2022 resolution and reflection

 Dear you,

A new year.  A time to move on.  A time to look back and move forward.  A time to prepare.

Today is January 6, 2022.  One year after the violent attempt to overturn the results of an election, we are still there, back there in 2021.  We reflect, we think back to where we were when we got the news, we watch the ceremony in DC and listen to those who were there. Others, millions sadly, are not reflecting.  They’re having little 1/6 anniversary parties.  I am pretty sure that Peavy dude down the street is hosting something “wild”.  That guy is still flying his flags echoing the big lie and sending a coded f-you message to Biden.  He is also accumulating fines for those flags, not paying them, and claiming he is taking the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.  Two-thirds of voters locally are down with Peavy and soldiering up for the ultimate culture war.  I take comfort in the remaining 1/3; we do things like read, push for environmental sanity, and cry during ASPCA commercials. We are the Thirty-Three Percenters.  Sounds a lot beefier, mathematically speaking, than the far-right Three Percenters, those friends of Peavy and the defeated president. Some of their members were part of last year’s Capitol siege.  One of them is featured in a story in today’s Business Insider.  Meet Guy Reffit.

Reffit is from Texas.  He came to the Capitol on 1/6/2021 to support the defeated president.  He was armed with a semi-automatic weapon.  Reffit has since been arrested and now waits for his trial with other defendants at a facility in DC.  Here is the troubling part; his son (Jackson) is the one who turned him in to the FBI.  His son did the right thing, but still, it’s his dad.  This is where we are a year later.  Yes, this nation is politically divided.  That’s not news.  But we are splitting apart as human beings, normal ties of affection and loyalty are being tested.  I feel for Jackson Reffit. 

What do you do if your parent, best friend, or child joins a violent movement spearheaded by one big liar?  It’s pretty easy to say I’d turn in the Peavy flag dude without hesitation if I knew he was part of 1/6/2021.  (Well, he was.  Just not in the gun-toting, glass smashing, defecating on the chamber floors kind of way.) But what if it was my dad?

No.  I don’t even have to think about that because my dad was a Republican, but he was the Liz Cheney kind.  He didn’t hang with trash and he loved democracy. And I don’t have to worry about rogue far-right offspring because I chose not to have children.  “Friends” might be up for grabs, but I’m way too selective to accidentally befriend an idiot.  But still, would I, could I, rat out someone close to me?   I cannot believe these are the kind of decisions and theoretical scenarios we deal with now. It really, really sucks.  

This is where we are on the anniversary of January 6, 2021. Democracy held, but many hearts (and homes) are broken. Still, I believe the 33 1/3% in my locale and the actual majority in the rest of the nation will hold on and not give up.  There is an undercurrent of hope:

“Listen now as Earth sheds her skin/Listen as the generations move/One against the other to make power/We are bringing in a new story.”

That is an excerpt from “Prepare” by Joy Harjo.  It informs my resolution for 2022.  I resolve to listen, prepare, and bring in this new story.

Begin.

Joyce