Day of Infamy
Tony E Dillon Hansen
Reflection on January 6th 2021 (and a warning.)
Much like FDR called December 7, 1941 “a date that would live in infamy;” so too we should consider January 6, 2021. January 6th is supposed to be a festival day of the Epiphany for Christians, but instead, it is shrouded in the cloud of darkness.
For it was on this date that a reckless President told a frenzied crowd to go and march on the capitol. The ensuing mob overran barricades, police, and doors. They broke windows and destroyed offices while maiming and killing along the way.to stop the Congress from conducting government business.
Congress (people of all stripes and genders) waited in horror as the mob invaded the capitol chambers. They were finally able to be led away from the mob for safety sake before anyone was hurt.
A committee investigated and found tangible evidence that linked then-President Trump to groups with the facilitation and intention to take over and to disrupt the government. Then-President Trump did nothing but watch with glee as protesters turned violent and stormed the capitol building. Finally, after damage and deaths, he went on TV to tell the mob to go home.
The whole scene shocked a nation and a world. There was real trauma in all who watched. I preached to help heal from that trauma that day and on Sunday that followed - something to change the direction and mood away from disbelief and violence. The pain and shock was palpable. I preached towards the healing love of Christ.
In any way you look at it, Trump was inciting a riot, and this mob was given direction to seize and to stop the government from confirming the Presidential election amounts to insurrection.
It was a Bier Hall Pusch - only not in Munich 1923.
This is why the Fourteenth Amendment should be applied to Trump, although the votes to acquit impeachment ought to be remembered as well. Those people should be considered conspirators.
That people are willing to support Trump still has more to do with ego than protecting our country. Plus, if he does achieve second term, the United States and the world will suffer backlash from an already unstable person. This retribution, this revenge, will make the McCarthy “Red Scare” or displacement of Native Americans pale in comparison.
The level of this retribution will yield to no barriers, and we will see something close to a National Socialist state in America. This has been promised by the now-candidate Trump.
The pardon of offenses from January 6th will only serve to reinforce this because it will allow for unfettered violence and hate against people that disagree with Trump.
(We still have to prosecute the people who helped to facilitate the insurrection from within the Congress.)
Honorable Liz Cheney, for all I could disagree with her on matters, stuck her head out for the truth. She and the committee did the courageous and necessary work to reveal the extent of conspiracy and malice that was planned and executed. Yet in the face of corrupt tyrannical opponents with waves of denying supporters, it is hard to be the voice of truth when people don’t want to hear it or believe it. Just ask Jesus; for he was executed for speaking against oppression and corrupt elders.
That potential of pardon and the prospect of a second Trump term should scare the living hell out of people. That people are so willing to trade freedom for this authoritarian security says that we have ignored the history lessons. We have replaced fact with innuendo and baseless myths. We have replaced the love of Christ with the material dissatisfaction of a broken world.
Just watch the TV media outlets next to each other. (I do when I am at the gym.) The one “news” outlet fancies some outrageous claims about people with different opinions (the left). They have even tried to “reframe” what happened on January 6th as something like a walk in the park and quiet people visiting the halls of the Capitol. They have become the mouth piece of a broken person that says anything, distorts at will, while threatening everyone that disagrees with him.
Those are not empty threats but vile and malicious promises to hurt and inflict damage. I have personally witnessed memorials in Germany to the kind of destruction that ensued there, thanks to a promised manifesto. The damage will be irreversible.
Clinton warned us in 2016 that Trump was dangerous, but I don’t think she could have ever imagined the horror show that Trump has become.
Government should not be maniacal, crazy, and threatening of its people, but that is what the United States will get if Trump gets another term. And I don’t think we will be able to last 4 years. We might as well throw out the Constitution as well as our civil rights.
I dont think the world will last 4 years as well. Alliances will disintegrate, and dictators around the world will have a pass to do whatever they want. We will have war probably with another country, but I would not be surprised if we also see another civil war in the United States.
Yes January 6, 2021 is a date that lives in infamy, and further, it should be a stark warning of what is to come should the dangerous and corrupt Trump gets another “term.”
For my own, I am hoping that America will have the good sense to keep Trump out. Yet, that there are so many fervent supporters (who conveniently ignore these facts) of this tyrant, makes me question things like the veracity of our electoral institutions as well as the entire government because it will be a dictatorship by the mob with Trump leading the cause - doing nothing to stop it - perhaps even applauding it.
That is reckless abandonment of hope and turning to fear. That is infamy.
So I hope and I pray to our Lord Jesus that we find the better angels within us and keep Trump out.
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