One year ago, on this day, I paused from my work, put on the television and began watching the news. I was curious to see how the certification of the election would go. Earlier that morning I had seen some news pieces about protesters gathering in Washington. There were pictures of them giving the middle finger to a large BLM banner or poster hanging on the side of a building, and I remember asking myself why these people seem to have so much hate in their hearts.
Watching the certification was uneventful for a few minutes, and then something seemed off. People started to bustle and move around – the Vice President was escorted out of the room. The insurrection had started. It was crazy to be watching it live. It reminded me of how I felt on 9-11. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I watched the news and followed twitter – it was nearly impossible to concentrate on much else. Startling images began to appear in the major new outlets: a confederate flag was marched through the halls of the Capitol, a gallows had been erected on the lawn, the crowd chanted “hang Mike Pence.”
For hours this went on – and there was no official word from anyone in our government. Eventually, the President came out with a video statement saying, “go home, we love you, you’re very special.” I was appalled. This same President once tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” suggesting looters during the BLM marches be shot. Yet we had people inside the Capitol breaking into high security offices, stealing laptops, killing police officers, marching a confederate flag through the building, and his message was “we love you, you’re very special.”
I shared my thoughts on Facebook. My messages were all pretty much the same, “Let’s be clear as to whom the president just said ‘we love you, you’re very special’” and they were paired with the images of the day. I also shared an article that had a quote from Giuliani’s speech from earlier in the day in which he urged the crowd to “have a trial by combat.” These people had been egged on… incited to violence. Documents and chatrooms now show some had been planning for violence for weeks. They simply needed to be told to march on the Capitol.
One year later, I’m as disgusted by what happened that day (perhaps more so) as I was then. The lies that stoked the violence have not been walked back. Every credible news source has said there is no evidence of widespread election fraud. The Republican representatives who, in the days following the insurrection, spoke harshly and denounced the President have essentially tried to pretend as though this never happened. They have repeatedly tried to downplay the events of that day… some calling it little more than a normal tourist visit.
I try to come at these things from a right to speech and right to protest point of view. While I find the symbolism behind gallows and the confederate flag to be very troubling, I believe in people’s right to protest and, yes, even carry symbols of hate. But those symbols take on an entirely different meaning when violence ensues. Many of the people who stormed the Capitol came armed and ready for violence – determined to have their own 1776 style revolution. Gallows cease to be symbolic when the crowd chants to hang someone and marches through the building after their victim. There were people who talked of executions and to this day, there are a lot of representatives who refuse to denounce what happened and call it what it was – an attempt to overturn an election… an armed insurrection against the government. They refuse to cooperate with any investigations – and the law and order crowd doesn’t seem quite as interested in law or order. One year later, and the dangers persist.
But for me, January 6 has a personal side, too. A week or so after the event, one of my board members informed me that they had gotten a complaint about my Facebook posts. They wouldn’t tell me who made the complaint. They wouldn’t tell me what the person had wanted done as a remedy (I assume they wanted me to be reprimanded or fired). My board said they investigated it and found no wrongdoing on my part – though hinted that a person in my position should be more careful. Maybe so.
My posts were public – I stood and would still stand by them. They didn’t promote hate. They didn’t incite violence. They were an expression of deep disappointment in the President’s remarks, hypocrisy, and lies. I had switched my settings over to public when I marched in the BLM movement in Memphis. Being more public went hand-in-hand with some of my feelings about this blog – living a more open and authentic life. The thing is, public Facebook posts are a lot like this blog – you’d have to go looking to find it. I’m not terribly visible and I’m not really friends on Facebook with anyone from the community where I work. I’ve intentionally kept that separation because of the position I hold. I suspect whoever lodged the complaint had been watching me. This was disturbing on many levels. I felt personally attacked and wasn’t even granted the right of knowing my accuser. After the complaint, I made those posts private along with the ones from the marches in Memphis. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t really be who I am – not here…
For the past year, this has bugged me – all of it. For the past year, I have censored myself on Facebook and this blog because someone took a shot at me. For the past year, I have let this incident be a defining moment in how I view my immediate surroundings. For the past year, I’ve had this kernel of self-doubt that says if this minor personal attack bothers me, maybe I’m not cut out to be a public-facing figure (politicians and celebrities endure far worse). I am neither a politician nor a celebrity – I’m just a guy trying to live his life and do some good in the world. All of this causes a type of low-level, consistent stress… a nagging form of minor paranoia. For the past year, nearly every time I’ve considered taking this whole thing down (which is almost weekly), it’s been because I don’t have enough trust in humanity to not worry about who is watching or if they’re the type of person who’s willing to fight fairly. Even now, I’m uncomfortable posting this piece. I continue to do it because I feel I need to have some control over my own freedom – some say in telling my story (however boring, or whiny it is). I study Buddhism (loosely) because I also want to counter-balance that need for control – ceding control is almost always the more peaceful path.
January 6, 2021 was an awful day in this country. And because I fight my own disappointment in humanity with humor… one of the funnier tweets I had seen said it’s kinda like deciding on dinner with a group of friends. Some say they want to order pizza and a few others say they want to kill and eat you. Sure, the group that wanted the pizza won out, but you still have the problem of the group who wanted to kill and eat you. The anniversary of January 6 reminds me, among other things, that there’s someone out there who, at least a year ago, wanted to kill and eat me.