And then I realized I was watching history.
I was watching one of those moments that over the course of your life you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when they happened. They are moments that define your life and society in general at each distinct time.
I heard the news that Kennedy was shot while walking home from school. I was in the drive of the school a matter of a few feet from turning onto Virginia Avenue where my family lived then and still does.
When Neal Armstrong stepped out onto the moon's surface, I was a camper at University Settlement in Beacon, New York. We all thought the bigger deal at the time was Pete Seeger coming to the camp to perform for us kids.
When Nixon resigned I was sitting on the steps of a general store in Willow Creek, California near the end of a bike trip to San Francisco. That night, the group I was with would celebrate, if that is the term you want to use, at the campsite we were at for the night by drinking just a wee bit by the fire and reciting comedy routines by Cheech and Chong.
I was sitting in my office at 111 John Street on the twenty-second floor when the planes hit the World Trade Center. I watched from there as the first tower fell.
And today, I watched a congressional committee set out in chilling detail how a president and his followers tried to subvert an election by force. It was clear from the testimony ad the videos shown that the mob brought to the capital and incited by a seditious, treasonous group would have killed members of Congress and the Vice-President if they had been able to. All the while, the President did nothing, and in fact, cheered the mob on.
When the hearing was over for the evening, I logged onto my social media account to see what friends, and that includes my friends on the right had to say.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The former president has done a lot of awful things over the course of the past several years. He has been racist. He has been homophobic. He has used the highest office in the land to enrich himself and his buddies. He has turned the Constitution into his own little plaything. Every time, the voices in opposition have grown just a bit more quiet.
And now, nothing.
Of all the horrible, diabolical things this man and his thugs have done, they have managed to beat us down by numbing us to the insanity to the point where the worst imaginable merits not a peep in response. We in opposition are done and done for.
And we will find this out this coming November when there have been no consequences or recriminations, and the forces let loose by this maniac and his thugs come home to roost.
