Judith Fox Goldstein

We are told there were plans to find and kill Vice President Michael Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the twin demons that day of the mythology of these poor benighted, rioting souls. But, a quick-thinking Black Capitol police officer had the wits to stall the crowd until senators, representatives, and staff could be spirited away into hiding. Whatever the plans of the faux Gothic hordes might have been, once they had broken the windows of the Capitol, breached the doors, and poured into the gloriously high-ceiled rotunda, it was as if many of them were overcome, stunned, almost silenced, by the majesty and truth of it all. There were five deaths, and each one deserves to be lamented and mourned, but there were far fewer injuries than there might have been. The almost-insurrection, spurred on by irresponsible speeches from the former president and his friends, devolved into a gaggle of post-adolescents gawking at statues, putting their feet on desks, strewing papers on the floor. We’re told the truly crazy smeared shit on a couple of statues, but, for the most part, the aftermath, which Capitol workers and Congressman Andy Kim quickly moved to clean up, resembled nothing quite so much as the trash that spectators, heading home for turkey, leave behind at the end of the Macy’s parade.

We went in just two weeks from the horror and despair of insurrection to the healing normality of a very ordinary, very kind, very longtime politician raising his right hand and promising to bring democracy, unity, and hope back to the United States. Best of all, he said it quietly, comfortably. We were almost bored. We were definitely relieved. There was nothing especially new or striking or strident or exciting about this newest president or about his inauguration speech. Thank heavens.

What does the future hold? Horror or peace? Despair or comfort? Unity or more and more distance and disunion? We cannot know. Not yet. We can only hope. The achingly lovely contributions to this special Persimmon Tree section have many purposes. They give us the hope we are looking for. They suggest paths we can take, things we can do, to make that hope a reality. They recall and recast and recite events so we will not forget them, so they can become for us the past we must build on in order to create a better future. They explain and analyze. And, most importantly, they transform events from the dread and dismay of January 6, even from the normality of everyday, into the ineffable immediacy of art.

Space in this special section was limited. We are grateful to every contributor – both the relatively few whose work we are able to publish and the many we cannot, though those, too, are beautiful, deserving, and meaningful. Thanks also to the editors of Persimmon Tree who gave of their time to get this published promptly – and as accurately as we could. And special gratitude to you, Persimmon Tree‘s readers and donors. Without you, none of this would be possible.

Atlanta GA, January 05, New York Times

2:20 pm Wednesday, January 6, 2021

I disconnected the phone and relaxed in the glow of a great call-in session with Karen, my octogenarian therapist. We were both pleased that Reverend Warnock had won his Senate seat in Georgia. Jon Ossoff’s election results, we hoped, would be called soon. What a difference it could make for both houses of Congress to be Democratic. Perhaps President Biden, along with Vice President Harris, could restore security, sanity, and serenity to our government and country. As I sat in my deceased mother’s rocking chair, placed strategically near a southeast window so that if sun broke through the oppressively stubborn New York gray winter clouds, I could bask in its glisk.*

I checked a news feed on my phone, expecting to read that Ossoff had been elected. Immediately, I reached for the remote, turned on the television and watched with incredulity.

“What’s going on?” My voice cracked and tears welled as I spoke to a friend. I needed confirmation that what I was viewing on a cable news network was real.

“The Capitol is being attacked,” she replied. “Can’t talk now. I’ve got to watch.”

As I witnessed throngs of mostly white men, many wearing Trump regalia, others carrying Trump flags, and yet others carrying other paraphernalia, I thought, “White men are behaving badly. No person of color could get away with what’s going on. There’d be a trail of bodies everywhere.”

Last November, I conducted a month-long anti-racist workshop with members of my church’s adult spiritual foundation group. It was based on our reading of Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Anti-Racist. Most sessions, I was the only African-American congregant present, and as moderator, asked difficult and uncomfortable questions that sought deeper levels of conversation and disclosure about how racism affected the lives of both whites and people of color. We were all well-educated, liberal progressive Episcopalians, and our discussions were polite yet fraught with tension. One evening, tired of tiptoeing around the elephant in our Zoom meeting, I admitted I could intellectually understand white privilege, but that, as an African-American woman, I’d never experienced it. I asked, “Could someone explain an experience with white privilege?” The Zoom session became eerily silent. One person finally spoke about how her father had received the benefits of white privilege when he was able to purchase a house in Levittown, New York, after World War II.

Perfect examples of white privilege unfolded in front of me that Wednesday as I watched television with disgust and alarm. If anyone ever again questioned the existence of white privilege in America, I’d upload videos taken on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol Building.

My 38-year-old son called. “Mom, have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“Not in the first 67 years of my life,” I said. A child of the ‘60s, I’d witnessed the assassinations of Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. I’d watched Newark and Watts burn and the debacle of the 1968 Democratic Convention.

I called my friend back. “I’m glad my dad isn’t alive to see this.” My father was part of a group of soldiers who’d help integrate the Armed Forces in 1948 and later served in Viet Nam.

She commiserated with me. “I’m glad Dad isn’t alive either.” Her father of Italian-American descent had fought in World War II.

Our fathers held a deep love for this country. As I cried, I did so for all the men and women who serve and defend our country and who believe in the Constitution. I cried for my African-American sons and other children of color who see clearly what they live every day. I cried for the citizens of other countries who look at America as a land of freedom and opportunity.

Our America is broken.

Again.

It will heal. Can we set the break better?

Can we look to the youth as models of change, young men and women who see beyond the color of one’s skin and look into the content of their character? The actions of those young adults who last summer protested peacefully throughout the country after the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd are what we should use as our guides. The newly elected members of Congress, who include more members of minorities and women, provide hope.

John Lewis wrote an op-ed that The New York Times published after his death. He stated, “When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

We know what doesn’t work.

We know who and what does.

America will heal.

I’m willing to address the elephant in the Zoom.

I know I’m not alone.
 

Sabiha Iqbal

Scaling the Capitol, New York Times

Judith Fox Goldstein

“This is scary,” Devin, my twenty-nine-year-old daughter, said as we walked the streets of our Midwestern suburb on a frigid January day. “These people are crazy,” she continued. “The election is over.”

“It’s easy to accuse the entire mob,” I said as I slowed my pace up a steep hill. “But things may not be as simple as they seem.”

She fell silent.

“Most of these people were used by a demagogue,” I added.

“Yeah, but, Mom, who follows someone so toxic?” she said.

“You’d be surprised how easy it is to suspend judgment when you’re vulnerable, when you feel desperate. If someone appears with a remedy for all that ails you, it’s easy to get in line. I’ve talked to you about this.”

Devin knows the broad strokes of mistakes I made in my youth, though that part of my life is hard to translate to someone who’s never blindly followed a charismatic personality. Such mindlessness seems reserved for people who lack intelligence or education. I lack neither. But at age twenty-three I followed a magnetic person, a woman who was the center of an idealistic group of liberals eager to right the wrongs of sexism, racism, and poverty.

Lillian was the first person I knew who subscribed to the publications I read: The Nation and Mother Jones. A diminutive woman with an expansive intellect, Lillian inflated my ego: she thought I was smart, and she liked me. Lillian was nearly old enough to be my mother, and her years of experience dwarfed my just-out-of-college naiveté. I was mesmerized.

I reflected on that hypnotic pull to a woman I barely knew. I was a refugee from a family so fractured it was impossible to find even a semblance of security. Since adolescence, I’d been on a survival tour, seeking a landing place, a safe haven where I could breathe deeply and without fear. I had a loose group of friends in college and two strong, short-lived connections. But at twenty-three, I was adrift. I swiftly allied myself with Lillian’s informal collective of people who were bright, funny, and engaging. We marched in peaceful protests on behalf of our causes. After work and on weekends, we attended concerts, partied, and engaged in lofty conversations about changing the world. I’d found a place not unlike my college circle, but with the promise of long-lasting friendships.

“We change the world by starting with ourselves,” Lillian declared during a late-night discussion. “We build connections between each other that create a just community, an honest community.” The room nodded in assent.

“We have to look at our own problems first,” another woman added.

Lillian glared. “I just said that.” We fell silent at the undisguised anger in Lillian’s voice. “If we’re going to start with ourselves,” she said, “maybe you should look at how you compete with me – how you always have to have the last word.”

The other woman stared at her feet. I wondered what was wrong with what she’d said.

“Or not!” Lillian said with a mischievous grin, her countenance making a U-turn. “After all, good ideas can come from competition – and you’re one of the best competitors.”

The room burst into relief, people laughing uncertainly, then, as they saw Lillian relax, their laughter built to a wild crescendo.

By the second year of my friendship with Lillian, I spent holidays and vacations with strangers connected to my new friend. I accepted whomever Lillian accepted. I shunned whom she shunned, whether or not I’d had a previous relationship with the outcast.

I abandoned my few remaining college friends and anyone who questioned the righteousness of the idol I worshipped. I stopped thinking for myself. In the moments in which I privately questioned Lillian, I distorted facts to restore my confidence in her. Not everyone in her orbit was as blindly devoted to Lillian or as obsequious as I, something I couldn’t recognize at the time. The blend of my age and my background created the perfect cocktail of drunken loyalty. To complicate matters I appeared strong, hiding my inner needs, delivering a pitch-perfect performance of a true believer. I, too, knew how to tell someone what she wanted to hear.

When I was twenty-five, I’d migrated so near the epicenter of Lillian’s life that she invited me, along with another friend, to move into her home.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea for me,” I told her. I felt consumed by Lillian, and I couldn’t find the words to express this without insulting her.

“You’re scared,” Lillian said. Her voice was gentle, understanding. “Of people. You don’t even like to have roommates.”

She convinced me I should overcome my standoffishness. I moved into her home with the understanding we would give it a six-month trial.

My boyfriend, who only knew Lillian casually, broke up with me on my birthday, three months later.

“Yes, I know,” Lillian said when I told her of the breakup.

“What? You knew?”

“He told me last week. We had lunch,” she said and opened the newspaper, disappearing behind its pages.

I began to think differently about her. What of loyalty to friends? She had lunch with my boyfriend. And he told her he was dumping me – on my birthday. And she said nothing to me?

Over the next three months, I witnessed Lillian’s hair-trigger temper blossom into tirades about trivial matters: a glass in the sink, a joke she deemed directed at her, a politically incorrect comment. At the end of our six-month trial, I called Lillian from work and told her I needed to find my own place. By the time I reached her house, my clothing and books were wind-blown across the front porch. I was now on Lillian’s blacklist. Two of our friends reached out to me, but I didn’t reciprocate. I was afraid of what Lillian would say about me, and I was afraid she would blacklist these people for coming near me.

For long after, I was ashamed for having turned over my judgment and my future to someone else. Other times, I felt guilty for moving away from Lillian, for having hurt her. Decades later, I believe Lillian was on her own survival tour, one more complicated than mine. It was only when I came to this could I forgive her for shunning me – and forgive myself for suspending my common sense in order to meet my emotional needs.

Like so many who blindly followed the president, I was afraid and in pain when I sought the solace of a tribe. Most Trump followers are not storming the Capitol, but many are afraid. Some fear losing a lifestyle they’ve worked decades to achieve; others fear never being able to establish a middle-class life. And President Trump magnifies the racial and economic divides in our country. He didn’t create these divides, but he conned a pained, largely white population into believing he would soothe their wounds and keep them or make them whole. The dog whistles the president blew may as well have been bullhorns.

As Devin and I turned the corner to our tree-lined street, I broke the silence.

“Believe it or not, there are Trump people on this block who are afraid.”

Devin turned a questioning look to me, telegraphing her doubt.

“Katie told her mother not to put a Trump sign in their yard in November. She said the Black Lives Matter people might burn down their house.” I was referring to neighbors we’ve known for twenty years, people who’ve shared countless dinners and bottles of wine with us, whose daughter, Katie, had played with Devin when they were kids. We’re all white. We’d never discussed the racism that certainly resides in all of us.

“Until we put out the Christmas flag,” I said, “we had a BLM flag flying so long it started to fall apart. What do you think that said to our conservative neighbors – our white family flying that banner?”

Devin nodded, her way of saying she’s thinking about this.

As we opened our door, we looked back across the street at the home of the family we’ve known for most of Devin’s life. The dining room chandelier twinkled in the otherwise darkened house.

“I don’t want the entire January 6 mob arrested,” I said. “There are degrees – people who fomented the unrest and rained violence, and others, whom we may not agree with, but who arrived at the protest not knowing what was in store.”

Forgiving the poor judgment of my youth has opened my mind to why people follow someone when it doesn’t seem to make sense. That forgiveness leads me to believe there likely are many who came to the Capitol who still have a functioning moral compass, people who were as appalled as I was at the sight of the violence.

For Donald Trump, my forgiveness is elusive. Unlike the woman I worshipped when I was twenty-three, the president held no idealistic goals. He sought no solutions for Americans in pain. Altruism never interfered with his life-long mission to serve himself: there’s no evidence of empathy, no compassion tempering what many believe is mental instability. And it appears there are those complicit in the January 6 riot who, likewise, merit no mercy.

I ask myself if I could ever heed a call to storm the Capitol in a violent assault. At age twenty-three maybe I was capable of such extremes, though I hope my neediness never ran that deep.

Nevertheless, my experience with Lillian, a person who generally meant well, showed me I was capable of abdicating my discerning mind, adopting without thought the judgments of another. I learned. I hope for the millions who followed Donald Trump that they, too, learn.

I hope our country’s recent calamity prepares us for a moral future: a stronger, more thoughtful tomorrow, one in which we bring real solace to those in need. Racial and economic justice, which often are interwoven, cannot be achieved in a single moment, not even in a single decade. It took years of introspection to unravel my experience with Lillian. It will take years for our country to mend the divides Donald Trump mirrored and magnified and eventually brought to a violent attack on our Capitol.

It will take years, but this is the time to begin.

Margo Berdeshevsky

Election Day 1920, Orange County, Florida, the county where I grew up. Black groups had been conducting voter registration drives. When Mose Norman, a Black man, tried to vote, a white mob went after him. In the next two days the homes of nearly all of Ocoee’s Black families were destroyed by fire. Some estimates are that the white mob killed as many as 60 Blacks, maybe more.

Researching racial politics of North and South Carolina in the late nineteenth century led me to two events related to Black men trying to vote. No doubt there were many, many more:

November 8, 1898, Phoenix, South Carolina. A white man was collecting affidavits from Black men who had not been allowed to vote. When local Democrats ordered him to stop, he resisted and a fight broke out. The Democrats opened fire on the crowd of Black men who had gathered. Over the next few days between 600 and 1000 white men descended on the town, burning homes, lynching four Black men and killing an unknown number of others. No one was charged with the murders.

November 10, 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina. After the election, a mob of 2000 white supremacists, angry that a Black-white coalition had won the election, destroyed the property of Black citizens, killed as many as 300 people, and overthrew the election. For some time it was called a race riot and blamed on Black citizens of Wilmington, but now is considered to have been a coup d’etat.

Wednesday’s attempted coup followed an election in which Black voters played a major role. It was not just about Trump. Insurrectionists were saying this is a white country and Black citizens’ votes shouldn’t count.

One might almost think white people don’t want Black people to vote.

Insurrection, New York Times

Sabiha Iqbal

Look! There’s something on our bare Covid calendar today – my late-afternoon appointment for two successive MRIs, a reminder that the only time we leave the house during the pandemic is for medical appointments, the drive-by pharmacy, and curbside grocery pick-up. January 6 is also Epiphany, our day to take down the Christmas decorations. We are certainly aware that January 6, 2021 is the date Congress – with difficulty – will confirm Joseph Biden’s presidency. Early that morning, we do not know this will be a date, an event, we’ll remember like others in our lifetime, beginning with the assassination of President Kennedy.

We’ve packed away the last baubles when our daughter texts, “Is it true there is rioting in Washington, D.C.?” We turn on the television and watch in horror as Trump supporters storm the Capitol, breaking windows and vandalizing the interior of the citadel of our democracy while terrorizing congressional members who hide under desks with gas masks, before being taken to locked rooms. It’s insurrection; it scares us. We unglue ourselves from this unbelievable attack by our fellow Americans, egged on by a traitorous President, just in time to reach my appointment. I joke lamely on the way that this is the first time I was glad to quit what I was doing to go to an MRI.

I wiggle into the tube and feel warm and swaddled, glad I am not watching more incomprehensible scenes on our TV screen. During two hours I have plenty of time to pray. I pray for our divided nation, I pray that this rebellion will end quickly, I pray that Trump will do the right thing and put an end to this rioting. I pray the divisiveness in our country will end and peace between different points of view will prevail. I pray for the lives of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

In addition to the constant sounds that are tempered by music, jackhammers begin to pound and bowling balls drop from great heights upon the enclosure. The harsh sounds morph into cannon fire as I concentrate on our country’s Revolutionary War. To me there is no comparison between the patriots who sought freedom for our country and these ruthless Americans who are using violence against our nation. I have always tried to understand other political points of view, but I am at a loss to understand and justify what some members of the other party are doing right now. I yearn for the days when one party would win the presidency while the other knew it would have the chance to win in another four years. We shook hands, united under whomever had been elected President.

I am given a break between tests; I hear the television in the waiting room and cringe. As I settle back into the tube, I concentrate on what led to terrible divisiveness between the two parties. Is it the immigrant dispute during the Trump administration, with the building of a wall, separating migrant parents and children, and caging the little ones? My party supports immigration and loving treatment of all people. Was it the disregard shown by the administration towards poor Americans? My party puts people before profits. Surely only a small number of the opposing party think that violence, destruction, and insurrection are the answers in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Justice and peace will prevail. Won’t they?

As a voice announces that I am almost finished, my only thought is: May I stay right here?

The Capitol Rotunda, WUSA9.com

Tulsa OK 1921, Youtube.com

The National Guard, New York Times

Question: What do I think of Insurrection?

Answer:

I cannot bear to hear one more person say, “This is not who we are.” Yes, it is who we are, who we’ve always been – a violent, dangerous, White supremacist nation. From the moment the first colonists stepped ashore we have pillaged, plundered, and murdered our way into nationhood.

We decimated indigenous peoples while we put in place the world’s most destructive and violent system of slavery. At the same time our nation’s founders created the world’s finest Constitution, exalting principles of democratic governance. The hypocrisy is clear.

Among our rules of governance is the Insurrection Act of 1807. I, an 80-year-old Black Georgian woman, am asked what I think of Insurrection: It is a dangerous thing to do. It flies in the face of governing by law.

The laws of this country have often worked against me. I have been denied equal education. I have been redlined. I have been denied the right to vote in a country in which I can trace my ancestry to before this nation was formed. Yet, I believe in the rule of law because the alternative is anarchy, fascism, or some other form of lawlessness that puts power in the hands of an oligarchy and leaves everyone else at the mercy of the mob. On January 6, 2021, we saw what that looks like.

The irony in this inflection point in our history is that many White people are just now experiencing the lived experiences of Black, Asian, Native American, and other non-White American peoples. For centuries angry, disaffected, and often simply racist White people have threatened, maimed, murdered, hanged and destroyed the lives of non-White people. The 1921 Tulsa Massacre is a fine example. The Trail of Tears is another. The internment of Japanese Americans yet another. Need I go on?

My great-great-grandparents, Frederick and Della Baker, were murdered in the 1860s in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, for having the temerity to teach Black people the rudiments of reading and writing. My experiences in my violent homeland are real and personal.

What do I think of insurrection!? I think that individuals in any group that decides to take the law into its own hands, breaks into and damages public property, and tries to subvert the work of a legitimately elected body in the act of doing its job should be prosecuted and, when found guilty, convicted and jailed.

The right question is: Do this nation’s citizens and legislators have the will – the courage – to acknowledge its history, to understand how we got here, and to do what it will take to save this democracy?

gaye gambell-peterson

photo by windflower

This is what I know: If you’re one of the lucky ones, like I was, you can witness history from the safety of your home. You know you’re living in an important moment, yet you still brush your teeth, fold the laundry, wash the kitchen floor. You can even entertain yourself, escaping into reams of Netflix series or movies on your computer or TV. The features of pandemic life: groceries that are delivered; the plunk of Amazon packages at your door; all part of this history, too, but like the rest of your life, you can safely tuck them inside.

You can forget about history.

But a time comes when history seizes you and breaks into your home.

Your two brothers, both physicians, both beloved, are hospitalized with COVID. Vigils by the phone. Prayers as you await the outcome. The statistics of the virus become personal, invade your privacy.

You and history are one.

Trump, you say, has blood on his hands. By the lies he told about the virus. For thousands dead. All that was ignored. I wait with increased urgency for the jab of a vaccine needle. I seek out more TV shows and movies to lull me back into forgetting.

I am tired of history.

But last week, history called. When those same screens of escape blazed with the attack on the Capitol, there was no turning away. Or forgetting.

We knew violence was inevitable under this president. How could we not know? For the past four years, he’d been working towards this moment. But seeing the form that inevitability took, the mob violence and destruction, was harrowing. Enraging. I couldn’t look away.

A man lifted a crowbar and smashed a Capitol window. A Black Capitol Police officer tried to hold back a menacing White horde from climbing a staircase.

“Stop them! Stop them,” I yelled at the TV.

These were Hitler’s Brown Shirts. The Roman Mob. It was the American carnage Trump talked about in his inauguration speech. But this was his American carnage. His creation. This moment of history belonged to him.

History Writ Large is a moment when the significance of the events occurring is obvious. A turning point. To where – we can only hope.

There is more history to come, we know. Joseph Biden, a decent man, will become president. Kamala Harris, a Black woman, will take the oath, as vice president, to uphold the Constitution. A defeated president, impeached twice, will leave.

All this, while fear resides in the land.

That is history, too.

Judith Fox Goldstein

Elsa Lichman

Definitions

Memo

Seized by the FBI on January 5, 2021: Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in and see blood from their Black Live(s) Matter and Antifa slaves being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally or protest. Go there ready for war.

Images

Thousands on the Capitol Mall, waving flags and looking like cherry blossoms with their skin turning pink in the cold. Flags waving: red, white, and blue American flags; blue and white Trump flags. Yellow and green “Don’t Tread on Me” flags. “Thin Blue Line” flags, and a Confederate flag.

Capitol Hill police in black helmets push against fences to deter the intruders. They are outnumbered. Thousands, like ants, swarm up the Capitol steps. Zombies following the directions of some unknown leader. Smoke. Hundreds in brown fatigues. Are they police, army? People are smashing windows. The men in the brown fatigues are climbing through.

Sounds

Glass breaking. Doors being kicked in. Yelling and screaming. A tall man with dark hair and a beard looks into the camera and says, “The government did this to us. We were good, law-abiding citizens.”

Words

Sedition, bloodless coup, anarchy, flash bang. Breach the barricades. Not enough law enforcement. Congress is sheltering in place. Armed standoff in the House chambers. Insurrection. Lawmakers are ducking under their chairs, pulling out gas masks. Will they evacuate the Vice President? Lockdown. Rebellion. Treason. Bonfire of the Insanities. The breach is complete.

More Images

Inside the rotunda, hundreds of people swarming and packed together, not wearing masks. Hundreds of red hats. MAGA in white. Signs that read JESUS SAVES, signs that read JESUS=TRUMP. A man with coyote tails hanging around his face and horns of a bull or bison. His face is painted red and blue, with white stars. He is bare-chested and his left pec is emblazoned with a black tattoo – circular with the roots and branches stretching towards the edges. He wields a six-foot spear.

Yggdrasill is the giant ash tree that supports the Norse cosmos; its branches reach into sky realms inaccessible to humans, and its roots to the subterranean realm of the dead.

A man wearing blue jeans, a gray plaid jacket, gray baseball cap, and work boots props his feet on Speaker Pelosi’s desk, an American flag crumpled beside him. Later he drawls “I sat down here in my desk. I’m a taxpayer. I’m a patriot. That ain’t her desk. We loaned her that desk … And she ain’t appreciating the desk so I thought I would sit down and appreciate the desk.”

In the Senate chamber a man with olive-green body armor and a combat helmet swings a bundle of white plastic zip-tie handcuffs. He wears a tag with the Texas flag overlaid with Marvel’s “The Punisher.”

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Larry Rendall Brock, Jr. tells a reporter he assumed he was welcome to enter the Capitol. He claims he found the zip-tie handcuffs on the floor. He claims he wore the tactical gear because he worried that a member of Black Lives Matter or Antifa would stab him. Brock’s nickname is “Torch.” A family member tells a reporter that after his stint as a military pilot, Brock developed a Manichean world view – everything is black and white. There is no gray. The battle is between good and evil. The conflict is between light and dark.

A man with long gray hair and beard wears a sweatshirt with Camp Auschwitz and a skull. Another man wears a face mask with a skull and a T-shirt that says 6MWNE meaning Six Million Was Not Enough. 

Final Image – A Noose

Sound: Hundreds chant “Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.”

Inauguration Day, Flags on the Mall, NY Times

After the Speeches, NY Times