The first anniversary of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol is days away. Unlike the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the bombings that took place on September 11, this event has been marred with obstruction. Like a bad accident and a police officer moving people along shouting “there is nothing to see here.” The controversy over this horrific episode has me confused, saddened, and frustrated. The commission made up of politicians that survived this event, all Democrats, apart from two Republicans, are some of the bravest politicians working in our nation’s capital in decades.

Imagine, being elected to guard the rights and lives of their constituents no matter what their political beliefs; all the while receiving death threats. I can almost guarantee many of these men and women wake up every morning and fear what kind of hell they are going to be up against.

Is the democratic society that we enjoyed for over two hundred years crumbling at our feet? Many editorials have posed this question for lesser reasons, but this time it seems that answer might be, sure as shit looks like it!

We have a disgraced, twice impeached Ex-President that is still ruling the Republican party from his bully pulpit in Mar A Largo, Florida. There are probably several unidentified organizations that believe the events of that day were or are justified. Many of the polls taken in the past few weeks show 40% of the Republican party thinks violence against the government is justified. One can only assume these same citizens that live, work, and play in your community would not hesitate to commit a violent act for their beliefs. More than likely endangering the lives of innocent people, possibly your loved ones.

There is a lack of discipline that should be given to sources that bombard knowledge-seeking citizens with rhetoric that makes me scream and wonder what can make a person believe the conspiracy theories they spew out? There seems to be no way to stop it or try to convince a person that what they read or heard from an expected reliable source is not true. It is like we have leaped the “National Enquirer” to a new source that bleeds into the common thread of our daily lives. Realizing I just dated myself, look it up if you don’t know what that publication was all about.

I believe that times that cause our country to look inward should never be forgotten. There are several events in my lifetime. The killing of John F. Kennedy, Marin Luther King, and the attempted murder of Ronald Reagan. Of course, there is the killing of John Lennon, the marches for women’s rights, and the Vietnam War. Just to name the events from the 1960s and 1970s.

However, there was a period of our lives when all the government problems were in a different country and maybe that is when we all became complacent. Then September 11, happened and we woke up to understand that our backyard was not as safe as we had thought.

Twenty years later our front yard was desecrated by our citizens. There must be a day of reckoning as well as a closure for each of us to move on and become a nation our founding fathers envisioned. I will not let this anniversary go without a moment of silence and a promise to keep remembering and talking about it until we find the truth and punish the people that insight this horrible crime on our democracy.