Wednesday, January 6, 2021. It seems like so long ago, but last Tuesday was a long evening into a very late night with a shortage of sleep, watching and following along with the two run-off election contests for the U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, with the results determining control of that body for the first two years of the Joe Biden administration. One race had been called and the other looked promising when I turned in, and it was great to get up Wednesday morning to learn that, amazingly, there were two close but solid victories, eventually shown to be outside the margin for automatic recounts. For me and mine, we can not be rid of the stain and stench of the Trump era fast enough and, had the Senate remained in Republican hands, the obstruction of the Biden agenda, even being able to pick his own cabinet, and certainly to make the kinds of judicial appointments that I would want to see, would all be in jeopardy. A promising morning brimming with hope had dawned.
And then in a chilling, shocking, and ultimately completely predictable unfolding of events, the rest of the day was consumed with the clear fomenting by the President of the United States of insurrection and sedition, playing out in violent and deadly fashion by the motliest assortment of lunatic fringe, also known as the base of the current Republican Party.
But since it was a bunch of white folks doing it, they all sauntered lazily out of the defiled Capitol Building, the seat of the people's legislature of this great republic, undetained and unrestrained, free to then violate the City's curfew for the next few hours.
We now know that five people died that day. I guess blue lives matter until they don't, but as long as you call yourself a "patriot," and have the permission of your President... We also know this was still followed by the doomed but still destructive effort by ambitious and unprincipled and anti-democratic members of Congress to reject electors from states lost by the GOP. You know, states where lots of African-Americans live and vote.
By late afternoon, still glued to the news coverage, I whipped up a simple dinner of Peruvian-spiced chicken thighs, along with quinoa and roasted broccoli florets, and watched it all, knowing that even this—THIS—would not be enough to bring an end to Trumpism and its utterly remorseless enablers and apologists. But at least we're closer to the end of Trump.
