#5SmartReads - January 7, 2020

The one reflecting on a dark, dark day in our history.

January 07, 2021

The Capitol of the United States was attacked yesterday by domestic terrorists, urged by the President that swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. He violated that oath. We are living in one of the darkest times in our history.

Words matter. Especially when they’re spoken by the President of the United States of America.

”There were very fine people on both sides.” [on the Charlottesville Unite The Right rally]“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”

What did we expect to happen?

The words may have been written by others, but the President’s words gave agency to them. And that is unforgivable.

It took me a while to find an article sharing this perspective. And that’s a damn shame, because it’s one that has been on my mind since the attack on the Capitol began.

“I got my black ass beat all summer long on Black Lives Matter plaza by the police in the city that was the first to paint Black Lives Matter on the streets, the first to name a street after it, and these white people are basically being welcomed with a red carpet for all of their terrorist actions."

If the division and the violence doesn’t end our republic, the hypocrisy will.

When Stacey Abrams narrowly lost her gubernatorial race in 2018, she went through the traditional 5 phases of mourning. And then she went into a new phase - plotting.

It paid off. Abrams’ 10 year effort in mobilizing voters in Georgia helped deliver the state to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Warnock and Ossoff to the US Senate.

I want to give Abrams all her flowers (and command of a Federation starship - IYKYK), but I’ll start with pre-ordering her new book and supporting whatever she does next.

And to think I thought what happened earlier this week in Pennsylvania was the craziest thing I’d see in a legislative chamber.

There weren’t riots, but there was the refusal to seat a state senator whose election was certified and the ejection of the best lieutenant governor John Fetterman from the chamber.

Events like these aren’t an aberration. I expect them to become the norm when one party disagrees with the outcome of fair and free elections.

“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”

Alexander Hamilton must’ve had a time machine, because what he wrote in 1792 sums up Trump in 2021.

I appreciate The Dispatch for speaking truth to power, and I hope they help lead conservatives out of the Trumpish hellhole they’ve dug themselves in.

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