What is the Color of Their Sky

 As I write this we are a few hours away from the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol building by the right wing Trump supporters hell bent on stopping the certification of then President-elect Biden as the new President.  I remember sitting in my office occasionally checking in on the certification process when I saw it was delayed.  Then I saw what really happened.  Crowds of violent right wingers pushed passed police barricades and broke windows and doors to enter the building.  Chanting things like "Where is Nancy?" and "Hang Mike Pence".  They were not interested is securing anything like democracy.  They were a gang of anti-democratic and anti-American hoodlums who, egged on by the outgoing President and his gang of sycophants, driven by their blood lust.  They were and are criminals.  They attacked the heart of what makes our country great.  They were the opposite of patriots.  Driven by a lie and the idea that they knew better than every elected official running the election they almost succeeded in ending the great American experiment.  But they failed, on that day, to stop it.  And while some of their allies in the Congress tried to continue the charade of upholding election security by challenging the decided, investigated and certified election, the true patriots worked late into the evening to make sure we had a new President.  But now we deal with the aftermath.

One would think that the sight of so many people looking to attack and maybe even kill members of the Congress of both parties might stir the country.  Seeing a gallows built in front of the Cathedral of Democracy would chill many to the bone.  Seeing people destroy, steal and desecrate the personal belongings of our elected official might make one rethink their allegiance.  But it didn't.  For a few hours we saw some in Congress who stood behind the former President during even his most egregious actions while in the office speak out against him.  But that didn't last long.  It was less than a few days until their tune changed.  The Republican party has since created narrative after narrative to try to take any blame away from the then President, themselves and even the people who did the attack.  It is maddening watching members Congress who have said in open hearings and in speeches that it was like a tourist visit, that they were not Trump supporters but Antifa or Black Lives Matter protestors.  There were even those who blamed the FBI.  I am sure most don't believe what they are saying, in part because the facts don't agree with the nonsense.  But they say it.  It is echoed by the right wing noise machine and trickled down to the average Joe or Jane on the street.  The same people radicalized by the then President who didn't come to Washington.  And we are off to the fascist races.

But if it was just the right wing gangs who are promoting the anniversary tomorrow not as a day of sorrow but one of joy.  It is the actual Republican party that will host events lionizing the criminal rioters who stormed into that sacred space to do violence.  It is the former President who had intended to have a press conference of a sort on January 6th to somehow give his view.  It is famous members of the very Congress that was attacked who call those arrested and waiting trial political prisoners and those serving their time martyrs for a cause.  What cause?  

I don't understand.  There was no massive fraud in the last election.  Joseph Biden won in a free and fair election.  If you can't believe that and justify the attack on our country as a good thing, as a patriotic thing, as a blow against tyranny then I have to ask if you have become detached from reality.  Last year a man, unfit for office, voted out by the people, tried to stage a coup.  Using gullible angry people who said they were ready to kill the sitting Vice-President to keep the outgoing person in power.  The threat was so high that if stories are to be believed, that same Vice-President didn't want to get into a car with the Secret Service for fear he wasn't going be brought back to fulfill his duty.  If you continue to support the idea that attack on January 6th was good for the country and led by patriots then you are either fully delusional or evil.  There is no other choice.  I pray that you will come to your senses as the year continues.  However I have little hope.  My hope is however in a committee that will work day and night to find the truth, in a DOJ that said today that they are on it and working from the low hanging fruit to the top of the tree, and on the spirit of America.  In the meantime we hope that the color of the sky in the world that those who continue to support Trump as a good American is pretty enough to distract them and those who are with us can focus on fixing the broken world we now inherit from him.