Life of Wry

My god. The day started in bliss. Yesterday’s (it was only yesterday??) election resulted in two democratic Senate seats. Watching the returns last night was ulcer producing, but by about 10-ish, Warnock’s election was called and Ossoff’s was well on its way. By this morning, both were official.

We’d achieved all three of the goals we’d set: Took back the White House, held the House (barely!) and flipped the Senate (by the skin of our teeth and two months after the November election!). And, to be fair, this was every democrat’s goal, not just ours. But we worked hard for it (as did hundreds of thousands of volunteers all over the country for years and especially this pandemic year).

So yes, cloud nine this morning. Spontaneous laughs, smiles that were stuck on, a little dancing here and there, little jogs down the hall. Plus, happy texts, emails, and Facebook posts & messages all morning. It was unbelievably sweet and light and happy. So incredibly satisfied and relieved.

Then girded myself for the formal process of Congress’s affirming of the Electoral College voting certificates. People were nervous because Trump had decided this was the day he was going to mount a protest… to call all his supporters to Washington to demonstrate their disagreement with the election outcome. Blah blah blah. Ridiculous and reckless and every other stupid word to describe him, his plan, his rally. He’s just so incredibly irresponsible and pathetic. Futile as his whining is, there was worry. Thousands of misinformed, disgruntled and agitated yahoos descending on Washington = not a good thing.

He juiced them up in a rally full of his ongoing lies and conspiracy theories, then encouraged them to storm the Capitol where Congress was going to be doing its election formalizing thing, per the constitution. He said, “You can’t take back our country with weakness. You have to be strong.”

And then, as directed, they stormed down Capitol Mall toward the Capitol.

The rest of the day’s been a shocking display of thuggery and lawlessness. I won’t go into all the detail, but I spent the entire day watching it unfold, stunned and scared. Some tears, lots of fear.. it felt so out of control and it was unclear how far this would go. The capitol police were entirely overwhelmed and unequipped to handle the mobs (which is itself shocking as Trump had broadcast his intentions for weeks), so the insurrectionists (we call them now) breached the Capitol. They knocked down barricades, bust through perimeter buffer zones, jammed the steps on all four sides of the building, climbed exterior walls, they even broke windows and climbed in.

They crowded their way through the rotunda and through the halls. Video shows guards just giving way to them. They tried tear gas, not sure it did much. Congress members donned gas masks, hid under their chamber desks, they were terrified. There was an armed stand-off at the entrance to the House chambers. Armed. The capitol guards totally lost control. Eventually, they had to focus on the safety of members, so left these insurgents to ransack the place while they scurried freaked out Senators and Representatives to undisclosed locations in the bowels of the building. Meanwhile, Trump’s maga guys vandalized the halls and offices, a woman was shot… it was insane.

We were watching a whole bunch of that in real time, stunned they could have their way with the place. And Trump just kept tweeting encouragement (by the way, Twitter froze him out of his account today… only for four hours, but still). He finally, under pressure, released a video of himself telling his army of domestic terrorists to go home, told them he loved them and explained to the world that this is what happens when people get their election stolen from them.

What a bunch of whiners. The idea that THESE people are aggrieved is absurd. There was an election. They lost. That’s how it works. The people in this country who should feel aggrieved are black and brown people, women, LGBTQ folks.. all kinds of folks whose rights have been denied forever and have real reasons to protest. This whole ruse of an election being stolen is a grift, just a way to get money (a quarter of a million dollars, and counting) from these people on the false promise that he can actually reverse the outcome of the election and stay in power. Shameful.

The whole thing is revolting and he is an utter disgrace. Now everyone’s talking about the 25th Amendment or another impeachment. He’s off his rocker.

But we knew all that.

And don’t fool yourself, this is exactly what Trump wanted. He is loving this. He loves the chaos. His people fighting for him. His name emblazoned on giant flags, waving alongside American flags.. and confederate flags. His peeps. Ivanka called them patriots.

These people have to go.

Some pics on the day…

And look at these crazy shots… this is the armed standoff at a window looking in on the House Chambers:

This guy’s just dropping in on the proceedings (though the members are gone):

This guy’s occupying Nancy Pelosi’s office…

…and left her this nice note:

Can you believe this stuff?

Anyway.. it all felt like Sept 11, 2001. That scary and unsettling. Hoping it shakes people up and changes the course of our country. Maybe with the New Year, a new “uniter” president, a vaccination… maybe we’ll all turn a big giant corner together.