The January 6th Putsch is Not Over
Conspirators against our Democracy are planning more violent insurrection as I write this.
I turned 51 today, and I’m not too proud to say that I wept yesterday while describing to my twelve-year-old daughter what she witnessed watching the news with me. She’d joined me around 1pm, when the coward Ted Cruz was speaking. Then, moments later as all manner of unreconstructed hell broke loose, she watched as I tried to make sense of that which none in my lifetime have ever seen.
The hours which followed passed like moments.
Neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other white supremacist thugs ran roughshod through the most recognized symbol of democratic government in the world, The United States Capitol building. They marked it for their own, like animals spraying their urine and smearing their feces on the walls. They beat at least one Capitol Police officer to death with among other instruments, American flag poles.
In doing so they have loosed a judgement which will claim them all. Hang around this abyss of human devolution too long and be consumed with the rest of this hatred incarnate.
Yesterday was nothing, in comparison to what those insurrectionists, racists, and thugs have planned. Tens of thousands of treasonous terrorists have pledged their violent intentions online, and tens of millions cheer them on.
State of The Union: A Nation Under Siege
Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were all assassinated again yesterday as we watched armed thugs and insurrectionists storm our nation’s capital. Their deadly attempt to overthrow the United States Government was as much a violation of the terms of surrender accepted by a defeated Confederate States of America at Appomattox in 1865.
The terrorist carrying a confederate flag through the building came across the wire. This disgracefully iconic image was for me among the most maddening. My teeth gritted, my eyes welled up with tears, I tried my best to explain to her exactly what was going on- and the enormity of the scene.
“Do you see that?” I asked my kid, astounded. “You see that flag?” “Those mother fuckers are fucking criminals, every fucking one if ‘em,” I roared!
My kid winced as my eyes glistened with tears of rage. I don’t usually get so emotional in front of them — but she needed to understand the gravity of that heinous act.
“Sorry, kid. But this…this,” is all I could muster.
I told her of the building’s significance to our nation, and moreover, our democracy, way of life, and of what it means to be an American. We watched insurrectionist carrying Blue Lives Matter flags up the Capitol steps, a mere twenty minutes after Cruz had spoken.
This Is All Out War
I’ve been yacking for weeks, calling for calm, and for compassion for those with whom we disagree, and it has fallen on mostly deaf ears. January 6, 2021 changed everything, whether the intended change was the desired result of the conspirators against democracy, or not.
They should be tried for their crimes and given no further fanfare. This is America. We didn’t lose our collective shit when Hitler was ravaging Europe. We transformed our country into anti-fascist liberators. Today’s version of that American Military is an insatiable war machine for a government of corporations, battling for control of humans, resources, and money. It is incapable of honoring those sacrificed for this republic. The oil driving this machine runs in our Representatives’ blood. That changes now.
Our collective mind, and our shared suffering, needs, hardships, and loss cannot and will not ever be defeated by those who wield forces through abuse of power. America’s chickens DID come home to DC to roost, yesterday — and look at all the chicken shit they left behind when they “flew the coup” again.
Our National Response
As a nation, we must not abide what happened yesterday. I’m as ready as anyone to tear our corrupt establishment down, brick by brick- but not like what was witnessed yesterday.
Peaceful protest, nonviolent activism, and changing our government from within are the only ways.
A tree decays from the inside out. We need to be the new flesh within this national tree. We need to dig the dead and dry wood out. I remain a revolutionary. I remain an advocate for tearing down the walls of Babylon. But this is not the time for physical warfare. There are other ways.
America is dead. Long live the new Republic.
I’m a peaceful man. I am nonviolent.
Our government is the opposite. Our government is warlike and violent. Thus far, most of the Americans who have found that out are American citizens of Color. But ask anyone in any central American country who was alive through the 60s,70s, or 80s… or the Asian folks from the 50s, 60s, etc., this has always been the case.
With all that said, even being nonviolent myself — I want to see a full investigation into Congress, the Pentagon, Capitol Police and every random neckbeard that stormed our People’s House. I want to see them tried and executed for this attempted installation of their favorite would-be dictator.
Yes. Executed. No quarter. Hell, make it public.
Resume National Reconstruction
Expand upon a “green new deal” idea and go one step further. Enact legislation for a National Reconstruction, much like Lincoln intended for the secessionists in 1865, before a bullet stopped him. Right the wrongs done by his successors and his opponents which led to Black Codes, Pig Laws, and Jim Crow.
Within years of the Emancipation Proclamation, the addition of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and Black suffrage, the gains accumulated since the beginnings of abolitionist movement were hamstrung by the actions of Southern Racist reactionary Democrats in The United States Congress.
By 1877, Black men had been removed from public office and increasingly discriminatory laws and practices were put in place to empower southern whites over their Black neighbors. White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan emerged, terrorizing People of Color throughout the southern United States. That the intentions of Lincoln were thwarted, and anti-American insurgents never laid down arms must be addressed once and for all.
I’m not talking internment camps or indoctrination. I’m talking massive scaling back on our military spending and weapons production coupled with massive tax increases for the super wealthy. That money should be dumped into the education systems and infrastructure of our nation’s most impoverished and under educated communities: whether the inner city or the holler…. red or blue.
Reparations, reallocation of lands to indigenous people, and to those afforded such as pre-Radical Reconstruction American citizens are but a few wide topics which need be addressed immediately.
Rebuild every bridge and roadway. Create new manufacturing jobs to generate the materials necessary for completely rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. Eliminate unemployment. Resume the war against poverty. Feed America’s hungry. Provide every citizen with an equal right to the same healthcare regardless of income or title.
The discord we are experiencing in our nation today is a result of a combination of factors, none of which could ever sufficiently carry the blame for the situation to which we have all subscribed to one extent or another. It is a natural human reaction to defend one’s self against an existential threat — but we have become our own worst enemy. While Americans beat each other and threaten to blow up one another’s houses our enemies abroad roll in the aisles with laughter and plot against us. We must stop acting this way.
Hold every leader accountable. Overturn Citizens United and in turn remove trillions of dark money dollars from our elections and the hateful vitriol from our national debate. We must begin to communicate as civilized equals for the first time in many of our lifetimes.
The America which I witnessed live during the January 6th Putsch is not the America that we were sold in history classes. The America which lives and breathes abroad is not represented in those texts, but in propaganda only. The America which our descendants will either herald or mourn is what we are building right now. Every one of us has a part to play.
Let’s rebuild this nation in a new image. Let’s take the vision of every American leader from our Civil Rights icons, to Women’s Rights pioneers, and the LGBTQ community, and perfect the protections afforded to every one of us by out Founders, handicapped by their place in the evolutionary history of humanity. Too many Americans still face persecution and an uncertain future under the current tyranny wrought by poisonous nationalism and phobias. Either we end this cycle within our generation, or future factions of leaderless crisis cults will tear this once proud nation to shreds as a pack of wild dogs on a dead beast.
Hope is Eternal, Work is Imperative.
My 50th birthday was shit. No special reason worth explaining now. On the night of January 7th, 2021 I brought it up to my wife — only to say that in comparison, my 51st birthday was pretty cool and I felt alright. Energized and hopeful.
It only just hit me that my hope sprung from the failed coup d’etat the day before my 51st birthday. This power vacuum created by all this hatred is a paradox- wherein Right vs Wrong has created the situation which renders our national institutions to Clay.
Now is the time for those of us with a voice to rebuild this place where true equality reigns.
Equality and progress. No more, no less. Forward together, now.
-pgr2021, 01/07.
