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People need to be held accountable

After four years of playing Santa Claus with trillions in tax giveaways and trillions more spent on propping up farmers and corporations, you can hear Republicans already chanting “We have to cut back on spending. The debt is getting too big. We can’t leave a debt for our grandchildren.”

After four years of putting up with Trump’s lies, his corruption, trying to conduct a coup by overturning the election, and finally, with Trump orchestrating a seditious insurrection, Republicans like Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley are suggesting, “We have to move on, look forward not backward, work toward unity.”

Grassley and Ernst stood silently by as Trump’s misinformation and lies led to some Americans believing his debunked conspiracy theories; his total lack of leadership and concern for the COVID-19 pandemic leading to the death of 370,000 Americans and rising; his constant prediction of “rigged elections” and then when he lost by seven millions votes, he turned to trying to orchestrate a coup by getting his minions in key states and in the U.S. Congress to reject the certified electoral ballots or to “come up with 11,780 more votes in Georgia”; and if this wasn’t enough, he and his sycophants sounded a call to action to domestic terrorists on Jan. 6 which resulted in five deaths and shutting down the U.S. Congress as part of this insurrection and coup attempt. And Grassley and Ernst want to look forward and ignore Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 takeover attempt?

Jan. 6 was a seditious insurrection. All those who participated should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, including Trump. He must be held accountable for his actions. We have to reject what has become “normal” during his presidency for fear that they will be repeated by other presidents and accepted by Americans because Trump got away with them.

It seems to me that we are at a crossroad – do we endorse democracy or do we endorse dictatorships? We either demonstrate that we want to reestablish democratic norms and actions or we continue down the path of white supremacy, domestic terrorism, threats and intimidation and corruption which benefits a favored few.

By not holding Trump and those members of Congress who voted to object to the election results guilty of sedition, we clearly are voting for an end to the experiment in democracy.

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