It’s Bad.
On Wednesday morning, I looked at the news, awestruck by the throng of people on the D.C. mall. I shared this curiosity with my sons.
“Look how many people!” I said. “Remember when we were down there for the March For Our Lives rally? There were 800,000 when we were there. I’m betting there are at least a million people – during a pandemic!”
We stared at the screen, which showed only a fraction of a million. They stood in the freezing cold, unmasked, smiling and huddled together; all I could think about was how many of them were likely to get COVID-19.
Then I casually moved on with my life. I was texting my mom some dumb stuff about how I was trying to walk indoors to get my 500 miles because it was so cold outside, when she texted: Capitol was stormed…. It’s bad.
Funny thing about bad news: it takes you back instantly to other bad news. It’s like it’s all tied together in the brain or something. My first thought was 9-11-01, when I sat in my mom’s living room, watching the horror on TV. My second thought was ducking and running from the D.C. sniper.
And now, a new image is burned into my mind: guns drawn on a broken window, as a mischievously evil face peers through the broken glass. It was like watching a movie, except for the genuine fear in the eyes of the law.
I watched as one lone police officer, armed with only a baton, tried to shoo away an angry mob as they plodded toward him. There must have been a hundred people coming at him, slowly and methodically. The officer backed away, waving his baton and trying to be stern, like he was dealing with a group of toddlers instead of a herd of grizzly bears.
To make matters worse, everyone in the mob was Caucasian and the officer was Black. He’d probably had “the talk” from his dad about what to do when a group of Whites attack him with racial slurs. I bet his dad never told him what to do if that group stretched from four feet to three miles away from his face.
There’s been a lot of talk about the attack on Democracy and not so much about the people involved. One woman was shot; she got a whole story in The New York Times. But the million others are still running wild in the streets, in their homes, posting videos on Facebook of their adventures.
Imagine if the police had shot everyone in the building. People are wondering why they didn’t, but I don’t wonder.
It would have been a massacre. The mob had guns and bombs. The police had guns and sticks. Along with a bunch of stupid, insane people, all of our country’s leaders could have been killed.
Well, all except one: Donald J. Trump was at the White House, watching the whole thing on TV. He would have survived, and been outraged that the people he “loved” got killed. (Not because he cared that they died, but because that would make his fan club slightly smaller.)
“This is just the beginning!” his fan club screamed. “Next time we’ll be armed and ready for battle!”
Since the U.S. is not (yet) Afghanistan, I am not as worried about random bombings as I should be. But I am worried.
My concern now is that Trump is going to pardon himself, and get away scot-free.