Dangerous Times

 It has been 10 days since a seditious conspiracy attempted to overthrow Congress and prevent the Constitutionally mandated requirement for Congress to count the Electoral votes for President. From the Ellipse where a mob formed listening to incitement from Donald John Trump and his minions, to the Capitol Grounds, and into the halls of Congress, we were witness to the closest our democracy has come to being toppled since 1861. We are 4 days from inaugurating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Washington has become a locked-down fortress with 10,000 National Guardsmen currently deployed, likely to be 25,000 by Inauguration Day. To say this is a national embarrassment is trivializing the issue. As a nation, we should be ashamed and enraged that Trump’s cult has brought us to this.

It is fair to say that the perpetrators of this travesty, from Trump on down to the least of his cult at the Capitol, all bear a heavy responsibility. One amazing thing is that all of them were recorded in the seditious conspiracy they undertook. Trump, Giuliani, Mo Brooks, and others are proudly on display before the walk down Pennsylvania Avenue exhorting the mob. How many were in the mob? We probably will never know, but the number is likely in the thousands and maybe even as many as 10,000. There were thousands of videos and photos, many taken by people in the insurrection themselves, that were posted quickly to social media. Now the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are very busy reviewing each one and identifying the criminals one by one, arresting them, and charging them in court.  Family and friends, appalled at what they have seen, are part of the identification process. If one is going to commit a crime, videoing it and making it a show on Facebook or Twitter is certainly a bad idea.

There is a very scary aspect of the events that is slowly coming out. Some of the insurrectionists have ties to law enforcement and the military. Until all the visual and audio evidence is sifted through, we will not know how many. Every one of these people is required to take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution. As they are identified and charges are filed, I look for many of them to be fired and banned from future law enforcement careers. If an active-duty military officer is identified and charges filed, they will face a court-martial. For retired military officers such as Larry Rendall Brock Jr, the possibility exists for involuntary recall to active-duty under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. Whether the Department of Defense will do so is uncertain. We are literally at the start of a very long legal process here.

When I began this blog in 2020, it never occurred to me that I would have to write about insurrection. We are polarized in a very bad way. Trump must be held accountable; he has been impeached a second time and will at some point those impeachment articles will be referred to the Senate. Likewise, the Republicans in the House and Senate who spurred on the mob by attempting to block the counting of electoral votes in a free and fair election (there was no fraud of any consequence) should be subject to expulsion under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment; their actions demonstrated a clear violation of their oath of office and support of seditious conspiracy. The entire Republican Party, down to the lowest local officeholder and registered voter, must repudiate lies and misinformation. We are at a dangerous crossroads in our history. Joe Biden has a massive set of tasks ahead.