While I was resting in my home in St Louis, Missouri, in the early part of afternoon on January 6, I turned on the television, “woke” my Roku device, and I loaded the NBC News app. I was expecting coverage of the Electoral College vote certification in Congress and the twin runoff Senate elections in Georgia, only to instead learn that the Capitol Building had been stormed and that members of Congress were in hiding. I do not remember if my Dad was in bed and I went to tell him or if he was in the room with me, but I left the NBC News app running. I pulled out my smartphone, opened the Microsoft Word app, and began typing up a complaint to my members of Congress (Cori Bush, Roy Blunt, and Joshua David Hawley) with a request (and for Blunt and Hawley, a demand) for a Congressional probe — one that included televised hearings — into how security was breached. I soon learned that Joseph Robinette Biden had described the chaos as “insurrection” during a press conference and that images of the chaos had been broadcast all over the planet, drawing global condemnation. I also learned that someone who worked at Capitol Building grabbed boxes containing the Electoral College votes before evacuating to safety so as to prevent their destruction.
Some hours later, I caught Bush’s interview with MSNBC (through the NBC News Roku app) following the incident and was relieved that she was not harmed. The app later wound up live-streaming Hawley’s speech on the Senate Floor, and I had to fight to control my anger, because I have to take medicine for ADHD and was already infuriated about being a constituent of one of the insurrection’s main instigators in the Senate. But when Hawley had the gall to try and justify egging the insurrectionists on by claiming he was simply trying to give a voice to the people of Missouri, I was so enraged that I nearly lost my temper and had to fight back the urge to throw a screaming-at-the-top-of-the-lungs temper tantrum.
I later learned (in part from reading Daily Kos) that some of the insurrectionists were planning to assassinate Congressional leaders with positions in the order of presidential succession (and that those leaders came intolerably close to being assassinated, as well as that Electoral College votes that had not yet been counted came intolerably close to being destroyed), leading me to wonder if the temper tantrum I nearly threw would have been justified, not that I would have enjoyed it.
During the evening of January 9, I learned that there had been a protest against Hawley in Downtown St Louis. If I’d had advance knowledge of the protest and had been able to go, and if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, I would have gotten on the bus and gone Downtown.
If your Congressperson and/or one or both of your Senators had any role in contributing to the Capitol Building Insurrection, put their names in the comments section, along with what they did that contributed to the insurrection (if not already known), how angry you are at being one of their constituents, and if something they did in the aftermath almost triggered a temper tantrum. If they did something in the aftermath that did trigger a temper tantrum, I sympathize, considering what’s been revealed in the insurrection’s aftermath.