The Twelve Minutes Of Video Which Changes Everything... We Hope---

The Twelve Minutes Of Video Which Changes Everything... We Hope---

I watched, and have read mostly everything available. I usually have some kind of political analysis, but after watching the twelve minute video, it hardly feels appropriate. It's like making "play-by-play" commentary on the funeral of a loved one.

The level of hatred, ugliness, and violence, of undistilled evil which drove that mob on that day was lurking there all along below the surface. This was the vile inhumanity of a KKK lynching, except deployed against our "People's House."  

Only one man in our history is evil enough, has the power enough to bring this out on this scale. This is not my America, and those people not of us. They are a disease, as is the Party which defends him and the movement which empowers him. This isn't politics, it is war.. 

Forgive me, but he has brought such hatred and anger out in me that sometimes I lose myself. He is making us all ill.  It is a struggle to keep my composure and stay on message, when there is no "message" that I can deliver, and no analysis which is coherent with my actual emotions. Not today. The most extraordinary thing about this committee was their calm in the face of this historic crisis. This is one way you know who you can trust with leadership in times like these.

What is there to hope for in these times? Maybe, in the the same sense that Trump has brought out the worst in America which we were witness to this evening, he is also, through his malignant words and actions, bringing back to life that which is the very best in us. We can only hope that it is substantial and timely enough to strike with and turn the enemy's most vulnerable flank, which is the twelve minute video itself. 

Everything else that transpires in these hearings are mere footnotes to what we witnessed, every bit as much as was the trial of Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd, who was convicted by a nine minute video taken in real time. There is no "unseeing" what we all saw, which is why the mind control experts at Fox News blacked it out. 

Last night, the entire world was witness once again to Donald Trump kneeling on the neck of our seat of government and laws, our system of democracy, our children's futures. 

As for myself, I feel oddly enough that I shouldn't overthink what we will be reading and hearing about over the next days, rather to allow myself first to experience the full range of emotional turmoil from last night, and let that guide me. To not "block" on it. I shouldn't need any more information, frankly, to know where my responsibilities lie, though information is useful. 

We've entered a whole new domain in which few of the old rules for public discourse still apply. We will be discussing things which were previously inconceivable, in a historical context which is unprecedented. What we all watched last night was not politics, it was war, and there is no unseeing it, no unstarting it. Our lives are about to change drastically for the second time in the last three years, not because of a viral Pandemic, but a pandemic of violence. That is the new reality which confronts us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. 

What we are watching this week is not a TV series. It is our political combat manual, which lays out the tactics and strategy of our enemy and their force's command structure. What we do with it, and how we train with it is what is primary. Our only weapons are truth and ideas. What remains for us all is finding the resolve to use them.