Insurrection Reflection

I don’t plan to post this on Facebook. I’m not sure if anybody will read it, as I have very few followers these days, and I’m not even sure if the software works to alert people of a new post. But I need to write this.

I have been in denial. It’s a common reaction, I suppose, to a widespread calamity that can’t immediately be assimilated. While many were glued to their television sets watching the unfolding violence of the assault on the US Capitol last Wednesday, I don’t have TV. I was listening to the radio and they interrupted the program to report on events in D.C. So, it wasn’t as frightening or dramatic for me, but still … when a friend called to tell me what was going on, I still couldn’t quite get my mind around it.

And another friend called me that night and expanded on the possibilities of what could happen if there is a combined inability for police and military to stop more violence from happening. And still, I maintained that we were going to get through this. I believed it was like a poison that needed to get out of our system before we would start to heal.

Days later, watching what has happened, and listening to some of the reactions around the country, and the world, I had lost some of my faith, but I still tried to put this into perspective. We will get past it, I thought. Our country is split. Our country is broken. But not everyone who followed the president’s call to action wanted to commit violence. Not all of his followers have bad intentions.

Seventy-four million people voted for him. Not enough to elect him, but enough to be a force to be reckoned with. But they can’t all be armed militia. Some of them are friends and family whose hearts I know well.

So, I wanted to believe that only a handful of extremists – white supremacists, Nazis, and rioters – had perpetrated these treasonous acts. And the media was finally starting to take responsibility for their culpability in giving the president instant access to a virtual loudspeaker to foment his followers to believe his alternate reality and arm themselves to fight.

And it took five deaths to make them take him seriously. Both rioters and police have fallen – a symbol of our divided state – both suffering equally. This was not a game where somebody could win and somebody else could lose, and then shake hands and go home. That was clear from the president’s refusal to accept that he lost the election fair and square. And deaths were the result.

Twitter blocked him permanently. Facebook blocked him until he goes out of office next week. Snapchat and Instagram blocked him. Some of the most dangerous websites are being blocked. And slowly they are also removing incendiary posts from their users and disabling their accounts.

But this morning, one statistic made me stop. Twitter has disabled 70,000 accounts. That is a huge number. It doesn’t even include people not on Twitter. It doesn’t include people without internet.

Even if some of those are mindless bots, that’s a lot of anger and dissatisfaction – DANGEROUS anger that can erupt in violence and – in extreme form – civil war.

So, our country is broken. As I knew. But healing it isn’t just going to take a long time, as I thought. It might not happen. We might stay broken. And this is the first time I have believed that even possible.

I convey my apologies to my friends who tried to convince me of the intensity of our emergency. You are right. We are in a perilous situation. One thing I do believe. We all love our country, except for those who just wanted a selfie in a costume, holding a gun or a confederate flag.

Any of my friends can tell you that I’m relentlessly optimistic. I always say, don’t be afraid or worry too much about the future. Whatever happens, you’ll be able to deal with it – you’ll find a way because you have no other choice. But what if there’s no good strategy? What if we’re doomed to fail? Of course, fear and worry still don’t help. I will still try to calm my mind and help anyone else looking for techniques to do so. But I’m no longer in denial.

At this point, we are just taking one day at a time. I do love my country, the birthplace of Chief Joseph, Woody Guthrie, Shirley Chisholm, William Faulkner, Emily Dickinson, Ursula LeGuin and Mississippi John Hurt. And millions of others too numerous to list. Let us not forget that diversity is sewn into the very fabric of our nation, and somehow even this torturous split has the innate thread of unity.