With the anniversary of the January 6, 2021, insurrection looming, I thought I’d remind all of you what really happened on that day — not the outright MAGA lies (that the rioters were tourists — or Antifa — or planted FBI agents) and not the resurrectionist history being propagated by Republican legislators (that it was a mostly peaceful protest, and that protesters were invited into the Capitol). This insurrection occurred just three years ago, not two hundred and three years ago, and any of us who were viewing that day (almost 33,000,000 households according to Nielsen) know and trust what our own eyes were interpreting for us. This is just a reminder of how fragile our democracy is, that we must stand vigilant and protect it as best we can — and that we can’t allow the disgraced, twice-impeached, treasonous, sexual abusing ex-president anywhere near the Oval Office again.
by Tom Shafer
January 10, 2021
And no, this isn’t a reference to or dialogue about Big Wednesday, the 1978 surfing movie I loved (and still do!) in my teen years – though in many ways, the “big Wednesday” in the film, when the biggest waves in living memory arrive on Southern California shores to challenge every surfer, to reveal whether he or she has what it takes, might be an appropriate metaphor for the events of January 6, 2021.
Yes, that Big Wednesday.
And actually, it was a day I was looking forward to. Very early that morning, around 2:30 a.m. or so, the election results for the two Georgia Senate runoff seats began swinging Democratic, and increasingly it appeared that both Reverend Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were on their way to winning those races. For me, winning back the Senate meant that perhaps gridlock in Washington would be broken up a little, that perhaps we might see movement on legislation that will help America and its citizens – all of its citizens, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.
Additionally, January 6th was the day designated for Congress, during a rare joint session, to count and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, naming Joe Biden as President, thus confirming and ensuring the peaceful transfer of power. Having suffered the slings and arrows (or Tweets and ramblings) of the Trump administration for four years, I was certainly welcoming this celebration of democracy in action – and a return to the normalcy, dare I say boredom, of traditional governing.
But for me, Wednesday was even more consequential than any of these events. Because at 10:20 a.m. that morning, my special-needs sister and I were scheduled to receive our first doses of the Moderna vaccine. The state of Ohio prioritized, in the second phase of its vaccination plan, adults with developmental disabilities and their caregivers. Being my sister’s sole surviving family member, I was deemed “essential” by administrators with the Greene County Board of Developmental Disabilities and thus granted authorization to get inoculated with her.
So we did, and I am grateful that she (and I) is now afforded an increased level of protection. My sister lost both of her jobs last year as a result of the pandemic, one (as a greeter at Homewood Suites) that she had held for over thirty years – as the longest tenured employee in the company! My sister loves to work and help people, so with the assistance of GCBDD and OOD (Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities), she was able to acquire a job cleaning the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) at Miami Valley Hospital here in Dayton. Though I know that, with the assistance of her supervisors, she was being protected while completing her work, I did worry about her exposure to COVID. I feel so much better now that an mRNA vaccine has created a spike protein in her, against which her body is building an immune response and making antibodies, all which will protect her from future infection. Of course, I’m glad that the same thing is happening in my body as well.
So, after the inoculations and a quick trip to the grocery store, I settled in to watch coverage of Congress counting and certifying the election results – while I was completing a little word processing. Of course, it was well-documented (including by yours truly) that over a hundred House Republicans and a handful of Senators were planning to contest these results, thus creating a spectacle of what is typically a barely-covered, perfunctory electoral procedure. CNN was also following the raucous Trump rally a few blocks away, reporting on its large size and the incendiary rhetoric pouring through loudspeakers: “Show some fight. Learn from Donald Trump, and we need to march on the Capitol today” (Eric Trump); “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass” (Rep. Mo Brooks); “Let’s have trial by combat” (Rudy Giuliani); and “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about . . . So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” (Donald Trump).
In what would become a split-screen afternoon, just after 1 p.m., opening speeches in the House and Senate were being juxtaposed by views of people spilling onto the Mall, the rally now over, attendees actually answering the calls from their leaders. Shortly thereafter, an Arizona representative filed the first objection to state Electoral College certification, which prompted the House and Senate to return to their separate chambers to debate the merits of the objection for up to two hours. Around 1:30, capitol police ordered evacuation of many nearby buildings, including the Library of Congress, and it became apparent that the rally was now turning into a riot.
By 2:15, police were reporting that the unruly mob had breached the Capitol itself, and in an unbelievable, live television moment, at 2:22, the Secret Service violently escorted Vice President Mike Pence from the Senate chambers. In that instant, the full gravity of the situation became obvious. For the next three hours, an out-of-control insurrection raged inside and on the grounds of the United States Capitol, an attack now being perpetrated against the American seat of government.
Sometime during the four o’clock hour, as law enforcement clashed with traitors, one of the CNN reporters, reading from the CNN scroll feeding across the bottom of the screen, announced that Jon Ossoff had been declared winner of his race, signaling that Democrats had regained control of the Senate – a truly odd concomitance given the violence that was still ongoing. What should have been a moment of celebration for Democrats was lost in the D.C. melee.
Somewhere between the six and seven o’clock hour, police, with aid from the National Guard, reclaimed the Capitol and grounds, but the damage was done. Four were dead, one shot just outside the House Chamber, and a capitol police officer would die a day later from injuries sustained while defending congressional members and their staffers. Offices and conference rooms had been ransacked, and much of the building resembled the fallout of a warzone. Political leaders and pundits were questioning the safety of our elected officials, our most sacred buildings, our institutions, even democracy itself.
But, the coup now quelled, and in a show of remarkable defiance, Senators and U.S. Representatives returned to the Capitol at 8 p.m. to complete the work they had started some seven hours earlier. They would debate and vote for nearly eight more hours before President of the Senate Mike Pence would announce (at 3:45 a.m.), “Joseph R. Biden Jr. of the state of Delaware has received for President of the United States, 306 votes. Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 232 votes.”
As I turned off my TV, déjà vu slapped me hard across the face. ‘This was just like 9/11,’ I thought to myself. And in so many ways, it was. I was teaching back then (read “My 9/11” under the For Your Consideration tab), but when I got home from work, I watched coverage until almost four in the morning, too amped up and too angry to allow sleep to take me. Our world changed in the wake of that event, and I suppose it will with this one too. And though I am still processing what happened on January 6, 2021 – from the Georgia runoff to Capitol insurrection to Joe Biden’s certification to my Moderna vaccination – I do know one thing: Big Wednesday had quietly rolled into what would become Outrage Thursday.
