We make it all-too complicated.
When I was a young, smart-ass in high school, I scrawled something on the locker of my then ex-girlfriend with a Magic Marker. (It had something to do with the break-up.)
I was caught in the act.
And the next day I spent the entire day washing down not only the locker in question but every locker in the building.
It didn’t occur to me to call a lawyer.
We have all seen the riot that took place at the Capitol one year ago.
We have all seen the destruction that occurred.
We have all seen the police being attacked by the rioters.
We have all seen what we never imagined would ever happen after a speech given by the sitting president of the United States.
Yet somehow this didn’t happen?
Somehow this wasn’t bad?
Somehow this isn’t something that punishment needs to be meted out for?
Somehow there is no responsibility being applied to the responsible?
Yes, there have been more than 700 charged for participating in the riot. Some 70 have been sentenced.
A simple question: What if instead of scrawling a message to Peggy on a locker I had thrown desks through the windows of the classrooms she was in that given day?
Would I have found myself taking up a career as a glazier, or would I have found myself, post-haste, in (a) the principal’s office and then (b) in juvie?
Would my parents have grounded me until, oh, I qualified for Social Security?
I’m guessing that regardless of which side of the aisle you’d sit, you know the answers to those questions.
That’s not hard.
During his speech to the crowd on 1/6 (“We have hundreds of thousands of people here”—uh, no, but that was just one of a Niagara of lies), Donald Trump talked about how “they” were planning on renaming the Washington Monument and getting rid of the Jefferson Memorial. And “They’ll knock out Lincoln too.”
“But then we signed a little law. You hurt our monuments, you hurt our heroes, you go to jail for 10 years.”
“You hurt our heroes, you go to jail for 10 years.”
Presumably, he was talking about stone statues, not flesh-and-blood individuals.
What if he had been in office and the Capitol Police were being beaten with flagpoles and hockey sticks, being drenched in the face with bear spray?
Not hard to imagine his reaction to that.
During his presentation he said, “we’re going to have to fight much harder”… “And after this, we’re going to walk down [to the Capitol, where Congress was undertaking its Constitutional duties], and I’ll be there with you” and “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”
“Lawfully slated” as defined by Trump and Trump alone, with fictitious claims like, “In Detroit, turnout was 139% of registered voters.” Huh?
“So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” he concluded.
And we know what happened then.
Trump was the leader of the country. Trump was a man who should have been truthful. Trump was a man in a position that once school children (maybe not high school, but. . .) were told to respect.
What happened?
We know what happened.
It wasn’t the “fake news media.”
It wasn’t “big tech.”
It wasn’t any list of other villains.
Trump lost.
He — and all those who did and who continue to support him in his lies—should be ashamed of himself for claiming otherwise.
Shame.
It is as simple as that.
And every parent — Democrat or Republican — should think about whether anything that happened on 1/6 is something their children should emulate.
Peggy knew what a jackass I was.