Our Precious Democracy

Over the past few days, I’ve been reading the book I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. Well, I’ve been having Alexa read it to me while I play Minecraft or work on other projects in an attempt to finally tackle my ever-growing “books to read” list. Though I do read plenty, it seems the combo of audiobooks and Minecraft is excellent for calming the anxiety within this mildly dyslexic individual.

Having paid attention to the events that occurred during Donald Trump’s presidency, much of the book is not shocking to me. In fact, those four years went pretty much how I expected: a rollback on Obama’s policies, including ignoring the threats from climate change, along with the beginning of unraveling women’s rights, general chaos, and rampant racism.

When rioters stormed the Capitol on January 6th, I wish I could say I was surprised. I had expected that Trump would fight for another term, whether he won the election or not. He had started claiming fraud far before the election took place, so it was clear that he was going to stick with his fabricated story that the election was “stolen” from him, his “big lie,” even though there were no facts to back up his claim.

I remember that day well. My husband was at work, my mom in the kitchen, and I was on the couch watching the news, waiting to see the election certification process and relaying any important information to my mom. I saw the protestors break through the barricades and then watched as they entered the Capitol building. Lester Holt was unsure what was happening, as were so many of us. Surely we were not witnessing a riot or an attempted coup on live television.

Except that was basically what I expected. I was sad at what was happening to my country, but also felt strangely satisfied that I had been right all along: Trump was not going to let go peacefully and seemed to be mentally unable to accept that he had lost.

I had to go to work that evening at my part-time job — one of the hardest days to leave the house. I wanted to watch the news coverage. I wanted to know what was happening to my country. But I went to my job for my short five-and-a-half-hour shift, visibly angered and upset.

I did my best to not scream with rage, suppressing my anger with years of practice, as two young employees compared the January 6th riot to Black Lives Matter protests. They argued it was unfair for the police to stop the January 6th “protest,” stating that they would not have done the same if it had been BLM protestors. “They are looting the Capitol,” I voiced angrily, wanting them to stop talking before I ended up fully enraged and walked out. These two teenagers knew nothing of the world, and yet they were claiming racism for something that was completely different.

While I was frustrated that some BLM protests had included violence, arson, and looting, tarnishing the vision of the movement in the eyes of many Americans, this was still not the same. These were MAGA supporters who were invading the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the newly elected president. These were people who were riled up by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Josh Hawley, and then told to march to the Capitol. This appeared to be an attack on democracy and on the country as a whole. An attack on my country, the United States of America.

I remember the day the news media announced Joe Biden was the projected winner of the election. My mom was on a motorcycle ride with her boyfriend and I was sitting next to my husband when I got the news alert. I took a screenshot and sent it to my mom. We had all voted by mail for Biden, not wanting to vote in person for two reasons:

First, COVID cases in our area were out of control due to uneducated people refusing to listen to science, believing that Trump was telling the truth and Dr. Fauci was lying. Many people threw tantrums when the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania insisted that everyone wear masks. It made sense and was not much of an inconvenience, and yet adults were acting like toddlers who were told they could not run around naked.

Second, it was typical to hear insults toward Democrats at our polling place, and none of us were in the mood for that. When my brother and I went to vote in the presidential election in 2016, him for Trump and me for Clinton, we heard nasty comments while standing in line. It was all we could do to keep our cool and not get into a fight in the voting line. We were both Democrats and were surrounded by a bunch of Republicans laughing that the Democrats would “come in later, in their slippers, after they get out of bed.” Everyone in line laughed, except us — two hard-working Democrats who just wanted to vote.

I kept the screenshot from the day Biden was announced to be the projected winner: November 7, 2020, taken at 11:42 AM. I kept it as a reminder of what we almost lost and that there was hope for the country to get back on track. Hope that the country would someday be normal again. I still have it and will always keep it to remind me that there is always hope.

I requested off from work on Wednesday, January 20, 2021, the day that Joe Biden would be inaugurated. I teared up as he was sworn in, immensely aware that our democracy was precious and that we could have ended up with a dictator had Trump’s plans succeeded. We would finally have a real president again who respected the United States Constitution, valued the justice system, and would govern for all Americans, not just those who kissed his ass.

Some people say that we need to move on from Trump and forget about him, or that we should ignore his crimes because he is no longer in power. What is the point of a justice system if one can do as one wants and get away with it?

No, if we ignore what happened, it will happen again, and I fear that next time, we will not be able to stop it.