I will never forget that day - I was tripping on molly and stupidly briefly looked at my phone to check time or something, and there it was the Apple News notification about the incident. I then had a legit vision, about the forces working to make his victory an inevitability, and I cried as the world collapsed on me.
I came from a different country, that has struggled for decades with “strong men” and their corruption, and knew right then that the incredible feat that is the American Democratic experiment, which I admire and came to join, was going to end.
There is a slim chance to save it still, but most folks not bought in are far too naive to understand what is really happening or complacent to do anything about it.
Idk, I hope I am wrong.
Jefferson to John Adams’ son in law, 1787 -
“Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order.”
https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/tree-liberty-quotation/