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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJohn Pavlovitz: All Americans Know January 6th Was An Insurrection. Decent Ones Care.
January 5, 2022
John Pavlovitz
We all saw it.
On January 6th, 2021, many of us watched it in disbelief in real time: the almost incomprehensible sight of thousands of people breaching the very seat of our Government: smashing windows, breaking through doors, setting off tear gas canisters, crushing outnumbered and overmatched Capitol police, and parading unimpeded through the chambers of Congress.
As the chaos unfolded, the questions kept running through the heads of incredulous news anchors and millions of good people:
How is this happening?
Why isnt anyone stopping them?
Where the hell is the National Guard?
Why wont Trump say something?
With each passing minute, it became more and more difficult to reconcile in our brains, how one of the normally-most-secure sites in America could have been so easily and so quickly overtaken. The scenes of scores of people in body armor and gas masks, desecrating monuments, rooting through offices, and crushing police officers were shocking and sickening.
Yet, as disturbing as the initial images were, what soon became apparent is that this was not some spontaneous display of misplaced outrage produced in a random momentthis was a thoroughly-planned attack on our nation; conceived, coordinated, and aided by Right Wing media members, Republicans in Congress, and by a sitting president.
This unthinkable act of violence was not only an inside job, but one whose genesis came from the very highest level of our public servants and brought us the width of an onion-skin from complete collapse. We were literally a handful of courageous officers, a few quick-thinking politicians, and one or two fortuitous seconds from an overturned election, an installed dictator, and an unrecognizable America.
/snip
Johonny
(22,527 posts)That only failed because the soon to be ex-president was too lazy to walk to the Capitol and our secret service saved America by refusing to drive his lazy ass there.
Only to see morons reelect him president 4 years later.
bluesbassman
(19,981 posts)That the morons elected him is to be expected. They have shown themselves for who and what they are and we will have to deal with them moving forward in all their belligerent ignorance. But our system has proven to have failed us. It is been subverted and perverted by greed and power hungry men to the point where a man has been put above the law in plain sight. While it's tempting to put the blame for this at the feet of the moron followers of TSF who first put him in office and then engaged in a violent insurrection to try to keep him illegally in office, but the cold fact is that elected and highly placed government officials not only engaged in the planning and execution of the attempted coup, but aided in the coverup and slow waling that allowed TSF to evade any accountability.
FakeNoose
(36,294 posts)If SCOTUS had done its job, it wouldn't/shouldn't have mattered that the 2nd impeachment was unsuccessful.
Of course, if the 2nd impeachment HAD been successful, then SCOTUS didn't have a say either way. Chump would have been out for all time.
As it is, our only hope now is for the Grim Reaper to do his job, quickly and well.
Passages
(1,548 posts)Diamond_Dog
(35,561 posts)Tickle
(3,280 posts)We as a country are not consistent with calling it an insurrection. Factcheck.com refers to as a riot. The FBI called it a riot. I'm at a loss
Clouds Passing
(3,302 posts)Lucky Luciano
(11,534 posts)The rabid vermin needed to be put down for their attempted coup. They literally tried to end the USA. Not a lot of crimes top that.
liberalgunwilltravel
(599 posts)After Trump pardons the insurrectionist felons. I wouldn't shed a tear if they were all mowed down, as long as no innocents are harmed.
Wuddles440
(1,493 posts)While watching the event unfold on TV, I was literally screaming for the LEO personnel to shoot the insurrectionists and totally stunned when deadly force was not used. Tragic.
OMGWTF
(4,509 posts)Timeflyer
(2,776 posts)But--Jan 6 was Americans attacking America, literally using our national flag as a weapon, beating down brave people defending the peaceful transfer of power. It happened, we all saw it, it will always be a stain on our history.
dalton99a
(85,411 posts)hay rick
(8,395 posts)LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(13,036 posts)If you need further evidence of a planned assault, this is it.
People who compare Jan 6 to BLM protests are disingenuous. The history of this date must not be whitewashed.
Felon47 is making a big deal of pardoning the insurrectionists, under the "no harm, no foul" principle.
He's wrong, as usual.
A presidential pardon does not remove the underlying conviction. Instead, it signifies official forgiveness for the crime and can restore certain civil rights lost due to the conviction, such as the right to vote or hold public office. However, the conviction itself remains on the individual's record and is not erased or expunged. source
Watching a felon pardon felons is going to be great entertainment. Get the popcorn.
FBaggins
(27,900 posts)No real issue on how it got there... it was basically a few 2x4s in the shape of a gallows. You couldn't do any more with it than you could have used the guillotine at a Trump White House protest a few years earlier. Participants who wanted their photo taken with their head in the noose had to kneel down.
IOW - it was a prop. A tasteless childish prop.
Emile
(31,596 posts)Martin Eden
(13,692 posts)for any elective office to every American who cares about Constitutional rule of law.