I took the day off from work on January 6, 2021 so I could watch our democratic republic on a day that was clearly going to be historic. It was obvious there would be violence, was it not? The day before I had discussed with a friend the statements made by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). "The bottom line is the court is saying, 'We're not going to touch this. You have no remedy'," Gohmert stated on a conservative media outlet. "Essentially the ruling would be 'You have to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa, BLM'," he added.
On the day of the event, addressing the assembled Americans, Rudy Giuliani called for "trial by combat".
The crowd marched to the Capitol building, overwhelmed barricades and police lines, and used makeshift battering rams and force of human phalanxes acting in unison to smash through doors and windows. A scaffold was erected and a noose hung from it. Video of the event shows in hindsight that some law enforcement officers stepped aside as the very halls of Congress, where our elected representatives did a duck and cover that was shockingly surreal, were breached and gunfire from within was not sufficient to deter the crazed mob. Terrorists with zip tie handcuffs, lots of handcuffs, entered the room where moments before the Vice President had been grabbed by each elbow and rushed from the chamber out a back door.
Later that night, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) would claim (the source retracted, but the untruth now spreads given a life apart from reality) that antifa has been identified in the mob. No fascist has any love for an antifascist, that is a given. But, let's get off this Patriot - Antifa divide where we discuss the nuance of labels instead of underlying issues. Can we all agree that those who entered the Capitol unlawfully were anarchists?
One person who read this blog post said the words were elitist, and that not everyone knows all these words. I would ask, politely, that we all get out our dictionaries and visit Wikipedia, so we can have a discussion instead of a Civil War. The anger that led to this attack on the American Constitution was caused in part by "alternative facts" and differing views on what words and ideas actually mean.
My mother-in-law asked me, a few years ago, "Are you a communist?" I explained my leanings were more like a socialist, like in some of those Nordic nations. But, subsequently I read up on socialism and all the other -isms. Socialism has led to some lousy outcomes. I am not a socialist. I am an American, and my view of our new system of government of the people, by the people and for the people was stated best by Winston Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
My mother-in-law gave me a beautiful, leather-bound, gold embossed history of the United States, and I bought my own leather-bound copy of the founding documents of our nation which included the Federalist Papers, George Washington's farewell speech, and many other writings that comprised the best thinking of the wise people who debated and verbally wrestled to craft the framework of our common political reality. I hesitate to mention that the Constitution was the first thing I read, because everyone now waves the Constitution as if it would ward off evil and bullets.
A mob with an American flag is a mob.
A mob attacking the foundation of the rule of law while flying a Blue Lives Matter flag is hypocrisy given malevolent evil form with a foul stench and bitter taste.
I expressed to a deeply religious friend, pastor of his church, a person who voted for Trump (Can't we all talk like this, no matter our beliefs, in a quest for understanding and common ground?), "I saw a flag with the Christian fish symbol and an American flag with the words, 'Jesus is my savior, Trump is my President', and I was saddened that one could proclaim a Christian belief while attacking the American system we all hold dear."
My parents are members of the Religious Society of Friends, who you would recognize by the term 'Quakers'. That Christian faith is perhaps known as the group that refused to remove their hats for the King, and left England for the freedom of the new world. Many know of their nonviolence practice, which includes Civil Disobedience. But not all know about a practice of the faith known as 'bearing witness'.
I feel that I am doing my highest duty as an American by bearing witness to the events in our nation's Capitol and by speaking the truth about what I witnessed.
So, let me circle back to what I said in the opening paragraphs. Can we all agree that a system of government composed of three branches: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial is good; that a system of checks and balances created thereby is good? Because there is a gathering storm that believes that two of those three are optional, and that proposition is at the heart of what we now debate and take sides over.
When the Judicial branch is criticized to the degree where violence defiles the right to free speech it is not protected speech but anarchy and contempt of court. A court that declines to hear a case is not cause for violence, it means the argument presented to the court in filings and briefs was so weak that it is without merit and frivolous. Filing a frivolous lawsuit can have repercussions.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) had such a poor understanding of the Constitution of the United States of America that his case was not heard by the United States Supreme Court. Saying the next step is mob violence is ignorant and contempt of court. It is an attempt to tear down our system of government and shows disdain for the Constitution of the United States of America. Censure for Rep. Gohmert would be a mild outcome and is justified.
Rudy Giuliani's seditious demand for a trial by combat was an incitement to violence and as an attorney he should be immediately and permanently disbarred from practicing law in all jurisdictions for his contempt for our American justice system. Trial by a jury of our peers is how we do things in this great nation. Trial by the judicial system is how we do trials, but I guess he missed that part in law school.
Long ago my kind uncle took my mother and me to attend a broadway play, The King and I, starring Yul Brynner. To this day I recall the meaning and intent of something that was said, that went something like, "A gentleman always means what he says, and says what he means." I guess it was also stated in The Last Emperor as, "If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says." The sentiment is now being repeated as "words have consequences", a lesson I learned at a play in New York City when I was still in grammar school.
I was not happy when the Supreme Court settled Bush v. Gore, stopping the ballot counting and determining the outcome of a Presidential election that was very, very close. I was aware that the State of Florida had purged the voter rolls by name (not address) of all names of those who had been convicted of a felony. Said plainly, if your name was the same as the name of a convicted felon, and you were not a felon, and you went to vote in that election you would have been turned away with, "I'm sorry, you are no longer registered to vote." Was I unhappy? You bet. Did I storm the Capitol? No.I was not happy when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, despite winning the popular vote. That's the Constitution for you. We have an Electoral College that substitutes its judgement for the majority of voters following a process prescribed in the Constitution. I attended a rally and held a sign in my own state capital. I rallied, I would even say I protested. But I didn't riot. I complied with all lawful orders. I did not trespass. I broke nothing. My sign said, "What do we want? Science-based decision-making. When do we want it? After peer review." (I didn't make that up, I saw it on someone else's sign, but it expressed how I felt.)
So, is there to be common ground, reconciliation, and healing? My father was a Republican and my mother a Democrat. Can't we all just get along?
In hindsight, I feel badly that the courts often dismissed Trump supporters' frivolous lawsuits without ruling on the merits, as when the Supreme Court refused to hear Gohmert's wild assertion that the Vice President picks the next President of the United States, instead of the voters and the Electoral College. These people were so blinded by their passionate quest for power that they were unable to see what the courts intimated. Perhaps things would have turned out differently if all those frivolous lawsuits had been heard and after their day in court the Judge had said, as Judge Stephaos Bibas did for the 3rd US circuit court of appeals, “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” The Judge stated, “Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections. [The] campaign’s claims have no merit.”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
--Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing.”
--Edmund Burke, Irish statesman and philosopher
