From all we now know of the attempted coup against the United States, it is clear that we were on the edge of toppling into a totalitarian-ruled state after the 2020 election. The conspiracy was deep, wide, and mounted by those who were entrusted with the protection and defense of our constitutional system. The conspirators knew what they were doing was wrong, and they did it anyway.
Our system was founded on the belief that honorable men would uphold the oaths they swore. That only worked until the modern Republican party and their enablers in the media (Fox and their wannabe clones) came to power, and we’re still working our way through the consequences of that catastrophic shift.
If we survive this crisis (and I know we all hope we do) we cannot simply let this event fade from our collective conscious. This needs to be recognized as the defining battle of our time. Memorializing it will help prevent a repetition.
We’ll need to build a monument. We’ll need to recognize the heroes that saved the day and saved the country. Even the ones we don’t like. I know it can’t happen for a while. The current Republican party will need to disappear, as they refuse to acknowledge that anything bad happened at all on 1/6/2021.
We need to honor the election workers who battled the disinformation coming from TFG, sometimes having their lives threatened. We’ll need to honor the Capitol Police, who physically battled the mob, summoned in anger, to disrupt our democratic process. Yes, we need to honor Mike Pence for upholding his Constitutional duty. Dan Quayle had a role. And Nancy Pelosi, who rose to take charge when the President failed in his Constitutional duties. Any many others.
We cannot survive an existential crisis and not memorialize the event and what we learned. We have had great monuments built for much less. We are fortunate to have not had many events that rose to the level of threatening the existence of our country as we know it. This is one of them.
I’ve always liked the German Resistance memorial. It is subtle, but powerful.
We will build something uniquely ours. Like the German memorial, it will need to celebrate the heroes and leave the villains unmentioned. Everyone will know the names of the villains, for reasons we won’t be celebrating with memorials.
I hope to live to see it built.