I try to avoid politics as much as I can on this blog. I like people and I want my followers to be comfortable reading of my adventures out in the big wide world. I like that people can read my posts and laugh, cry, and be moved or bored. Today I am stepping out of my and maybe your comfort zone.
This past week has been a roller coaster of emotions for me. I have felt sad, horrified, and angry. I have also noted moments of reflection about the times I have been to the United States Capitol in Washington DC.
Like most people, seeing the Capitol building assaulted by a group of people who were out for blood and “revolution” broke my heart. Who are these people? What gives them the right to desecrate this incredibly gorgeous building? They said this was their home and they were taking it back. Well if it is their home it is mine too and I am not happy with how these groups treated my home. I am not happy with how they treated the nation. I am not happy at all.
Who are these people? I read an article that said they urinated in the halls, spread feces on the walls, and destroyed for the sake of destroying. Who does this? Who thinks this is a good idea? I cannot support a revolution where people think this is OK. Who taught them that this kind of action is OK?
I felt such pain for that building. Have you ever been there? If not you should go, well not now. The historic buildings in Washington DC are incredible works of art. They are not buildings, they stand for so much more. After several architects, the Capitol building was completed in 1836. It had already witnessed an attempt at its own destruction during the War of 1812 when the British tried to burn it to the ground. It didn’t work and it remains a symbol of a now floundering democracy today.
Capitol Rotunda.I read that some of the rioters after breaking into the rotunda dropped their mouths when they looked up at the rotunda. They started to take photos. Who can blame them, it is a beautiful space. This is what they wanted to destroy. Some said that this is a symbol of what is wrong with this country. I disagree, this is a symbol of what is right in our country. This is a symbol of freedom. Freedom from the oppression of the British. Freedom of Religion. Freedom of Speech. Freedom to become better. I don’t believe it is the freedom to destroy.
After the grounds were finally secured, the cleaning up began. Who cleaned this mess left by mostly white supremacists? It was black people whose job is to take care of our house. I read an article about these people and I know it may sound a bit romantic but, here is the final quote in the article. “With each stroke of the broom, they were slowly helping to piece this democracy back together. It’s what Black people have always done, no matter the circumstances, no matter the burden placed upon their back.” I couldn’t agree more although I believe I would add many people of color and caucasian as well.
There was one other person helping to pick up the mess that these groups left behind. New Jersey Representative Andy Kim was helping the other workers.
“When he finally did walk around the rotunda — his favorite and arguably the most storied room of the building — the disarray left him speechless. Water bottles, broken furniture, tattered Trump flags and pieces of body armor and clothing were strewn on the marble floor as if it were an abandoned parking lot.
“I was just overwhelmed with emotion,” Kim, 38, told NBC Asian America. “It’s a room that I love so much — it’s the heart of the Capitol, literally the heart of this country. It pained me so much to see it in this kind of condition.”
So for the next hour and a half, he crouched down and filled a half dozen trash bags with debris. When he finished cleaning up the rotunda, he began working on the adjacent rooms, including the National Statuary Hall and the Capitol crypt downstairs.
Then he returned to the House floor to debate Pennsylvania’s vote count, a session that lasted until 3 a.m. By Thursday evening, he’d been awake for more than 36 hours.
On a day in which video of mayhem and bloodshed inundated social media, a widely shared photograph of Kim, alone on his knees, picking up the final pieces of garbage in a nearly empty rotunda, was a radical break from — and rejection of — the violent impulses that drove the country to the brink of collapse. Many people labeled him a “true patriot.” While Kim said he didn’t dwell much on the symbolic heft of his actions, the term was on his mind.” Asian American News
Today I am proud of Andy Kim. He represents what is right in this country. He represents what is right in our government. He and others like him project hope for the future.
I have biked and kayaked and walked my way through the end of the week. I seek nature when my head and heart can handle it no more. I feel sad for this country at the moment. Our leadership has created such divisiveness and I am not sure that it will be easily corrected. As this country has done before I believe we will persevere and move forward hopefully in a more gentle direction.
Meanwhile, I will breathe. My niece, who is a youth minister in the Presbyterian Church shared a meditation when this was happening on Wednesday. Brittany, I changed the words a little. I will breathe in peace and I will breathe out peace to others. Breathing is sometimes all one can do.
I may send some love to my amazing and steadfast home in DC as well.
This is a part 1 in a series of at least 2. If you don’t want to read it, you don’t have to.
Journeys of Thankfulness 
I do believe this may be the best thing you have ever written, my friend. Well said!
Your voice is quiet but deep. Beautiful.
Another perspective that you may not agree on.
Terrible things, if you love America and its core values, are beginning already to be implemented. If you disagree with liberals or Democrats, who now are unchecked by any traditional balances, your media speech is likely to blocked or “flagged”. Democrats own the entertainment media, the electronic media and the written press. Lies told by liberals flood the media and are unchecked, including many things they are now saying about the President. Any actual facts supporting the President, as they have been now for four years, are totally suppressed. If you deprive a man of his voice it does not make him a liar, but it sure indicates you are very afraid of what he might say. The fact that the lying liberal media propaganda machine repeats a lie all day and night does NOT make it a reality . . . still just another liberal lie. Half of Americans, and anyone who watched all the mountains of hard evidence presented during the several hours of the Georgia Senate Election Commission hearings, will always know this election was the most corrupt in American history. Those people in D.C. went to protest what they will always believe was a stolen election, and to show support for President Trump, and it’s likely they represent half of all American citizens. Over two hundred thousand were there, all over D.C., all day, and were universally well behaved. President Trump multiple times told the capital gathering to stay peaceful. The Democrats are claiming, consistent with all their other lies about Trump, that Trump told his followers to “attack the capital”, that he encouraged them to “revolt” against our government, calling it an “insurrection”. None of this is true, but is being presented, ad nauseum, as fact. He did tell his followers not to give up, to keep fighting, to continue to resist the Democrat narrative . . . but in no way did he “incite violence” or “encourage insurrection”. Strangely, though many other rallies or protests, almost all done by liberals, also filled the streets and came to the capital, this time neither Pelosi (in charge of capital security, or the mayor of D.C., arranged any extra security . . . though multiple agencies report they had been offering it for several days previous, and the probability of Antifa/BLM confronting Trump’s supporters seemed very high. You don’t suppose they were hoping for some big blow up they could blame on Trump and his supporters? It appears Democrats will now write up impeachment papers based, just like the first time, entirely on lies. In truth, there is plenty of doubt about who the tiny fraction of the crowd actually was that forced entry onto the grounds and the building. They showed up late and looked nothing like the Trump supporters we have watched gathering peacefully for months. The press, which carefully ignored months of far more damaging riots by leftists, have been thrilled to give this one maximum coverage. We hate, as all Americans hate, what happened at the capital. Perpetrators should be tracked down and prosecuted. Trump, however, should not be blamed for the actions of this very suspicious group any more than Nanci and Biden should be blamed for all the billions in damages, the multiple lives lost (including police officers), or the tens of thousands of private homes and businesses destroyed by the several months of nightly riots by their own leftists . . . rioters who actually WERE encouraged and nurtured by Democrat leaders. Those rioters also attacked both federal and state government buildings, trying repeatedly to burn them down, but the press reported all the events as “generally peaceful”. Rioters about whom Biden and Harris refused any comment for several months, while massive carnage was accomplished. Now, Trump should be impeached for this one incident? It is a one hundred percent political move by Democrats to try to finish Republicans off for good, to make Trump look as bad as they can manage. Apparently Democrats think impeaching Trump, ridiculously now, with only days left in his administration, is another step toward “unification” and ending all the divisiveness. Think it will help?
Roseanne, Feelings run strong on all sides. I believe that somewhere in the middle is the truth. This article was really written about my building, your building. My house and yours. I just want to try to stay on track. If you feel you need to defend go ahead. I just hope not to see any more of what we have seen earlier this week and last spring. I strongly believe in peace.
This is beautiful and beautifully written.
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Agreed, agreed, agreed! Sober tone, powerful words. Well done my friend!
My heart goes out to you and to your fellow Americans that are living this nightmare and horror. You have a long way ahead to heal, educate, and de-radicalize the next generation. This is just so very sad.
A very sad week for our country. It is our right to protest and demonstrate, but it is not our right to desecrate, break and enter, or destroy. The photographed people must be punished for criminal actions (democrats or republicans). Our country has sunk below discourse and compromise. We must try to return to days of compromise, honesty, trust and faith.
Thank you for so beautifully expressing my feelings of my house being invaded and degraded. I, too, felt as if it was MY personal home that was attacked via the attack of the Capitol building. Thank you again.