January 6, 2021
Today is the 1st anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021. I won’t let it go unremembered. It is a day I hope will never be repeated. Today is 4 years since the unprecedented unforgettable event. It is part of American history.
Joyce Vance gave her opinion in her January 5th Civil Discourse, here. Her informed commentary is always worth your time. This morning she published a supplementary post on the same topic, here.
Here’s my blog from four years ago, January 6, 2021. (Prior and after, I blogged on Jan. 5 and next on Jan. 12, 2021. Neither related directly to Jan. 6.)
I printed and pdf’ed the “screen shots” taken by myself of about an hour of the riot at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021. Jan 6 2021; Jan 6 2021 (2). (There are two sets of photos, in sequential order.) These are unedited and are just what was on the screen when I took the photo. There are 32 in all, you can scroll through quickly. None are Pulitzer quality, I can assure you. I watched the chaos most of the afternoon that awful day. At the beginning, I didn’t have the camera at hand; I stopped taking pictures after about an hour. Never, did I anticipate what I witnessed live on TV that afternoon.
I follow politics – anyone who knows me knows this. On the other hand, I don’t spend an afternoon watching political paint dry.
January 6, 2021 – it was a Wednesday – would not normally occupy my time any year. The formalization of the vote is usually a routine event in the national political calendar. Not so in 2021.
2025 continues to happen today. “Politics” is every single citizen; it is all of us, not “them”. We are all part of the problem…or solution.
As I will continue to say, I am one of the 75 million who voted Democrat on Nov. 5, and I’m proud to be so.
I have no idea how all will be today and this year. We will soon see. Odds are today will be more like the good old days, than that first Wednesday in January was in 2021. About the only controversial thing at the moment is that the nations flags are flying at half-staff, recognizing the death of President Carter a week or so ago. Odds are that the inauguration on January 20 will be relatively normal.
We’ll see how/if the new President follows through on his promise to be a dictator only on day one, which I presume is sometime shortly after January 20.
We are all well advised to stay aware, active and very attentive to actions in coming days, months, and years to follow. Our democracy, as we have come to know it over our entire history, is in trouble. And we’ll pay the price if we lose it.
Take the time to read the latest commentary by Heather Cox Richardson, which was in my inbox overnight. How do you fit in to the picture.
Stay on the court, peacefully.
It is 5:10 a.m. Monday, Jan. 6, 2025.
POSTSCRIPT: It’s irrelevant, I suppose, but the incident with the Tesla – the perpetrator – did not pass unnoticed by me, nor the tragedy in New Orleans, since the perpetrators were or had been soldiers, at least one recently on leave from Ft. Carson, Colorado. Ft. Carson is where I did my two years of service in 1962-63, and I know it well, as I know GIs, as I know Colorado. Very b:riefly: I volunteered for the Draft immediately after graduating from college. I had zero interest in becoming an officer. So I spent my ‘career’ as a Company Clerk in an Infantry Company – probably similar to the New Orleans murderer. In short, I lived in and was very aware of the community that is military (and it is a community). I’m proud to have been in the service; and I respect those who have and are serving, and understand that their society is imperfect, as is our own.
POSTNOTE: I watched the totality of the formal recording of the electoral votes at a joint session of House and Senate. In all, about 35 minutes. Kamala Harris presided as President of the Senate.
Jan. 6, 2025
COMMENTS (more at end)
from Sandy: Excellent points once again Dick! This is certainly a scary time with Trump being re-elected. It is unbelievable. Let’s hope he cannot destroy our fragile democracy
One of the legacies that the man child who would be king has already created is to sow distrust in the political process, trust in which is so important to democracy in America. Due to his consistent whining about having the election stolen from him and so many voters being persuaded by his five-year old childlike whining in spite of the lack of any proof of the 2020 election having been stolen, too many people no longer trust the process. Now, the man-child who would be king has completed control of the Congress and the SCOTUS and is free to do more harm to democracy until and unless some pushback begins to happen. The petulant little child is already whining about all of the attention being given to the late President Carter including groveling about flags being flown at half-mast out of respect for Carter. What a selfish and insecure ignorant, arrogant and narcissistic five-time draft dodger of a man child!
Norm, I want to emphasize a single word in your comment: “pushback”. Each one of we citizens – all of us – ARE politics, regardless of whether we agree with the dominant regime or not. “Pushback” has to come from each of us, you, I, every single citizen of voting age, all of whom have a stake in the future. You and I don’t agree on everything, as you know, but no one can say we aren’t ‘on the court’!
Thanks for this. Someone once stated, “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades unfold.” Last year was truly an annus horribilis—here’s to hoping this year will be an annus mirabilis!
I was at home reading with the television on when it all started. I watched it from start to finish in real time. I remember jumping out of my chair and yelling “This is insurrection!” to my slightly interested cat. No one with a shred of a brain could have mistaken it for “a day of love.”
Unfortunately, those who adore our president-to-be have only a shred of a brain between them — and their determination to give him full power for as long as he wants it is going to be a world changer, and not for the better. I feel myself curling up into a protective ball, hoping to survive. Let us help each other and stay vocal.
Similar circumstances, different reaction… I was still working for 3M back then (retired Labor Day 2021), and due to Covid, was working from home. I spent the entire day with one eye on work, and another on news media – both on the same computer…! But what I remember thinking was “This has to be the most idiotic, second-rate, ill-considered riot, ever! I remember recoiling in-the-moment at the occasional use of the word “insurrection” (as the riot unfolded live, that word was used only by a very few of the most florid commentators). Having just lived through (and less than a mile away) from the Mpls. multi-day riot, I couldn’t help noticing how “minor league” the Capitol event was in comparison.
Clearly, as you said, no “love” involved… yet my feelings about it haven’t changed: A lot of people, misbehaving in a worked-up crowd, as people who willingly place themselves in worked-up crowds tend to do…
I stick with my interpretation. Thousands of screaming people climbing walls, breaking windows, pounding down doors en masse with huge logs, defecating in hallways, crushing cops in doorways, hollering for the deaths of the Vice President and the Speaker of the House (what the hell did she ever do to them anyway?), all being carried out by insane people whose most accessible word appeared to be “fuck,” with the stated intention of interfering by force with the legal proceedings of our government, means insurrection to me. What happened that day was much worse than what occurred during the Boston “massacre.” I didn’t watch the media. I watched it happen live. With both eyes. They obeyed Trump’s order.
Interesting reply. What you are describing is what I saw, too!
Which is precisely why it was NOT an insurrection. For that, the actors need to have some kind of objective in mind – ultimately, a desire for some “result”. And there needs be some kind of organization behind the violent activity that those doing the organizing (at least) feel will lead to that desired result.
None of that was present.
In our lifetimes (Dick tells me we are similar ages…), we have lived through, literally, dozens of US happenings that were called “riots”, for which at least somebody doing something like organizing an event (usually a protest march or gathering, but not always) had clearer objectives in mind than the idiotic Jan. 6 rabble did. And there was never any serious question of calling any of them “insurrections”.
Riots, by definition, are events of rage and mindless violence, and are devoid of any clear objective that the participants have “signed on to”. That’s what this was, as your description attests. The rioters wrecked stuff. But they achieved nothing – because they did not TRY to achieve anything. Their mindless violence put them into quite a good position to have achieved quite a lot (and all of it unthinkably bad…), but the mob had no objective other than the violence itself …for which we can be grateful, I suppose. It coulda been a lot worse – it could have actually BEEN an insurrection.
Our nation’s take-home lesson should arise from how easy it was for the rioting mob to get to a position of such awful potential (for a time, they “owned” the Capitol, with the Congress in it), and what COULD have happened, had it actually been an insurrection…
Thank you Dick for posting your photos and commentary of this horrific time in our American history as well as in our own personal histories…God help us all…vigilance to our Democracy and the rule of law, kindness to our neighbors and prayer is what will get us through this time!