Assault on the Capitol

 

This is not Broadway's les Mis.
This is the assault on the Capitol of the United States of America,
my home.

It was yet another "where were you when" moment in my life. I am old. I am from Oklahoma. I am not unique. The only differences between you and me is our ages and where we live. We've seen too many of these moments. Disasters, natural and human-made. As I'm sure they did you, each of these moments frightened me. The human-made ones made me angry. The damage all of them did made me just so sad.

Watching TV. That's where it seems I've been when these moments happened. Of course I wasn't watching TV at the moment most of them happened. I was hunkered down in storm shelters or school basements for too many tornadoes to remember. I was in high school gym class when President Kennedy was shot. In college and working during Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement. And when Senator Kennedy was shot. When Dr. King was shot. The 1989 San Francisco earthquake. (That one I saw live. I was on maternity leave watching baseball's World Series televised from Candlestick Park.) When the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed, I was working. I was in school again when 911 happened. The Iraqi War, Hurricane Katrina. The wild fires. All that and more.

Then 2020, aptly named "The Dumpster Fire Year" by a local TV newscaster. I have been "Safe at Home" since the middle of March. I've always read. A lot. During this nearly a year, I've read more. And I've watched more TV than ever before. Mostly binge-watching cop shows -- Icelandic cop shows, Swedish cop shows, French cop shows, Italian cop shows, British cop shows. Thank goodness for MHz Networks and Acorn. And subtitles. (I can't stand Blue Bloods' constant shouting and Danny's foot chases any longer! Haven't been able to for a while.) 

Oh, yes. There is a jigsaw puzzle in progress on my dining table.

For self-preservation, I cut my TV news to less than half. Thirty minutes of local news. Thirty minutes of international news from the BBC. Thirty minutes of national news from ABC. And PBS's News Hour. I count most of the TV journalists among my friends. After all, they come into my home every day and with the pandemic, I've been to their homes. I know what books and treasures are on their bookshelves. I know their cat. They give me a lot of bad news. More bad news than most of my real-life friends give me. Pandemic death numbers. Economic numbers. Election campaign rhetoric and bombast. Really, political news has been awful these past five years. But this year, the worst.

It's been a question of survival. The first goal was to survive the pandemic, but it's still going on. No more travel for us. No out-of-state visitors. No visitors of any stripe. Except the TV people.

Things I normally looked forward to -- a day trip into the mountains, a games party now and then, exercise classes, walking and coffee with my friends, going to the movies, eating out -- not gonna happen. My friends and I still walk. Our town has many parks designed and maintained to encourage walking. And our weather is usually comfortable enough year round. We wear masks and maintain the recommended six-feet social distance from one another. We carry folding chairs in our cars so we can visit in parking lots or in driveways. Not to tempt Fate, but so far we've avoided contracting Covid-19 or any of its variants. In fact we've had many fewer colds and no seasonal flu.

In years past, I would have looked forward to the Fourth of July with watermelon and barbeque. Then Labor Day Weekend, the final opportunity to drive to the top of Mount Evans before the road is closed for the winter and October before Trail Ridge Road through Rocky Mountain National Park also closes for the winter. But not this year.

So there was the election to look forward to and the very real possibility that Joe Biden would win. He may not have been my first choice, or for that matter my second, but by election time he was my only choice. The GOP's politics-of-hate campaign and their blatant disregard for the safety measures we were practicing would finally end. Trump would step aside and we could get back to the business of living our lives in an America for all. 

The election came and went. Thanksgiving came and went with no relief from the Trump lies and accusations, even though the election was over and he lost. Trump's rallies and rants escalated through December as the Electoral College cast their votes and those votes were certified by the States. 

The mood in the United States has been ugly for a long time, but it got uglier as Christmas neared. Too many people either followed the Trump/GOP line that the pandemic was not that serious or they had had  enough of it and they decided what-the-hell. They travelled. They rallied in Georgia for the Senate election there. They partied, including at the White house. Ignoring the CDC and Dr. Fauci's warnings.

Of course, I believed those dire warnings. I knew that the world and life do not blindly follow our calendars, do not observe our humanly fanciful time limits, do not adhere to our traditional dates of endings and beginnings. But didn't 2021's possibilities shine and sparkle in our imaginations. Vaccines to vanquish the pandemic. Children back face-to-face in school. Long term care facilities no longer locked down. A new administration in the White House. Jobs coming back. Couldn't we put 2020 behind us?

A metaphor for 2020/2021:   

     "Have you ever driven west through Kansas to get to Denver? You hit the Colorado border 

     and think YES, MOUNTAINS! But then you realize the first half of Colorado is pretty much just             more of Kansas. Slowly, you see the blue peaks [or white depending on the time of year] and            
     the joy of the mountains slowly becomes a reality." -- Charlie Worroll.

Interstate 70 through Kansas is the metaphor for 2020. The country is High Plains Desert. Not many trees and those not very tall. It is just flat land and high sky. You can see from here until tomorrow. 

From Salina, Kansas, to Limon, Colorado, is 343 miles. That's more than five hours of your life at
75 miles per hour, slowing to go through the very few small cities and smaller towns.Their church spires and grain elevators rise from the vast land into the infinite sky. 

At Limon you see this.

   

There,                                                
that faint white on the horizon.
Mountains!                    
Mountains?                    
Or is it just a cloud?                          

From there it's still an hour and a half to Denver where you can see this by looking west from the third floor terrace of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. You're still on the prairie and the mountains are another half-hour west. That's if there's no ski traffic.

After New Year's, I looked forward to January 6, 2021. The United States Congress would formally count the Electoral Votes that were certified and forwarded to them by the States. Joe Biden would be the 46th President of the United States. Kamala Harris would be the first woman and first person of color elected Vice President of the United States.

I was ready. At 12:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (10:30 a.m. Mountain Standard Time) I turned on my TV to watch PBS's live coverage of the confirmation of the Biden-Harris victory.

PBS did not air Trump's rally prior to the mob's surge down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. Watching PBS's coverage of the joint session, I had no idea what had gone on less than an hour earlier and just blocks down the street.

It begins.

Announcing the votes is done by State alphabetically. Alabama and Arkansas the votes went to Trump. Arizona the votes went to Biden. The first objection came from Ted Cruz, Republican Senator from Texas. The Joint Session was suspended. The Senators went to debate the objection and vote yea or nay to uphold the objection. The House of Representatives met for the same purpose. Two and a half hours or so later the Joint Session was reconvened to announce that the objection was rejected and the count went forward.

    

                          Lisa Desjardin, PBS journalist                Amna Nawaz, PBS journalist
                             Inside the Capitol                                          Outside the Capitol

These two women are my friends. They've been in my house. I've been in theirs. At least electronically. Lisa has a black and white cat who lounges or cavorts on the couch in the background while she reports for PBS News Hour.

Amna was among journalists, on air, covering the activities outside the Capitol. We could see Trump supporters milling around, hurling obscenities at the reporters. As time went on, we could see the mob clambering over the Capitol, unimpeded.

  

                                  I was truly afraid for the safety of the reporters outside

Inside, Lisa was on air when the mob started bashing at the front doors of the Capitol. She was on an inside balcony, the next floor up and could see the doors. We could hear the glass in the doors shatter.

The mob had breached the doors and was pouring into the building. Lisa could see no Capitol Police. She started looking for a safe place. I think she must have been videoing from her cell phone and she kept it on. I was terrified for her.

At one point she was crouched down behind a counter. When she raised up to try to see what was going on a police officer in full protective gear carrying what looked like an assault rifle appeared. He told her to get down and stay down.

She was soon escorted to safety along with members of Congress transmitting video the whole time. At one point, she blocked our view saying "We're not supposed to photograph this area." (I almost laughed at the irony.) She continued to do her job despite the fact that her life and the lives of those around her, was at risk,  And yet she followed the rules designed to protect the Capitol. 

The Capitol was locked down. National Guard were brought in, much too late. The building was cleared and secured.

Documents and papers of all kinds were scattered. I wondered where the boxes containing the certified electoral votes were. What would happen if they were stolen or destroyed?

 

When the Joint Session was reconvened the boxes were carried in ahead of Vice President Pence. The votes were safe. Pence gaveled the Joint Session into being, pronounced the Trump Mob a failure and the count continued.

The count went forward. To be considered, objections had to be in writing, signed by a Member of the House of Representatives and a Senator. Following the violent mob assault on the Capitol, Senators who had signed onto the objections for Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada withdrew their support. No interrupting the session for debate was necessary for those states. Thank Goodness.

That left the objection to Pennsylvania's certified votes. And yes, the Joint Session was suspended while the House and Senate separately debated the merits of the objection and voted to uphold the objection or dismiss it. 

I have a long-standing interest in United States Constitutional Law. These past few weeks I have read and researched, researched and read, afraid that this whole affair could go awry or be delayed. The night of January 6 bled into January 7 before we had a resolution. At 3:41 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 1:41 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, Vice President Pence in his role as President of the Senate announced that the electoral votes had been deemed correct and counted. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. of Delaware was elected President of the United States and Kamala D. Harris of California was elected Vice President of the United States.

I could go to bed. And I did.

The vote may have been confirmed, but the storming of the Capitol by a delusional, hate-filled mob will take longer to deal with. Five people died -- a member of the mob was shot by a Capitol policeman, three people died of medical emergencies, and one Capitol Police Officer was bludgeoned to death. Rioters will be identified and prosecuted. Whether Trump will be held accountable for inciting the violence and destruction is yet to be determined.

It's like the I-70 metaphor for 2020 and 2021:
"The first half of Colorado is going to be more Kansas. We won’t hit Denver until the summer at the earliest. But not even western Kansas lasts forever, no matter what it feels like on the drive."