’s party, then that’s the very definition of false outrage. And yet, for four years now, millions upon millions of people have been content to look the other way at rampant dishonesty. Yesterday, the bill came due.
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