A Big Salad

I was in the middle of writing a long, sprawling, multi-tangent blog post about the phone call that President Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State, when all hell broke loose at the Capitol building.

Four people died after an angry mob stormed the place, broke in and began wreaking havoc.  Unless you have been in a coma, you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, what followed was outrage, backpedaling and a ton of news coverage.  I think I've watched more news in the last 72 hours than I did in the entire month of December (and that includes a Christmas Day bombing bender).

Here are my takeaways

1.  There are some crazy motherfuckers out there.  Some of them currently hold office.  

2.  Just because you own a fur and viking horn ensemble, doesn't mean you should wear it in public.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

3. There's going to be a huge Covid surge because of this incident.  That is way too many unbubbled people without masks for it not to happen.  

4.  If this wasn't a glaring example of white privilege, I don't know what is.

5.  And if you can't see #4, I'm not sure we can be friends.

It's interesting how much more critically I've started looking at things in the past year.  A friend of mine who teaches fifth grade was teaching her class about the bombings of Pearl Harbor and the bombings of Hiroshima, and had them do a Venn Diagram activity.  She posted a photo of what they came up with, and while Americans were killed, the Japanese simply died.  The fact that I noticed it makes me feel good about my critical thinking skills.  I didn't say anything, because nobody likes a social media know it all - and, I wasn't there - I don't know what lead to that statement.  

I will get better at confronting injustice, but it's baby steps.  

The pony in all this horseshit is that both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were elected in the state of Georgia.   Which, you know - that's where I'm from.  My mother had the Warnock/Ossoff sign in her yard - she and her boyfriend voted together.  I couldn't be more glad or more proud.

So now, people are throwing around words like treason, sedition, insurrection.  I have to laugh at that because there used to be an adult toy store called Inserection not too far from my first apartment, so every time they say it, I mentally giggle.  I may be actually giggling - I don't know.  I haven't been in a social setting in so long, I sometimes don't know what I've said in my head vs. what I say aloud.

Honestly, what more can I say?  At this point, they have certified that Joe Biden will take office in 12 days, and now, we wait. Will they invoke the 25th Amendment?  Will they impeach?  I don't see Trump taking the high road and walking away.  I assume he'll be dragged kicking and screaming to some extent.  

But it's an interesting time to be alive and seeing this all go down.  Because this is a period in history that kids will certainly study in the not too distant future.

And hopefully they won't let it happen again.

ae