I want my country back.
I’ll admit I’m not completely certain what that means anymore.
Am I longing for the white-male-chauvanist orderliness of my youth? No, we have to get past that, and we are, and of course rearranging our political and social norms on the scale that we are now engaged in is going to upset some people, maybe most people, but we have to persist. The people who have not had a voice must now be heard, and we must listen.
That’s not what is going on at this moment, though. The anger boiling into our streets, and into our Capitol, is not a cry for mercy and justice. It is the death rage of a group who are losing their grip on power and are digging in to keep it. White supremacists is not too harsh a label for them. Not just for the Proud Boys among them, but as well for the huge number of ordinary citizens who have been quick to pour out their hatred on social media and in public squares, who are ready to take up arms to protect their increasingly marginalized place in America.
They have been inspired and encouraged by our president. He is our very own modern Jefferson Davis.
Without an actual civil war, he has been defeated. But he leaves behind an angry mob that must be sent back home, or if they won’t go home peacefully, jailed.
We have to stop tolerating the hatred our president has encouraged.
He should be impeached. I doubt he’ll be convicted (even though I think he should be), but he should be barred, under the 14th Amendment, from ever holding federal office again.
Those who rioted in the Capitol should be arrested and tried.
The members of the House and Senate who on January 6 challenged the certification of the presidential election, after those results had been certified by the respective states and all judicial challenges dismissed, should be barred from serving in Congress.
Insurrections must have consequences. Any governor and any parent can tell you that.
Social media must stop allowing itself to be a bulletin board for hatred.
We have to calm down and go back to striving to be a nation of mutual respect and cooperative industriousness.
That’s the country I want back.