Insurrection, Impeachment, Inauguration.

What happens after the insurrection of January 6th? Should we move on in the name of “unity” like many Republicans are calling for?

No.

No, we should not, for the simple reason that while Republicans claim to want unity, what they really want is capitulation, and anything less is divisiveness. They want us to ask their 74 million voters what they want; how we can join together in harmony with them, but the only thing they want is to dismiss the 81 million who voted for a Democratic sweep. Those 81 million voted for equality. They voted for a public health policy that would begin a drawdown of covid deaths. They voted for common sense and common decency, and they voted in greater numbers; by 7 million more.

For four years, we’ve heard that elections have consequences, and now that Trump is gone, people like McConnell, Graham, Cruz, Rubio, and Hawley, among many, many others want their complicity forgotten and swept under the rugs of the House and Senate floors where they encouraged incitement through their words and actions or more likely their inaction to face the truth and facts.

Their refusal to acknowledge the legal President-Elect is one reason that their fake outrage and false flag “pleas” for unity should fall on deaf ears.

Refusing to back down from frivolous lawsuits, encouraging their followers that if Trump lost, it was fraud when their voter suppression was the only fraud being perpetuated isn’t a model for unity. They use honeyed words and hope we forget their treasonous behavior.

They want us to ignore the past twelve years of McConnell’s power grab and racism towards our first Black president and his obstructionism for what the majority of Americans want; the change they’ve voted for.

We won’t ignore it, and we won’t forget it.

Democrats are in the majority, and the chairmanships must show that. If McConnell won’t accept reality, then maybe the Jim Crow era filibuster needs to go, along with the slave-state-benefiting Electoral College. They split the Dakotas into North and South doubling the number of Senators, but balk at statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, where they continue to be taxed without any representation in Congress. The populations of North and South Dakota are comparable to DC, and when combined, 1.5 million LESS than Puerto Rico.

I wonder if when George Washington finished his second term and John Adams became our second president, did they know how history would remember that moment? It’s importance? Its uniqueness? Did they know they were in the middle of a giant moment of history? Did they think it would always be that easy?

Until this year, I think we, the American people took for granted the ease with which we move forward with a new president every four years. The assumption was that the cogs would slip into place and the gears would shift and turn easily and nothing would stop the country from moving forward.

Together.

It all worked like it was supposed to work for two hundred forty-five years.

Until now.

I lay that wholly at the feet of the Republican party. Not only the insurrectionists, the collaborators, the white supremacists, but all of the enablers in the party in Washington and around the country.

It will be said that this began with Trump in 2015, but the reality is it began in earnest with the Obama Presidency and the obstruction led by Mitch McConnell and his racism. It was enabled not only by the Republicans, but the racist system we have been working in from the beginning when we kept slavery instead of abolishing it with all men are created equal, and continuing with the 3/5 Compromise, the Electoral College and convincing people that land is the same as people and should have the same equanimity at the voting booth.

Former President Trump isn’t the only one who should face an impeachment trial. Some of those members of Congress who will decide his legal fate should also be held accountable for their sedition and conspiracy to overthrow the government.

Every Republican member of Congress who voted to overturn the election on January 6 should at a minimum be censured.

Anyone helping insurrectionists, before, during, and after the siege (like Reps. Gosar, Biggs, and Brooks) should be expelled and prosecuted. Senators Cruz and Hawley should be expelled and prosecuted and all of them should lose the opportunity to run for office again (as stated in the 14th Amendment).

The House followed through with the impeachment of Donald Trump, and it is only through the cowardly slow-walking of McConnell of not bringing the Senate back to hold the trial, there is talk of “letting it go.”

Well, no. That’s not how justice works.

Despite the Democratic majority, McConnell still refuses to relinquish committee chairmanships and whines about not enough time in a day to confirm Administration nominees, hold an impeachment trial, and continue with legislative business. Well, Mr. McConnell, hand the reins to Senator Schumer, the new Majority Leader and Leader of the Senate and he’ll show you how it’s done. I have every confidence the Democrats can get the people’s business done while fulfilling their Constitutional duty to an impeachment trial.

At the Inauguration we heard from many speakers, and please go back and listen to them all, but I would encourage you to listen in full to Inaugural Poet, Amanda Gorman’s poem, The Hill We Climb. Listen and watch her hand movements as they are part of the art of her poem. I will leave you with the last lines to carry you through this, the first full week of the Biden Administration:

When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it