A sad day in American history

When I’d see Nate in the hall in my dorm or in the quad, he always had a smile for you. We had the same major and had a lot similar tastes. On paper, we should have been great friends.

However, I learned my freshman year of college that I couldn’t trust him.

Nate had an annoying habit. A group of us would be hanging out in the study area and someone would bring up their exciting plans for the weekend. It didn’t matter, Nate had even better ones. He was going to be partying with the star running back from the football team.

We’d be eating in the cafeteria. A friend would tell us about the great seats he had for the recent REM concert on campus. Remember REM, they were all the rage in the early 80s? You can guess what happened. Nate would have a better story about how he saw the group the previous summer and managed to sneak back stage and hang out with lead singer Michael Stipe.

It wasn’t just the lie, but how he embellished it beyond belief and the frequency of how often it happened. He was a modern day Pinocchio. It was a constant game of exaggerating the truth and one-upmanship with him. And, it was frankly a game that I was unwilling to play, so we never got very close and went our separate ways.

Spinning the truth

With President Trump winning the November election and January 6 upon us once again, I find that I’ve been thinking a lot about Nate and his half-truths and exaggerations. Oh, I’m not here to dispute or recount the election. Trump won and the U.S. will celebrate his Inauguration Day later this month. I’m not a fan and I’ll never be a fan. I think character, integrity, and the way you treat people, especially those without power or means, matter. But, I accept that he won and am moving on.

Saying that though, I have little patience for folks who try to spin January 6, 2021 and the mob attack by Trump supporters as anything other than an insurrection and attempted seizure of power two months after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

They remind me of Nate and my patience runs thin.

I’m a patient man, but I’m not that patient

You want to tell me that Trump got robbed in the 2020 election. I’ll call you crazy. I’ll point to the 62 lawsuits Trump and his team filed and how Democratic- and Republican-appointed judges all ruled that the lawsuits were without merit. Let that sink in for a second, “without merit.” But, that’s okay, I’ll still hear you out. You’re a friend or an acquaintance or simply someone I just met. It doesn’t matter. I was brought up to be respectful to others. I’ll let you have your peace.

You want to tell me that Trump has a plan to turn water into wine and will save the world, I let you talk away. I’ll point out errors in fact and suggest you “follow the money.” I believe there’s always someone getting rich from one of his plans. This is usually a family member or someone closely associated with Trump. But I’m a reasonable man, I’ll let you talk.

Until we get to January 6.

I lose it when I see the Nate-isms come out. And boy do they ever come out when talk turns to the Capitol Attack. For example, I find it laughable that Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican from Georgia, in 2021 had the audacity to say: “If you didn’t know that the TV footage was a video from January the sixth, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

A different kind of site-seeing

A normal tourist visit? I’m not sure how site-seeing looks and sounds like in Georgia, but it certainly must be night and day different than the rest of the world. Clyde sees polite, orderly visitors. I see rioters charging the Capital complex, trying to prevent a joint session of Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election. I see the rioters breaching the police perimeter; vandalizing and looting offices; assaulting Capitol Police officers; and trying to take over the House chamber, stopped only when police drew their guns. I’m not even mentioning the fatal shooting of one of the rioters, several deaths of law enforcement officials that followed, or the large number of injuries to police, or even the damage from the day totaling more than $2.7 million.

Yes, site-seeing in Georgia must really be different.

I had little patience for Nate’s lies back in the day, I have even less patience now for politicians like Clyde who try to change the narrative about what we were all able to see with our own eyes.

Getting it off my chest

So, where’s that leave us? Trump is expected to pardon many of the January 6 rioters and continues to go after the United States House Select Committee that was created to look into the insurrection, saying they should go to jail. He has a personal vendetta against former Rep. Liz Cheney and seems hell bent on getting back at her.

When Trump talks about the day, I feel the same way I felt when Nate would start one of his tall tales. Then I remember we have laws in the U.S. Yes, thank goodness for the good ole U.S. Constitution and laws that adhere to all of us — even Trump and his administration and anyone that would like to present a false narrative.

He may offer pardons, but most of us still know the truth. And the truth matters.

I know for me — I couldn’t let January 6 go without marking down its significance. I had another story planned, but the false narratives keep digging something deep inside of me. They gave me the words I’ve been feeling in my heart. I’m hoping that folks on both sides of the aisle will never forget the day and work to make sure it never happens again. And yes, I’m hoping we can start to move on.