Facebook Publication Date: 44203.792361111
Hey, it’s Laura. Lace asked me to run this post from my Facebook wall here, and encouraged us to take it to the Cafe groups to discuss as well. This is what I wrote this evening, after something over 24 hours of… pondering? meditating upon? stewing over? yesterday’s violent disruption of our democracy.
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Don’t think that, because I haven’t said anything yet, I don’t have opinions and feelings around yesterday’s attempted coup. I am… far from shocked. I am not even surprised. I am LIVID. Yes still. I’m working on it.
I am devastated that a woman was shot. I do not want, ever, to learn that the death penalty has been meted out, at all, much less without a trial and full recourse to the law. I am DEEPLY thankful that there weren’t more serious injuries than there were.
I am… I would have once thought of myself as inured to the sight of the Confederate flag. But I’ve become more deeply disturbed by it over my decades of life, not less. To see it being born through the halls of our Union’s capitol building… felt like an absolute GUT PUNCH of an insult to our nation and democracy.
Y’all, some of yesterday’s violent rioters were armed. Some had explosive devices. They set out to harm people in order to thwart an election even the administration’s election security personnel called safe and fair. An election that failed to secure the electoral vote, this time, for the man who has NEVER won the nation’s popular vote.
Something that strikes me as more and more true as my life goes on is how deeply and abidingly I loathe and despise hypocrisy.
Four years ago I was told to “get over it” when my preferred candidate, who won the popular vote, lost the electoral vote to DT. I guarantee some of yesterday’s seditionists told some snowflake to get over it four years ago.
I was challenged as to how I could condone people who were BREAKING WINDOWS of EMPTY SHOPS, y’all, over the umpteenillionth KILLING of an unarmed Black man by police. I guarantee those of yesterday’s terrorists who went armed and carrying zip ties into the Capitol building to disrupt a joint session of congress performing tasks necessary for the survival of democracy just clutched their pearls for that poor Starbucks.
I watched the footage of peaceful protestors being violently cleared from the street they were blocking so DT could take his picture at the church, while cops yesterday posed for selfies with traitors trying to seize the capitol building, and directed them to the restrooms upon request.
Every since Kaepernick first kneeled, I have seen meme after meme about how horrendously disrespectful silently kneeling during the national anthem is to everything from the cloth being waved to the veterans who defend us to the very nation. I guarantee that the person who lofted the Confederate flag in the halls of the Capitol, and the one who worked to replace the US flag with one bearing DT’s name, decry the horrible insult of… kneeling.
I am FURIOUS, still today, at the utter hypocrisy on display. At people who have never bothered to cultivate an ounce of self-awareness, or look one inch beyond their own selfishness and self-centering. Have they been fooled and used? Sure. But grown ass adults have a duty to question, challenge, and NOT be used. Dereliction of that duty is a choice. A choice that is the more comfortable option, I suppose, when you can blame and dehumanize someone else rather than recognize your own mediocrity or the failure of the systems you grew up being taught were exceptional.
I was taught all of that. I didn’t stop learning and questioning, and now I know better. Is it easy or comfortable? No. Is it my absolute responsibility as a human on this planet? Yes.
I have more thoughts. But I haven’t really teased them out clearly. I’ll just end with this…
It’s not over. DT was never much more than a symptom, a catalyst, an occasional boost. White supremacy still girds, underpins, and holds together the laws and customs of our country. That doesn’t stop now, or on January 20. We have a chance to walk a clearer path toward a better America for EVERYONE here. But we still have to walk it.
So that’s where I’ll be.
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