January 6th 2021: A Turning point for America

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

I don’t want to spend time criticizing. There is no point in that, and I am sure the real experts will spend time discussing it perhaps for years. What is hurting my brain and soul is that I don’t hear people bringing up solutions to the problems we are having as a nation.

I​ don’t need to repeat what happened on one of the worst days of my life. That day, we had people who believe in lies, and conspiracy theories and decided to act on them. That day, 4000 Americans died of Covid 19. That day, many senators and congressmen and women from the Republican party decided to side with a President who never cared to share the truth with the American people.

F​or four years, this president has engaged in many unethical and corrupt actions, perhaps unconstitutional, and yet he was able to get away with them. The reason? He had a “base” and that meant those who sided with him in his party problably thought they could only win the next election if they remained loyal. They have not been held accountable either. Why? They just want to win, and they don’t care how. The argument that Democrats “hate” the president would be valid if he had acted like a president, but he did not. His behavior challenged many of our sacred constitutional laws and the separation of powers.

S​hould we accept politics is a dirty game and you play dirty to win? As an American citizen, I say no. If you lie, if you cheat, if you are corrupt, you should not be running our government. I don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican. You should not be leading us.

Unlike what many believe about Trump voters, the real story is that most on average in 2016 were richer than Hillary Clinton voters. They were also more male, whiter and older. They are not what I would call marginalized. They are not poor. They are business owners and professionals. Many call themselves evangelical Christians or conservative Catholics.

T​here is nothing wrong with any of those labels, except there is something that concerns me about so many of them. I can understand you having conservative views, ideals and policy fights. In fact, I support some of them, but what I can’t understand is how you can believe all the lies this president has spewed for four years and be okay with them.

A​ll I am hearing is..”what about…the radical liberals? “what about? That’s a fine argument when there is a moral equivalence here, but this is not the case. This president after four years and after he lost the fair and free elections, decided to do the following. Call the George Secretary of state and ask him to get him 11,000 votes. Then after over 60 court cases that denied his declarations of fraudulent elections, he proceeded to get his army of white nationalists to attack our capitol.

I​f his mob had actually killed some of our leaders, perhaps the 147 Republicans would have voted to certify the true winner of this presidential election. That is not what happened. Instead, they insisted on lying one by one about the so called fraudulent elections, unwilling to certify.

N​ow after a second impeachment, they ask for unity. What they can’t understand is that we can’t have unity when there is no justice. You can’t have unity when they accept and spread lies. We can’t have unity when you are attacking the very union our constitution stands for.

I​ am hopeful however. Why? Because Trump was truly voted out and 7 million more voters wanted him out. Most Americans recognized his ineptitude. Most Americans DID NOT vote for him. Most Americans wanted change. They wanted decency, wisdom, justice, fairness, truth. That is not too much to ask for.

I want a Republican party. We need a Republican party. But our government has become so polarized we can’t go on like this. Both parties need to come to an undertstanding, but the the time has come for true accountability. As an American, I want everyone who breaks the law to be held accountable. That goes for any politicians from ANY party. That also goes for rioters on the left or the right.

T​he time has come for a new approach to politics. We are tired. We want solutions.