Thursday, January 7, 2021

Emotional

 One of the things that William deals with is a lack of confidence. When faced with a new thing, his initial response seems to be "I can't do this" and it devolves to an emotional muddle. Nothing can be resolved until he settles himself down. I cannot tell you the number of times I have said to him, "Getting emotional doesn't help you."

Yesterday afternoon, as the end of the school day ticked ever closer, I walked between the two rooms. Tim returned to house and said, "The capitol is being attacked."

Up until that moment, the day had been winding down rather uneventfully. J is ahead in his math assignments, and had finished his work. He was happily playing a school sanctioned math game for his last half hour. William had finished his science. His assignments were all a continuation of climate and weather, but for whatever reason, his teacher worked with them on electrical circuits. Much to my surprise, William understands electrical circuits like nobody's business. In a competitive, Jeopardy style match up, the kids all rang in with their answers to various questions and electrical diagrams. William came second in his class and got 100% on his test. 

So William had extra time to read (A Wild Robot: think the creation story but with a robot named Roz). J was playing his math game. Tim turned on the television. We both watched the scenes play out in front of our eyes. Sedition. Treason, Rebellion, Incitement. Anarchy. Traitor. These all seemed like words from another time, but here they were, happening before our very eyes in real time.

There were people in my community celebrating this on social media. There were posts about how they knew that this would happen if Biden won the election, that Biden was destroying this country before he even got into office. Another showed pictures of the crowd and claimed that it was BLM doing the violence despite the sea of overwhelmingly Caucasion faces. 

Off in her own time zone, Cara IMed me. "Not going to lie. This is bad." 

I responded, "I figured that one out by myself." 

She asked me what would happen. I answered that my view was that the majority of the people would simply disappear as the hours passed, the ones that remained would be the dangerous ones, the radicals. I planned for a long night with every chance of violence. 

I knew that it needed to be written about, but last night, I could just manage a short post to note that the day had made me sick. Just sick. I can't write anything sensible when I'm emotional, no more than William can do his math when he is emotional. 

I am glad to say that it began to die down quickly.  For all the rallying, for all the calls to "be strong, not weak", the revolution ended as curfew neared. The building was cleared. The electoral vote counting began once again at 8 PM, and within a few hours, Joe Biden was officially the president elect. Of the 13 senators determined to contest and challenge the much contested and challenged results, only seven remained, and those seven were castigated not only by democrats, but by the members of their own party. 

This morning, Trump vowed an orderly transition of power, laughable in light of what had already gone down. Even as these people occupied the capitol, he was calling them patriots, and claiming that the election had been stolen from them. 

Now it's done. i feel like they must have after that long ago morning at Fort McHenry, after a sleepless night, to see "proof through the night, that our flag was still there". 

What will happen next? 

For the moment, there seems to be a truce. Will it last? I hope so. I will do my part. 

10 comments:

  1. Love the comparison to Ft. McHenry!

    I live outside of DC so all of this is local news as well as national news. I woke up this morning wondering how it would end. Glad Pence was on the news reading the results at about 5 a.m....

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  2. The Trump supporters still think he will rise again somehow. I'm sick at my stomach when I think about all this mess. Things are never going to be the same.

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  3. So sorry about this. We are all sickened, or at least all that I know.

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  4. I think the worst is over. But we need to understand what happened and hold those responsible accountable -- not just the demonstrators, but the ill-planned and ineffective Capitol security and, of course, the agitator-in-chief himself.

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  5. I personally hope that Trump is just removed from power using Amendment 25 Section 4 of our constitution but I'm guessing that won't happen. It was horrible to see that happen yesterday and felt like a real gut punch but for me, it wasn't out of the realm of possibilities after a summer of protests that resulted in much rioting, looting, burning and occupations of parts of cities with little apparent consequences. As long as we as a society tolerate this sort of behavior, I'm afraid these sorts of things are only going to happen more often and have worse results. For me the beacon of light for the entire thing was that Congress returned last night and certified the results that Trump and the protestors were protesting against. January 20th can't come soon enough.

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  6. Anonymous: just caught that typo, embarrassingly enough. Next time, just tell out, 'yo, stooopid!' My gosh. I spent a lot of years in Gaithersburg and alexandria.

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  7. I hope this situation resolves itself as quickly as possible. Very frightening for people to see. Arilx

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  8. I agree with Ed on the 25th Amendment. Trump is like a wounded bear and could do much more damage. He's a malignant narcissist and only cares about himself. I was sickened also, and wondering how the Capitol was breached so easily. It certainly wasn't like that for the BLM protests.

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  9. I addressed this on your previous post and yes, Congress reconvening last night was huge, both in the substance of what was accomplished and what was symbolized.

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  10. It's definitely past time for the 25th amendment. What an unbelievable point we've come to in the country. I, too, was shocked to see the lies immediately being spread about how it was "antifa pretending to be Trump supporters" and the people on local news pages applauding the horror. I no longer engage with those kind of people, haven't in a long time. I cut off contact with rabid Trumpers (some of whom were even family members) long before this for my own mental health.

    The 20th and the new President and the new Senate majority can't get here soon enough.

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