Capitol Insurrection

Today marks the one year anniversary an attack on the very seat of the United States Democracy. I sat here, in this very spot one year ago — and watched in horror on TV as a mob of angry supporters of Donald Trump, stormed the capitol, and called for the hanging of the Vice President of the United States because he chose the constitution and his oath over a single man. They erected a gallows out front ready for the task.

All while Donald Trump sat comfortably in the White House watching it unfold on TV doing nothing to stop it. As his supporters, fueled by his lie that the election was stolen beat law enforcement officers while carrying thin blue line flags. These people were not patriots. They wished to install Donald Trump as leader despite losing a free and fair election. I’ll also note that many Republicans won in 2020. Did they challenge their own elections?

For a very short time Republicans said enough is enough — we cannot proceed like this. There was a glimmer of hope that maybe, they’d realize their error in supporting a man like Trump.

Casting a Vote for Exclusion

I have been thinking quite a bit this past 24 hours about the last four years, and the end of the campaign for president. For many of us it has been a truly exhausting four years for many reasons, all of which have been covered ad nauseum around the world and here at home. As of this writing over 146 million people voted in this year’s election. Of particular concern to me and the reason I am writing this is the 71 million people who voted for Donald Trump. Like it or not, this is in fact a record — he now holds second place in terms of number of votes cast for a presidential candidate.

But… why?

I have been having a hard time wrapping my head around this and I am still grappling with it. And spoiler alert, I will not be answering it here — and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to answer it. I also keep seeing people say “Have some understanding, you know how they felt from 2016” regarding his loss. But… do they really?

Casting a vote for Donald Trump is casting a vote for exclusion. You may have liked one or two of his policies that benefit you but in the grand scheme of things you casted a vote for exclusion. There is more than enough evidence of this, and I will list just a few of them.