I know I’m a sports columnist, but what has happened at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday is too big, too threatening, too serious to ignore. Everyone should think about it, write about it, fight against it.
Pro-Trump protesters storming Congress, romping across the Senate floor, is 1,000 steps too far.
What have we become as a country? A mob inspired by a bully of a sitting president, a man so thirsty for power that he is unwilling to accept the results of a national election, with challenges to that election already having been tossed out of court by judges again and again and again.
And yet, some people, these people, protest, do more than protest, stirred by a president who history will remember as if not the most, one of the most dangerous leaders this nation has ever seen.
He cries for his misguided version of justice, swinging a wrecking ball.
And we, as citizens of a once-proud country, are troubled by a freaking insurrection, an attack on the proper processes of law, of the Constitution by people unconcerned with democracy, unconcerned with truth, only concerned with keeping the individual they want as president in office.
It’s a cost too high, and the people doing the storming must know this. If they know it, they are dishonest, disingenuous. If they don’t, they are ignorant.
Terrorism brought on by American voters who didn’t get their way is more dangerous than terrorism from outsiders who want and aim to see the demise of the United States of America from afar. Both are a threat to actually achieve that goal.
So tear gas is launched inside the Capitol Building, senators, representatives, the vice president are evacuated from the premises as they are under attack.
That’s five freeway exits past troubling. It’s a cross of insane and pathetic.
In my long life, I’ve seen many difficult things to witness, from the way civil rights activists were treated during the early stages of that movement to Watergate to wars waged with American boys’ lives that weren’t worth waging to other instances of political tragedy and corruption.
I’ve never seen an attempted coup.
Every American should stand up against what has happened today. Doesn’t matter what political party you belong to, what ideology you embrace, what religion you follow, what your frame of reference is, how far to the left you lean or how far to the right.
The fact that a president, who was elected by way of the same mechanism, loaded up with and made possible by patriotic volunteers devoting their time and efforts to a free and fair election and participated in by voters exercising their right as U.S. citizens, is now challenging with such aggression that same mechanism that has voted him out would be laughable if it weren’t so menacing.
And it is menacing.
There are things worth arguing about. There are things worth deep discussion and disagreement. There are things that should be protested.
But a mob charging into the Capitol while Congress is doing its duty, following time-honored protocols regarding the Electoral College, doing part of what it was elected by that same aforementioned election process to do is unconscionable, and it is unthinkable.
At least it was until Donald Trump lost a presidential election.
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 2-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.
Follow @GordonMonson