A year ago today, I did not go to school. Due to our COVID-enforced hybrid schedule, Wednesdays were at-home days where no virtual classes took place.
In our living room, my mother had the news on in anticipation for the televised electoral vote count from the previous year’s election. I was interested to see how the event would play out, as I was well aware that protestors would be at the Capitol insisting that the loss of the previous president to the people’s vote was unjust. I was expecting to laugh at a gaggle of delusional, pathetic fools as one of this country’s final remaining tenets of democracy did its thing.
What I actually ended up seeing was a direct, effective, borderline killer threat to democracy itself.
I was practically glued to my television screen as rioters with their profane chants and absurd displays of red, white, and blue clumped into a boisterous mass eventually powerful enough to seep into the Capitol with very little restraint. I got to see a makeshift militia of brainwashed, blood lusted, homegrown terrorists, ordered by their chosen leader to protect their country by trampling on its foundations, stumble around those supposedly sacred halls of American institution, power-drunk and disgraceful. What did the popular vote matter when these once-marginalized, now-organized morons didn’t get their favorite flavor of Popsicle?
I knew right away that things would never truly be the same again.
The storm was ultimately unsuccessful at actually overthrowing the government. But it threw the doors wide open for those who cannot stand to think that we are all human. It beamed from the rooftops: fight for your belief in lies! Fight for inequality! You can do it! And these signals have worked, based on how many concerned parents have been putting up hands at school board meetings or opting for homeschool because their districts dare to teach children basic truth, or how many people are passing around cups of bleach flavored Kool-Aids about everything under the sun.
A lot of people love to cry “never again” at every big, culture-shattering event before excusing events of similar magnitude that do not negatively effect them or their favorite political pundit. But it’s true: deluding yourself has never been so cool.
Maybe it’s time we stop living in fear of the truth. Maybe.
