Grieving 77 Million Insurrectionists on January 6th

Boy, do I feel like an idiot.

I honestly thought January 6th, 2021 was going to be a catalytic moment for our nation.

Watching a vicious, snarling cosplay army emblazoned with his name breaking through the barricades around the Capitol, I thought for sure the almost unthinkable horrors of that day would be a dealbreaker for even the most devoted of his sycophantic rank-and-file.

I believed that witnessing law enforcement members being beaten on the steps of Congress with flags bearing his likeness, would have fully sickened even his most-ardent supporters to the point of defection.

I was absolutely certain that as the photos and the videos and the testimonies streamed in of officers being crushed by wild-eyed MAGA loyalists; of unhinged men and women prowling the very seat of our government with tear gas and zip ties and nooses, seeking members of Congress—that for perhaps only once in the four years since he had arrived, we would finally all be of one mind and that they would declare this all fully unacceptable.

Four years ago, I would have bet my house that Republican voters’ patriotism, faith convictions, and simple humanity would have surfaced and they would reject this violent lawlessness once-and-for-all.

As night turned to morning and as the scale and severity of what we’d witnessed and how close we all came to losing our Democracy, I remember thinking to myself, "There is no way they will double-down on this or on him now. or ever again."

I was spectacularly wrong.

As we reach another January 6th, this one in the shadows of yet another election, what’s now impossible to deny, is that the insurrection we thought was defeated four years ago was simply postponed.

Its victory is now all-but complete, because 77 million of our family members, friends neighbors, coworkers, and fellow citizens decided that overturning an election and installing a dictator was not only not a dealbreaker, but something they consented to.

77 million Americans have passionately placed a lawless mobster on the throne of this nation.

That is perhaps the most sobering, heartbreaking realization of many that have come since the election: we are as divided a people as we can be, not just along lines of politics but of legality and human decency.

January 6th should have been, for any patriotic American (let alone any human being with a fully functioning soul), a chilling ice water bath of reality, shocking even the most partisan soul awake from the slumber of their fierce tribalism.

It should have been the decisive pivot point for our nation, away from this cancerous, craven cult of personality and its collective bloodlust for power—and into a compassionate, collaborative expression of our interdependence.

January 6th should have been America's second chance at life; this past election, a moment for us to speak unequivocally that no one is above the law and no individual greater than the whole.

That it became instead, a place for our fellow Americans to once again declare their undying allegiance to this man, and to an ugly, lumbering, violent march toward an ever-deepening bottom—is one of the absolute most tragic realities of my lifetime.

In the coming weeks, the engineer of this delayed but now completed insurrection will take a farcical oath to protect and defend a Constitution that he has repeatedly shown complete contempt for it.

His Congressional coconspirators will have carte blanche and unchecked power in the very Capitol chambers they helped violate four years ago.

Their criminal civilian foot-soldiers who figuratively and literally urinated on the halls of Congress will likely be pardoned and lionized, rewarded for behavior that in any other iteration of America would have declared them traitors and criminals.

And we will have to witness these perverse travesties and be subject to all that they will bring, knowing that those we live with and around willfully made it all happen.

Four years ago, a few thousand insurrectionists attempted to disregard the laws of this nation for a single career criminal.

And what they could not accomplish then in the Capitol rotunda then, 77 million Americans now have at the voting booth: the voices of our forebears have been rendered silent, the protections of our Constitution have been destroyed, and a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and wannabe dictator has been given the keys to the kingdom.

Where we go from here is anyone’s guess.