I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: lest we forget

  • Joyce Vance: Speaking Truth About January 6 Events

    Joyce Vance: Speaking Truth About January 6 Events


    One of my personal sheroes, Attorney Joyce Vance, speaks truth to power today in her piece in Civil Discourse on substack.com. regarding the events that took place at the Capitol of the United States five years ago today. Lest we forget…here are excerpts from her essay.

    Donald Trump is the President no one has ever said “no” to in a big way. Not Congress, not the Court, and certainly not the people around him in the executive branch. It didn’t happen even after January 6, 2021, which seems to have greenlit the fact-averse, law-free, and profoundly antidemocratic behavior that has come to characterize his second term in office…

    Now, with the fifth anniversary of January 6 upon us, we live in a world where the president has pardoned the “patriots” convicted for planning an insurrection and storming the Capitol. Trump has made sure that no one faces accountability for January 6, least of all himself. He has nothing but praise for the people who overran the Capitol—they’re the good guys, the heroes. His people.

    On the very first day of his second term, Trump granted pardons to some of the most dangerous among them, convicted felons like Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, beginning with these words: “This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.” In all, more than 1,500 people received pardons or commutations on Trump’s first day in office…

    …there was no moment where Donald Trump was forced to face the truth of what he had done to the country. He has never publicly apologized or even acknowledged he was wrong. There was no moment like the surrender at Appomattox or the withholding of restoration of citizenship for a time for Trump, as there was for leaders following the Civil War.

    That’s no way to fix a democracy and keep it whole.

    So, we will go through this same painful exercise every year on the anniversary of January 6, remembering and reciting the facts, until we get it right. The people who mobbed Congress are not praiseworthy people, heroic victims who fought a last stand for a lost cause. Trump is not the leader of a legitimate American political movement. We must keep on saying it. We have to refuse to let Trump’s narrative prevail. In the time of Trump, be a warrior for the truth…Take people out to lunch and talk about it. Refuse to sit on the sidelines.

    We’re in this together,

    Joyce

    *******************

    I vividly remember the attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, because I watched it in real time – a reality show orchestrated and directed by Trump, with a worldwide viewing audience. Ratings out the roof of scenes never imagined in the minds of most American citizens. And yet, we are asked to suspend belief, forget what we saw and heard, forgive the person responsible even though that person never once asked us to forgive him.

    Not this American.

    I’m in it with Joyce. I hope you are, too.

  • Memorial Day 2025 – living with moral shame

    Memorial Day 2025 – living with moral shame


    Hear ye, hear ye: all those who have ears, listen to a message from moderate conservative political commentator David Brooks:

    “All my life I have had a certain idea about America. I have thought of America as a deeply flawed nation that is nonetheless a tremendous force for good in the world. From Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan and beyond, Americans fought for freedom and human dignity and against tyranny; we promoted democracy, funded the Marshall Plan, and saved millions of people across Africa from HIV and AIDS. When we caused harm – Vietnam, Iraq – it was because of our over-confidence and naivete, not because of evil intentions.

    Until January 20, 2025, I didn’t realize how much of my very identity was built on this faith in my country’s goodness — on the idea that we Americans are partners in a grand and heroic enterprise, that our daily lives are ennobled by service to that cause. Since January 20, as I have watched America behave vilely — toward our friends in Canada and Mexico, toward our friends in Europe, toward the heroes in Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office– I’ve had trouble describing the anguish I’ve experienced. Grief? Shock? Like I’m living through some sort of hallucination? Maybe the best description for what I’m feeling is moral shame: To watch the loss of your nation’s honor is embarrassing and painful.”

    David Brooks is not a writer I follow with fervor nor is he one I deliberately avoid as a conservative policy wonk; but in the May, 2025, issue of The Atlantic he wrote a piece called “Everything We Once Believed In” which captured feelings I’ve personally struggled to express since the November, 2024, election. As we remember the lives lost by those serving in the U.S. military at home and abroad on this Memorial Day weekend, I challenge us to also remember why they served.

    Shame on us when we forget.