The Life in My Years

“What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. They will be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history. That will be their legacy.” ~ Senator Mitt Romney, January 6th, 2021.

“The mob was fed lies … They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government, which they did not like.” ~ Senator Mitch McConnell, January 12, 2021. Six days after the insurrection.

“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.” ~ Senator Mitch McConnell, February, 2021, after voting not to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial.

“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” ~ Rep. Andrew Clyde (R) Georgia, May. 2021.

March 3rd, 2023. A song titled “And Justice for All,” is released. The song consists of Donald J. Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, interspersed with a group of men singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with a backing track. At the end of the song, the choir chants “U-S-A!” six times. The choir is comprised of prisoners, incarcerated for their part in the January 6th, insurrection. Later that month, in Waco Texas, the song is used as an introduction to the kickoff of Trump’s 2024 presidential run. It isn’t lost on observers that Waco is the site of the Branch Dividian standoff.

March 6th, 2023, Tucker Carlson issues the statement, “A small percentage of them (insurrectionists) were hooligans, they committed vandalism … but the overwhelming majority weren’t. They were peaceful, they were ordinary and meek. These were not insurrectionists, they were sightseers.” Carlson makes that statement after airing a cherry picked video of the January 6th riot. After the airing, Representative Mike Collins (R) of Georgia says, “I’ve seen enough. Release all J6 political prisoners now.” Collins was not yet in Congress on January 6th, 2021.

Speaking of the January 6th, insurrection Donald J. Trump says, “They were there with love in their heart. That was unbelievable. And it was a beautiful day.” May, 2023.

“I call them the J6 hostages, not prisoners. I call them the hostages, what’s happened. And it’s a shame.” Donald J. Trump, November, 2023.

“January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they’d been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth … There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” ~ Senator Mitch McConnell, January 9th, 2024, commenting on his remarks of February, 2021.

March, 2024. Donald J. Trump promises to pardon January 6th insurrectionists. It’s a promise that he will continue to repeat throughout the campaign and following the election.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States … It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.” Senator Mitch McConnell, March, 2024.

June 6, 2024. Former Capitol Police Officers, Aquilino Gonell, and Harry Dunn, who both suffered serious career ending injuries inflicted by the insurrectionists visit the Pennsylvania State Capitol. Republican members of the legislature either boo the officers or walk out.

November 5th, 2024. Approximately two-thirds of eligible American voters ignore Donald J. Trump’s part in instigating an insurrection, allowing him to become the 47th President. Say what you will about the deficiencies in the Democratic Party’s strategy, the fact remains that the majority of voters who took part in the election, along with those who chose to stay on the sidelines, decided to excuse Trump for his actions regarding the insurrection, and his actions since then.

“I’m a big fan of John Eastman. Y’know, he was right. He happened to be right. That’s why they changed the law and nobody wants to talk about that.” ~ President elect, Donald J. Trump, at a gathering in Mar-a-Lago on January 4th, 2025, speaking of the events of January 6th, and John Eastman’s strategy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In attendance are Eastman, and other election deniers that include Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and former trade official Peter Navarro.

And so goes the campaign to remake history.

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As the events of January 6th, 2021, played out, I was sitting at a small desk in a sunny corner of our dining room, alternately trying to concentrate on writing, and watching an event that I never dreamed I would ever witness – an all out assault on the capital by a mob bent on overturning an election. It was a disturbing, disgusting spectacle that we Americans used to disparage as the kind of event that only occurs in so-called “banana republics,” those nations with weak guardrails against assaults on even weaker democracies. And yet there we were.

It was the ultimate outrage. I wondered why the police weren’t firing shots. Hell, I wanted them to fire shots. A shot was fired that killed Ashli Babbitt who was trying to breach a window at the capital. Since that day, Babbitt, who was in the process of storming the capital and breaking in a window (all of her own volition), has been martyred by the followers of Donald J. Trump.

My anger on that day was palpable, but I was consoled by one thought, that it would certainly be the final curtain slamming down on Donald J. Trump and Trumpism.

What a fool I was.

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Today, January 6th, 2025, Donald J. Trump’s election will be certified. In fourteen days he will begin his second term. He will continue the rewriting of history by pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists, and, barring a complete and inexcusable meltdown by Trump, he and the Republican Party will continue to whitewash the events of January 6th, 2021. But, for the Republican Party, Trump voters, and those voters who sat back and allowed Trump’s reelection, there is apparently no meltdown too great, and no deed inexcusable.

Trump will make certain that the federal charges brought against him will be quashed by his own Justice Department. He will wield the power of the presidency like a grand sledgehammer to crush any charges against him that can’t be killed by the DOJ. If he is true to his threats, he will wage a scorched earth war of retribution against those who had the temerity to hold him to task for his crimes.

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Today, I’m feeling more appalled, more distraught and more discouraged than I do on most days since the November 5th election. And more angry. I’m angry at the eligible voters who decided that the price of eggs and milk and their own personal inconveniences superceded holding a criminal former (and soon to be) president accountable. Today I’m even more angry at the short sighted, one-third of voters who thought it would be a great idea to sit it out, or cast some meaningless protest vote over a single issue, either ignoring or forgetting, but all the while simply excusing the events of four years ago.

Today, I’m in a chasm of depression.

The all-in MAGAs? Nothing I can do about them. At some point they’ll come around – or more likely they won’t. The eggs and milk voters? Something twisted inside of me would like to see them paying ten dollars for a head of iceberg lettuce in the coming summer and not being able to get their leaky roof fixed for lack of labor come the next winter rains.

The voters who sat it out who normally I would have some common cause with? I have to make my peace with them. But not today. No, absolutely not today.

Today, Donald J. Trump’s election will be certified. There will be no riot because the sitting president and his political party are accepting the results of the election. That is how it should be.

Today, Donald J. Trump will exult and at the same time continue to speak his dark rhetoric of American carnage, and of his plans for retribution. It’s his day of celebration.

Today is a day of sadness for the capitol police officers who did their duty four years ago. “I Was Nearly Killed on Jan. 6th. Four Years Later, I Feel Betrayed All Over Again”, is the title of an opinion piece written by Aquilino Gonell in The Bulwark newsletter.

Today on Morning Joe, Harry Dunn, who fought off the insurrectionists expressed his own opinions.
On the election of Trump, “The American people let us down.”
Regarding the pardons, “It pulls at my heart. It makes me angry.”

In a Huffington Post interview, Officer Michael Fanone, who was nearly killed four years ago today said, “This election, at least in part in my mind, was a referendum on Jan. 6, and it was a referendum on me and my outspokenness and the things that I’ve said. And the American people said ‘We don’t care,’ and I mean, they don’t care,” he said. “The American people don’t care, and therefore the media doesn’t care because the media these days is mostly ― I’m not going to paint everyone with a broad stroke ― but is mostly only interested in stories people are going to read. Nobody cares about Jan. 6. They just don’t care.”

Yes, today is a day of sadness and regret for those brave, too often maligned police officers. It should be a day of sadness for all Americans. It should be one of those never forget days, one of those, ‘where were you when’ days. Days like December 7th and 9/11. Days when our democracy was assaulted.

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And so history gets its rewrite. At least for the time being. History tends to be an ever changing chameleon. That’s not to say that history isn’t a matter of actual facts. It is to say that the facts can be distorted or ignored depending on the chronicler, his point of view, and, maybe most significantly, by what he feels it is that he has to gain by his particular version of history.

For the short term, history is being altered by Donald Trump and his acolytes and the cult that follows him, and by cowards within his own party who know the facts of the day but refuse to call them out publicly.

In the short run, part of a generation will be taught that January 6th, 2021 was either a tourist event marred by a few overzealous attendees or that it was a patriotic uprising. I suppose I should take some solace in knowing that at some point, history will get it right.

But not today.

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In 1986, William L. Shirer’s, “The Nightmare Years 1930 – 1940,” was published. Shirer, an American correspondent, best known for his book “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” wrote a memoir of his time in pre-World War II Europe. It was a dangerous, unsettled time not just in Europe but around the world.

With the reelection of Donald Trump to the presidency, I feel that the coming four years (or more) will be the most volatile and dangerous in American history.

After reading Shirer’s memoir, I’m considering a new blog, a sort of personal journal of my own, a chronicle of the days that loom before us. It would be a site separate from this one (which may put the future of this site in doubt). Not a rehash of the news, but my own personal thoughts and feelings.

At this point it’s only in the consideration stage. To be quite honest I don’t know if I could stomach a daily (or semi-daily) dive into the MAGA swamp.

Stay tuned.