First, let me apologize for the lack of a newsletter update over the past several days. My attention has been pulled in multiple directions, and I felt after Wednesday that anything I immediately wrote would be no more than a knee-jerk reaction to the horror we watched unfold at the U.S. Capitol. I don’t care what you call what happened, but five people are dead in the wake of Trump supporters storming Congress to interrupt the counting of Electoral College votes following a rally where the President called upon the crowd to march down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Then for lack of a better description, all Hell broke loose.
I will add that my mother predicted all of this following the Election in November, that some sort of incident would happen and it would bring about the ugliness of a sort we’ve not experienced before. I hate to admit it, but she was right. Now we all have to take a big bite of a crap sandwich.
What platitudes in that moment I could think of would not have contributed to the conversation, and thus it felt more appropriate to put my efforts toward local news instead. Yet over the past days, I have watched this situation further devolve into competing shouting matches and given me further pause.
Politicians from both sides of Congress have called for President Trump to resign, Democratic leaders want Vice President Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, and impeachment the rematch seems to be headed for a House of Representatives vote. President Trump has at least gone in front of cameras to say President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 19, as if he had a choice in the matter.
Additionally, arrests are happening amid an investigation by the FBI. People are resigning from posts, and everyone is in some kind of uproar.
President Trump had his social media cut off; Parler was removed from Apple, Google, and Amazon Web Services and right-wing politics tried to shift the story in a different direction.
While all this was happening in Washington, D.C., and arrests made all over the country in the aftermath, other events were happening locally of import. COVID-19 numbers jumped by new records, and people I have worked with and covered over the years were getting sick. A local business burned down.
The world as Americans knows it is on fire.
I think we can all agree that the events of the first week of the year – locally and nationally – have been disturbing. Yet what I wonder is this: do we all at least agree on what happened to us over the past five days?
I feel like there are multiple states of reality being played out right now, each different based on which political philosophy is being pushed by the presenter. I say this with the understanding that my own view of politics is also defining my views on what is happening.
We have long lived in a world where what happens in digital life spills into the real world – I have covered firsthand how words on a screen can lead to murder, for instance. Now we have an indelible example of the consequences of weaponizing digital life and exploiting that with death and destruction as the result. What makes it worse is the speed at which it all took place.
In a week, we’ve experienced what feels like a year already. Yet this is the start of the second week of the year today, so I’m gathering that we must all be prepared for additional shocks to our system during the coming days. I don’t feel like the situation is going to get any better, but instead will get worse before we see light at the end of the tunnel of terrors we’re experiencing.
What’s saddest to me is that we did this all to ourselves. You can’t sit here on the other side of the screen and tell me that you’re less responsible than anyone else. Why? None of us did our part as American citizens to stop what was coming. Instead, we bickered like children about problems that don’t require any movement from either side. Our leadership took advantage of social issues to raise campaign dollars than did nothing about them at all.
I’m not here to blame one side. I blame everyone, myself included. I didn’t raise awareness enough that you were being conned into believing that politicians will solve all of our problems, so long as we continue giving them $50 at a time.
You could have given me that $50 and I would have spent it more wisely than campaigns did. If anything, I think the campaign mailers we all got over the past months for the general and then run-off elections would prove that point. They all ended up in the trash and will rot away in our landfill on Grady Road.
We’ve all seen what happens when the reality is allowed to be determined by who is speaking at the moment, and not existing on common ground that we can all agree is a fact. People who are denying that COVID-19 exists for instance, go tell that to Sgt. Barry Henderson of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, who was put on a ventilator on Sunday (update: he’s recovering, more to come on that.) Or Rockmart City Manager Jeff Ellis.
Tell that to the 46 people who have died locally. More than 2,900 people as of Sunday have tested positive for the virus.
Want to deny the reality of our politics? Tell that to the Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by Capitol Police, the Kennesaw woman trampled by the crowd or the Capitol Police officer beaten – and who later died of his wounds – on video for everyone to watch.
Americans have to face up to the fact that we’re dealing with serious problems right now, the like of which we’ve never seen before. What happened last week makes 1968 look like child’s play, if you were to ask me.
So as we continue forward, ask yourself the following when evaluating what you want to seek as gospel truth or a bald-faced lie: the evidence is right before you on screens of all sizes. Your eyes haven’t deceived you. We really watched all this happen last week.
And I’m going to bet that not a single one of you liked it. If you did, then I suggest you go read some other news elsewhere.
Let’s get back to a common reality before we rip ourselves apart. We have now lost our moral high ground in the world as the “Defender of Democratic Values” in the eyes of those who are our friends and enemies across the globe. We wanted to be the global economic and military superpower, and we accomplished that. Keeping it without destroying ourselves is going to be the real trick now.
-Kevin the Editor
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