I woke up this morning to the most beautiful winter Carolina sunrise, and my first thought was “It’s January 6, and that feels like the day your Mom and Dad told you they were getting a divorce.” A strange thought but the truth. I don’t mean a “national divorce” like (shudder) MTG suggested. I mean a day when your life changes and you know you’ll never look at your family the same way again. My parents told me they were splitting up on the day that Ronald Reagan was re-elected. I was 16 years old, a junior in high school, right at the edge of childish versus adult thinking. Waking up to realize that the adults didn’t have all the answers. I don’t need to extend the metaphor beyond that, because their divorce was the right thing to do in the long run, so the comparison stops there. It was just that feeling that one day something happens that means that things will never be same afterward.
January 6th it makes me think about all that we have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears. We need to trust that. We have not done so. Our democracy is in danger and we have not mounted a proportional response. I have admired Maya Angelou’s saying for years, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them—the first time.” These wise words have now achieved the status of a refrigerator-magnet proverb, and yet we have not heeded them.
As a child safety expert I knew that we were in trouble as soon as Trump descended his golden escalator and said that “All Mexicans are rapists…..” and was not immediately booted out of the GOP as unfit to run for President under their party banner. He is a predator. He told us that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters. He is literally accused of raping E. Jean Carroll on Fifth Avenue. Yet somehow dozens of accusations of sexual assault or misconduct don’t matter. The days after the Access Hollywood tape came out, and that did not disqualify him, before the election, I knew we were in big trouble.
When he was elected, I didn’t cry but I tried to comfort my despondent teenager, and responded to the high school civics teacher writing on Facebook at 3 am, “what am I going to tell my students in the morning?” and entered years of shock. I literally did not have another good night’s sleep until Joe Biden was inaugurated. In those early days of November and December 2020, I was so grateful for writers like Sarah Kendzior, Masha Gessen, and Timothy Snyder, who immediately sounded the alarm bell. I was not crazy to be worried. I was a quiet Cassandra, but I knew we could not make it through four years without something really bad happening. The pandemic with its bungled, sabotaged, profiteering governmental response was already the worst thing that had ever happened in my lifetime.
Then came Big Lie and the January 6th insurrection —both unreal, but very predictable. Rosa Brooks led her election scenario “war games.” There were major think pieces about what would happen if Trump would not concede that he lost. There were War Rooms at The Willard Hotel (formerly my favorite hotel in DC). Bus tickets were bought and and t-shirts made. Just believe Trump, he said it would “be wild.” Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa’s Gaslit Nation podcast scheduled a January 6 special episode before the attack on the Capitol even happened—the dangerous plans were that well-known.
So, the coup-plotters went through with it! I believed I called it an “autogolpe” at the time, and that is still a pretty good word. What unfolded that day was truly, truly shocking, horrific, traumatizing. Where is the response? Why weren’t conspirators, the coup-plotters arrested within weeks, not….nobody as of a year later? Where is the FIGHT from Democrats? When will the Justice Department actually go out on a limb to defend us? Merrick Garland is trying so hard to be apolitical, but when will he realize that sometimes, not acting is just as political as taking a bold action? Garland should be a judge; he is absolutely the wrong person to run the Justice Department. I want a fighter like Sally Yates for Attorney General!
The big questions are on the line: do we actually have the rule of law functioning in this country? Is it really true that nobody is above the law? I applied to law school this year, something I had wanted to do for a very long time. I decided not to go for several reasons, and one of them is that I have lost confidence in our legal system and don’t think I would be in a good position to reform it. If I were 20 years younger I might take it on. But I will do what I can to fight to defend our democracy in other ways.
As a child safety expert I developed the advice that to detect danger and protect yourself from it you need to “Perceive, Believe, and Act.” You have to do all three of these things and not talk yourself out of the process by dismissing danger halfway through. You have to see danger, on the horizon or nearby; you have to cut through denial to believe that this could be happening, even in your very nice family/school/town or democracy; and then you have to take action to defend yourself.
We are at danger of failing on all three of these levels when it comes to January 6, 2021. Some people are gaslighting us to try to say it was no big deal. Some want to spread conspiracy theories that it was organized and carried out by someone of than Trump and his cronies—including Lindsey Graham today, but I am not going to link to his disinformation. And again, where is the ACTION? It is all on the line now. We saw the Republicans flirt with the idea of cutting Trump loose after January 6th, but then they changed their minds (see for example Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham: their 180-degree about-face hypocrisy tells me that they were either bought off/promised power, or blackmailed). Democrats can’t play nice in the hopes that Republicans will play nice if they get back into power. Why haven’t we learned by this point that is not going to work?
It is supremely frustrating as an everyday citizen to feel like it is not that clear what actions should be taking right now, but I will do my best to leave you with one bright spot and one proposed action:
Bright spot is the January 6th select committee. I think they are doing amazing, thorough work. Rep Jamie Raskin did a lot of interviews this week around his new book, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy. I highly recommend his interviews and I want to read his book. He is so open-hearted and truly courageous. He is doing this hard work of being on the committee, after having experienced the dangers of the insurrection, with his family, just a week after his beloved son died by suicide.
Your action item: Learn about your state legislature. Very few people think about who their state lawmakers are, but these people have a lot more power over your life than say, terrible Congresspeople like Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Green who are currently in the minority. Hat tip to Narativ Live with Zev Shalev for this point—the interview earlier this week with David Pepper, who warns that state legislatures are Laboratories of Autocracy.
North Carolina is a truly purple state but thanks to gerrymandering, when the Republicans won majorities in the state House and Senate in 2010, they gripped power and have not let go since. They have brought bad law after bad law to bear on us in a state that voted more than 50% Democrat overall! We constantly have to fight for our reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, our rights to vote, and more. And fight we do! Reverend William Barber and the NAACP in coalition with many groups started Moral Mondays here, which has become a national movement. But it would be so much better to have a Democratic majority to work with. Please learn about your own state legislature. Who represents you in your House and Senate? What do they believe in? Do they align with your policy priorities and values? If so, how can you support them? If not, how can you vote them out? I have been a proud member and former board member of Lillian’s List of North Carolina for years: we proudly recruit and train progressive women who are champions of reproductive justice to run and win elections to the North Carolina General Assembly and Council of State.
Your homework is to find out who represents you in your state legislature, the house and senate. For extra credit you can look for a local or state group doing work to advocate for the values and policies that mean most to you. Let me know what you find out! Even in gerrymandered districts, if people really cared about who was representing them in the state government, we COULD change it. And that would be a real step forward.
On HuffPo: Damning Supercut Exposes Republicans Who Flip-Flopped On Trump And Jan. 6
First they condemned him. Then they backed off. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republicans-flip-flop-on-trump_n_61d7e1f3e4b061afe3b0d643
Beautiful, thoughtful reflection on the January 6th insurrection attempt and what it means for preserving our democracy. I particularly appreciate your action item. We’ve got work to do. Democracy is on the line.