John Pavlovitz: All Americans Know January 6th Was An Insurrection. Decent Ones Care.

[Dennis Donovan]

John 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 isn’t anyone stopping them?”
“Where the hell is the National Guard?”
“Why won’t 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 moment—this 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