The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Too many right-wing ideologues in Congress, and at large, incorrectly trumpet that the Jan. 6 Donald Trump-incited assault on the U.S. Capitol was akin to the musket shots fired at Concord and Lexington by our patriotic Colonial forebears to defend our nascent republic. It was not!
It was a coup attempt to overthrow our Nov. 3 election. On Jan. 6, America dodged a bullet aimed at the heart of our democratic republic!
Why is it necessary to repeat facts you already know? We must reemphasize the dire threat of that nearly successful attempt to turn America into a banana republic.
We need to arise from our mind-numbing stupor after a four-year, daily force-fed diet of Trump’s nonstop outlandish lies, exaggerations and phantasms. Almost half of all Americans imbibed the intoxicating effects of his lies and treacherous, QAnon-like myths. They, like zombies, fell into irrational hypnotic trances from the incessant drumbeat of Trump’s big lies.
The rest, who resisted and didn’t buy what this master huckster was selling, became inured to and mentally calloused by his unrelenting illogical and convoluted rhetoric. Remember, Trump announced, honestly and openly months ago, most of the details of his scheme to contest the Biden election. Republicans in Congress and millions of Trump cultists bought into the Trump chicanery eager to perpetuate their grasp on the reins of our government. The other millions of Americans voted for and elected Joe Biden to replace Trump.
Trump sprang his trap on Jan. 6. He unleashed a flood of bile, aided and abetted by his congressional sycophants. Trump lit the fuse for his militia to bombard, besiege and ravage our Capitol with the aim to overthrow our government. The reactions of the millions of inured, calloused and hypnotized Americans, who had just elected Biden, were, and still are, too muted. They have not yet awakened from their Trump-induced lethargy to realize that Trump had commanded an armed coup.
America needs to wake up and to realize how close we came to becoming more like China or Russia than the democratic republics all of us have cherished since our founding days. Those concerned millions who braved the terror of the COVID-19 virus pandemic to vote for and to elect Joe Biden need to stoke their fires of enthusiasm. They need to arouse an enduring fighting spirit to achieve the promises of the Biden presidency. The fight for the soul of America is not over — it has just begun!
Concerned Americans dare not settle back into the narcosis of their previous stupors. We’re sick and tired from the constraints imposed upon us to avoid infection from the COVID-19 coronavirus. We’re sick and tired from too many months of political infighting through seemingly endless primary battles to the struggles to get out the votes to defeat devil Trump. We are simply sick and tired.
But victory is not in hand. Like the steadfastness and levelheadedness of Joe Biden, we must forge ahead to assure free and fair elections to ensure that our elected officials at every level hear every voice. The Democrats have a razor-thin edge in both houses of Congress. Biden needs help from every American to overcome the awesome power of the entrenched and intractable congressional Republicans to move his agenda, the one for which most of us voted.
Americans know how to exercise their political muscles. It’s time for each of us to let our elected officials at every level know that we want to see an end to acrimony and divisiveness and a dedication to the kind of unity for which Biden calls
Together, we must make certain to pull out all the stops. Imagine that we are on the 2-yard line — reinvigorate your strength — push Joe over the goal line and enable him to score.
