Insurgency at Capitol seared into history

There were smiles in the crowd. Wearing bike helmets purchased at chain stores and dressed in military wannabee costumes, they gathered to hear what the president they have placed their hopes in and pledged their loyalties to had to say.

Protected within a Pope-mobile construct of bulletproof glass, the president screeched a litany of false facts and false promises — encouraging his crowd to march on the Capitol.

Many in the crowd who accepted this directive believed he was with them. In this large crowd that moved steadily toward the great temple of democracy, there were those who, in misguided optimism, believed he was there, marching with them. Marching to reverse an election that had not gone their way. Marching to take back “their” country. Marching to impede and reverse it all. Inspired.

The president had long departed. Having stirred the passions of the crowd with invective, he was already back at the White House. He was back sitting in that same room where Abraham Lincoln had shed tears for our divided nation.

He was back in the room where

Franklin D. Roosevelt had rallied our country against tyranny.

He was back, at the very desk, where John Kennedy had wrung his hands in worry under the cloud of a nuclear October.

Our president was in that room — the room where all that had happened.

Not long after his words inspired action, and the slow march began its journey, the two houses of Congress convened.

While politicians engaged in the motions of ministerial acceptance and procedural challenge of a fair and free election — those protesting against this otherwise bland expression of transitional democracy arrived at the gates.

There were smiles in the crowd.

And as they chanted, I was reminded of the certain truth of all mobs.

I was reminded of the faces of pre-war Germany, as I was reminded of the crowds gathered in the sick lynching photographs of our own horrid past. The enthusiasm for destruction offended me and I found the energized chants appalling as the maddened crowd hammered at the doors.

There is anonymity in the actions of the mob. There is no collective conscience in a rabble. The reckoning had arrived. It was at this moment, in history and in our time, that those responsible for this travesty — those otherwise ensconced safely in their places of political leadership — came face to face with what they had created.

The reckoning had arrived, and a worried world watched as our nation was challenged from within.

Blood was spilled in this exchange. Those charged with defending law and order were injured amid the chaos.

In the end, there was but a few hours’ pause in the procedural advance toward political transition. And yet, the nation that emerged from the delay was a different land.

Our nation — a divided nation, was on display for the world.

Shattered glass/splintered doors are just the elements of a building in most settings, but this building is a temple.

This building has long been a proud beacon for the world.

There were smiles in the crowd, even as the flash bangs were deployed, the smoke drifted, and the frazzled officers of the law were pushed back — or pushed down.

There were smiles in the crowd as a determined group inside the Capitol pursued a lone unarmed African-american security officer up the marble stairs shouting crude racial epithets as they advanced. He looked desperate as he tried to blunt their progress.

There were smiles in the crowd as security barricaded the doors to the chambers of law and justice against the mob, guns drawn. Still the mob advanced, peering through the shattered windows of the chamber.

Democracy survived the assault, but if anything, this attack proved how fragile it really is, just as the events of Jan. 6, 2021, proved how divided this nation remains.

There is blood on the hands of those irresponsible enough to inspire these actions.

There is blood on the hands of those who light fuses, raise fists of power, and then slink away into the shadows.

There is blood on the hands of those who failed in that moment of grim history that demanded leadership — those who failed to rise in reaction to that moment and condemn it.

History — our nation — will long remember with derision their names.