Turbulent Priests

On January 6th, 2021, our capital fell under attack. Regardless of your political persuasion, someone violently bashing in your door and killing your security guard in the process qualifies as an attack. People roaming the halls of your home chanting about how they are going to kill you — an attack. The halls of the most powerful nation on the planet, indeed, to ever exist, trembled by the actions of a select few. These were not conservatives, those stalwart defenders of an idealized America, because conservatives — true conservatives — know the difference between stifling free speech with violence and terror, and championing it. Americans should be horrified, and we should be offended. In the Marine Corps, we were taught repeatedly that our purpose and existence were to defend freedom and not to stifle it.

Our goal was to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, and ensure the rights bestowed upon American’s everywhere (in the world) were not abridged and not trampled. Carefully our drill instructors and leaders taught us that our loyalty was to the Constitution, and not to the President, or to our superiors, or to any other human or position.

The Constitution was under attack that day. Not the aging piece of paper storing words tucked away with the Declaration of Independence, but the soul and character of our nation. That character is laid out in the document but is so much more than the words recorded thereupon.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Justice in the founding of a Supreme Court, representing the just distribution of responsibility and retribution in the well-thought-out agreement decided in courtrooms across our nation. Domestic tranquility in the peace that we can and should reasonably assume in going about our daily lives. General welfare in the ability of us to feed ourselves and eke out a living. Finally, the blessings of liberty, the freedom to make choices in and sometimes even against our own best interests. These are the foundation of our nation and our government’s primary responsibility.

How many of us have slept peacefully since November 6th, when the illusion that we were above all was grossly shattered in an environment of increasing animosity and threats holding our lawmakers and families hostage in their decision-making? I haven’t. And you shouldn’t.

Because January 6th wasn’t an attack, but a strategy. But how can I say this? Nobody actually asked anyone to attack the seat of power of our nation.

The Power of Words and Influence

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? - Henry the 2nd of England, 1170

We conveniently forget the power of words, especially when wielded by people in power. Would we suggest the phrase above having been uttered in anything but frustration that the power of the church as yet wasn’t completely under his control? Yet the moment these words were uttered, events unfolded that would not have unfolded otherwise. Four knights traveled almost 260 miles, in the time before vehicles and planes and even reasonably good boats, to kill the Archbishop of Canterbury.

America has been under attack for longer. Violence, we all know, isn’t a foreign concept but an invention refined here at home and has been wielded to great effect. The greatest of all violent events of Americans against Americans was perhaps the civil war when the nation nearly split in two, but that’s only if we discount the violence against slaves since the 1600s, and the violent push westward sparked by Andrew Jackson and his oft celebrated manifest destiny. Nothing is more American than violence, and to use inciteful words in such a volatile nation is at best idiocy and at the very worse - strategy.

Too often it’s been the latter. And yet, time and again we manage not to hold those vomiting such words out into the world responsible for their irresponsibility. This is what causes me anxiety. I see once again person after person who participated in the violence being brought to some form of justice, and yet, I have not seen those who incited the violence brought forward to pay. In fact, many of those same people still sit in the halls of a Congress against which they fomented the worst home-grown attack in recent history. And worse — they are denying it, in stunning fashion.

We maintain that there is a right beyond politics, and that truth transcends political ideology. It’s only with a very heavy heart that we say that one of our beloved counterbalances in this nation have gone off-kilter. There are those in conservative politics who decry the events of January 6, and yet others — people in positions of real power — refuse to take a side. They refuse to defend the planks of our government or those responsibilities on which government sits. For such a type to have risen up in the party that used to stand for accountability and integrity — is so much more than tragic. It leaves us open to attack from within and without because such attacks and the refusal to mete punishment out mean only one thing: an unbelievable chill across the free speech that we claim to cherish.

In Our Midst…

Make no mistake. Those who chisel away at our freedom of speech, our Liberty, through the use of violence also chisel away at three of the other four goals of government. They treat the idea of Welfare, that goal of looking after each other — one might argue the entire purpose of people joining together to form institutions in the first place — as some evil thing. In failing to hold themselves and others accountable, they attack the foundation of Justice.

But of course, they must, because, for example, we should not forget, Lauren Boebert tweeted out locations of her fellow legislators during the attack. She was not the only one with ties to attackers, either. And now, so many — I won’t call them conservatives — terrorists? Entryists? Perhaps that’s the best word. So many entryists have entered our halls that they have successfully taken over the Republican party and are right now scheming on how to do the same with the entire nation.

In Closing…

So what must I say on January 6, 2021? My heart breaks for the defenders of our capital who were swept up in what I view as an intentional strategic play for power. It’s easy to say that it was no big deal when none of our lawmakers were injured. To do so would discount the value of human life in a way that’s unfortunately too American, actually. But to say that when only the foot soldiers have been brought to justice, and the instigators still remain at large and even still roam those very halls that they deigned to attack is a special form of self-delusion. Doing nothing amounts to hoping that the next time will never happen. I’m glad to see the January 6 Committee churning through relentlessly, but if on the other side of this, no lawmaker or defeated former president faces criminal charges for their participation, then I wonder how our democracy can survive.