5 January 2025

I adjusted my eyes. I wanted to know the time. Outside it is as dark as when I went to bed at midnight.  Now it is 4:00 in the morning.  I can’t sleep.

My brain is full of images. Four years ago tomorrow, 6 January, I saw a sitting president rally a crowd to attack the People’s House.  I saw officers get bitten, beaten and others killed trying to keep order.

People who earlier in the day were in line buying their morning coffee, were getting ready to hang the vice president of the United States and the speaker of the People’s House. 

I saw my Oregon representative struggle to hide under her desk. I saw a woman demonstrator shot to death in the hallway of the People’s House—from votes to bullets.  And on that day “order” died.

Days and months passed. Committees were formed, votes taken; resolutions passed and “Citizen Medals” handed out to chairpersons of the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.  While the sitting president was handing out Medals of Freedom, the incoming president was honoring insurrectionists at Mar-a-Logo.

Normalcy and abnormality took over our lives and we do what we usually do—live—until, 7 October 2023.  Fed up with surviving in an Israeli prison in the besieged Gaza Strip, the prisoners broke free.   And the prison’s guards began a campaign of terror against the Palestinians that has no end.  

Like most people in the world, Pope Francis cried in the face of the carnage.

I have felt the pain from a distance away.  Last night, I saw a weeping Palestinian man cradling his five-day old baby, preparing to bury the little one in a shallow grave.  Moments later I saw the custodians of the “greatest democracy” vote billions more for the bombers to kill more babies.  Ironically, many who have and who will vote for weapons of mass destruction to be used against innocents in Palestine were the very ones to run for their lives, scared witless four years ago. 

The vile cheer leader who inspired and led the insurrection is about to lead again.  And me, I have to get up.

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