NEVER FORGET!!
One year ago today, our nation's Capitol was violently invaded and occupied for the first time since the British army marched in and set it on fire in 1814.
This time it wasn't a foreign military force, but an insurrectionist mob; attempting a palace coup in support of a sitting president, who—for the first time in our nation's history—refused to yield power in a peaceful, dignified manner, after being decidedly beaten at the polls.
The mob had been whipped to a seething froth by the lie—repeated constantly, but without proof—that the election had been somehow 'stolen'. This lie persisted, despite the fact that the elections in many of the disputed states were managed by Republicans, and that no evidence whatsoever—then or now—has supported this fiction. But evidence means nothing in this case. This belief has more in common with cult ideology than with any rational position.
The British were chased out of the country soon after burning the Capitol in 1814, and the crisis passed. But last year's invaders—along with a large cohort throughout the country that was with them that day in every way but physically—still dwell among us. The lie that angered that mob continues to be promulgated, and believed. For Republican politicians, it has become a loyalty test to affirm this ludicrous claim. Loyalty to Donald Trump, and to this lie, has now replaced alignment on any principle, any issue ― or to reality. Any elected Republican who strays from this paranoid fantasy, risks alienating a core party constituency, dashing any hope of re-election. Few have been willing to risk it.
No, the danger is far from passed, and could well get far worse before it gets better. The faithful believe now as strongly as ever - even more so, as they see it ridiculed and systematically discredited. Cognitive dissonance leads true believers to cling ever more tightly to fantasy, as the grip of contradictory reality is tightened.
Voltaire wrote, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." The seeds of danger are sown, germinated, and are thriving. How it will manifest is not entirely clear ... except that it will.
Coups d'état are no longer something that only happens elsewhere, in nations that lack strong institutions to prevent them. It clearly CAN HAPPEN HERE! It did, a year ago. We ignore this at our peril.
