January 6, 2023

Two years ago, I sat, like many, watching the insurrection unfold on live television. I’d started out with the intention, like many, to watch this thing called the electoral college do its supposedly boring task and accomplish its part in the peaceful transfer of power.

It was clear that Trump and others had other ideas and plans to make this not happen.

One of the things that stands out in my mind is the camera crew that was stationed on a street corner, really just to provide background images and the odd bit of commentary with the capitol as background. They and others started reporting things like people with guns up in trees and people breaking through lines of police going into the capitol. There came a moment when a couple people started going past this news crew and you could sense that the crew wondered if they were in danger. One asked the people if they had any knowledge about what was going on. Who were they? Where did they come from? The reporter pressed on – do you know you have blood on you? Are you all right?

Whereupon the guy told how he had gone with a group into the Capitol and they had broken a window into the chamber and a woman had started to go through the window and was shot. And the blood was hers. And he told the story like it was out of last week’s news from another city.

Someday I’d love to hear what that news crew and reporter thought about all that. And I’d very much like to thank them for keeping the cameras and sound going so we could hear all that first hand. I was watching on the Washington Post live feed so I assume the crew was theirs or a pool crew. I know that some crews had damage done to their equipment since they were considered “fake news”, but we all got to see what happened, as it happened because they were there.

Because of the Jan. 6 committee we were able to see a lot of other footage from inside the building too and hear a lot of the communications that were going on.

So don’t try to convince me that Trump and the rest of them don’t deserve indictment, a trial and hopefully jail time for trying to take over the United States. We all saw the evidence and many of us watched it live.