The media are filled with one-year retrospectives about the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. I can’t say I’m paying much attention to them. We’ve had a firehose of coverage from the moment it happened, and appropriately so. An anniversary doesn’t add anything to what we already know, and to what we still need to know.
Will we remember Jan. 6 the way we remember Sept. 11, 2001, or the way our parents and grandparents remembered Dec. 7, 1941? Probably not, though neither will it soon be forgotten. And one of the acts of remembering is recalling what we were doing on that day.
I was hiking in the Middlesex Fells, as I often do. I took a photo of two signs on a tree because I thought they were funny: one said “Keep Out”; the other urged hikers to maintain social distancing, which seemed like an odd admonition if you weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.
I emerged from the woods around 3 p.m. and turned on the car radio. NPR was carrying audio from the “PBS NewsHour,” and Judy Woodruff was freaking out. At first I figured the Republicans were trying to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes to delay Joe Biden’s being declared the official winner of the presidential election. That, after all, had been predicted.
Within a few moments, though, I learned the truth: that a mob of rioters had descended on the Capitol, had broken inside and were rampaging through the halls of Congress. It was our first attempted coup, aided and abetted by Donald Trump, and it may not be the last.
These are dark times, and I’m not optimistic about what the next few years will bring.
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I’m not optimistic, either. Republicans are taking advantage of their lies. They don’t want Trump. But waiting in the wings are wingnuts like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and so many others. Remember the 2016 presidential primary? Maybe two sane Republicans out of 20 candidates. Trump rose to the top… otherwise Cruz would have been the nominee and probable winner.
Meanwhile, the progressive Squad (many policies with which I agree) is tone-deaf with regard to its antisemitism and kill the rich statements, spending political capital it just does not have and thus helping get Republicans elected. Small businesspeople, many of them Hispanic, always had a legitimate beef about corporate taxes, for instance — high tax rate but they would never afford to bribe Congress for loopholes. The Squad wants to raise the rate but offers no details on the real problem, the loopholes.
OK, too lazy or dumb to write good legislation. You would think they would at least criticize Russia and China for military adventurism, human rights violations, treaty violations, and outright aggression and occupation of territories that, bluntly, are not theirs. Nope. They reinforce their image as communists.
I spent the morning listening to Blows Against The Empire.