Of Days

I have been glued to the news three times in my adult life (not counting elections of celebration or of heartbreak); 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Capitol Insurrection, the latter at the kitchen table while I assembled a Lego dump truck for my 95 year old grandfather agog as the horror unfolded at the behest of the orange tumor and his fascist death cult of don-drones and sycophants. A year later, I remain agog though wholly unsurprised; the dump truck, similarly, remains on my grandfather's shelf (though I do have to move the dump bed every few weeks via phone remote control for him; display purposes, variety, etc etc).

Three reads worth your time this morning, as we head into this day of days:

Consider the economic profile of the 716 people arrested or charged, as of Jan. 1, 2022, for storming the Capitol. Of the 501 for which we have employment data, more than half are business owners, including CEOs, or from white-collar occupations, including doctors, lawyers, architects, and accountants... Only 7 percent were unemployed at the time, almost the national average, compared with the usual 25 percent or more of violent right-wing perpetrators arrested by the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement from 2015 to mid-2020... only 14 percent of those who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 were members of militias...; 86 percent had no affiliation... In other words, these were people who had something to lose when they went to Washington and carried out this violence.

The day, this day of days, awaits.