photo credit: USA Today

The day after the insurrection on January 6, 2021, I wrote this  on Blog for Iowa.

“Trump has lost and is doing everything in his power to have that not be so, but nothing he and the Republicans have tried to overturn the results of the election has worked. I can view that as a testament to the strength of our institutions and the American people who voted. Despite how fragile we seem to be at times, our country has withstood an enormous malevolent force these last four years.

Trump will not get a second term in the White House. Democrats have won the White House and after the special election in Georgia, we also secured control of the Senate and are now in charge of both houses of congress. This is no small thing.

As a nation we held off and beat back Trumpism, the propaganda machine, the tsunami of lies, the money, the ignorance, the racism, and the hate in all of its forms. And we did it handily. Biden won by at least seven million votes.  At least for today, Democracy in America is alive, if not well.”

Today on the 2nd anniversary of the January 6th 2021 attack on the U.S. capitol I write:

We came through the 2022 mid-terms still intact. What concerns me now is the level of denial still out there, particularly in the media, “expert” pundits included.

The media narrative after the mid-terms was “Democrats did better than expected ” and the “Republicans did worse than expected.” Why would we think the party of insurrection would do well in the mid-terms??  Nevertheless, conventional wisdom said the outcome was cause for celebration for Democrats –  even though the Republicans gained back control of the House of Representatives from Democrats despite being the party of insurrectionists.

The inaccurate media narrative was based on the single factor that historically, the party in  power (Democrats in this case) almost always experiences huge losses of seats in congress in the midterms, therefore, the fact that Democrats didn’t experience huge losses means the country repudiated Trumpism and while everyone – media, pundits, politicos, people I respect, were going yippee all over the place my brain was fast forwarding to the scary implications of domestic terrorists in control of a branch of congress. There are still current members of congress who voted against certification of the 2020 election and are likely to chair committees.

Never mind this media narrative didn’t take into account the outrageous,  corrupt, traitorous actions of the former president and party out of power, the Republicans.  This false narrative did not take into account the unprecedented actions that the party out of power took to overthrow the election, dismantle Democracy, or that they were responsible for a violent coup attempt on the United States capitol on January  6th, 2021, that nearly worked. It did not take into consideration that the Republicans tried to pass off fake electors in order to keep Trump in power after he lost the election. It did not take into account that the party out of power does not know how to tell the truth and has displayed that they prefer Putin to America as long as it keeps them in power.  Thechosen narrative was this was an election with a good outcome.

Whatever. I’ve never been a glass half-full kind of person. In my view, how could anyone vote for any Republican after everything they’ve done – even one person –  let alone in big enough numbers to hand over control of a branch of congress. Now that they are there, the extremist of the extremes have taken the democratic process hostage with their ongoing refusal to elect a speaker.  Even more frustrating, of course is everyone is shocked and didn’t see this coming.  The coup attempt is ongoing and in its next phase.

We are in for a rough road ahead these next two years. The current batch of Republicans is already displaying a complete lack of interest in anything other than removing the pillars of democracy.  They will continue to do everything in their power to disrupt and denigrate government functioning.

We can never forget what they tried to do on January 6th, 2021. We remain in a perilous situation where we as citizens have to do our part to see that democracy lives to see another day.

I will leave it here with these patriots who defended our capitol on January 6th, 2021.