On Remembering the “Day of Rage” – Jan. 6th

@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @handmaidsdaily @nytimes provided this 40-minute video of the #J6 “Day of Rage,” so we can remind ourselves of the horror.  Americans have short memories and it seems many humans need to repress violence.  This is something we should not forget.

The characters Rita and Moira in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” strike me as representations of people who are doing their best to bury the very painful memories of life in the Republic of Gilead.  It’s understandable – we can’t experience a happy, healthy life if we’re stuck in the past replaying our traumas…so the popular wisdom goes.  I get it.  The urge to move on is strong, and our brains actually protect us from consciousness around things we can’t handle.  I’m sympathetic.

At the same time, some of us have the capacity and the need to stay alert to the potential of coming trauma – or “The Coming Tyranny” – and to sling mud at the walls or do whatever we can think of to try to slow it down or prevent it from overtaking all of us.  We know how hard it is to escape authoritarian rule, once captured.  Black people have some experience with that.

We can’t all do the same things, and it’s OK.  We’re built that way.

However, for those of us who want to remember what we saw with our own eyes on January 6th in the United States of America – scenes of mobs storming the U.S. Capitol building, breaking into offices, hunting down Representatives, beating and killing police officers, and oh yeah – spreading feces on the walls – I am grateful we have this 40-minute video by The New York Times, “Day of Rage:  An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol,” to refer to whenever our memories start to wane.  Corporate mass media, it appears, is not going to help keep these images in the forefront.  Thank you, NYT.  — LMO

“A six-month Times investigation has synchronized and mapped out thousands of videos and police radio communications from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, providing the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.”

WATCH as Americans lose it over the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States. | “Day of Rage:  An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol” | Dmitriy Khavin, Haley Willis, Evan Hill, Natalie Reneau, Drew Jordan, Cora Engelbrecht, Christiaan Triebert, Stella Cooper, Malachy Browne and David Botti, NYTimes.com | 6/30/2021