The "Last" Phone Call

CORRECTION: In my paragraph about the final straw, I was reacting to slightly incorrect information. The video of the Trump party was purportedly filmed during the rioting. I have since received information that its timing was actually before the rioting, in fact, shortly before Trump's speech where he was inciting the rioting. I'm leaving the post otherwise as written, because a part of what was driving it was reacting to that misinformation. As far as what I wrote, I stand behind the rest of it. And I would love to have been the fly on the wall to the actual reactions during the riot. Perhaps that will be spoken of in the future. Or somebody's video will be leaked. I personally have trouble believing Trump wasn't fully supportive of their actions as they fit right into his spoken wishes.

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I first thought it might be a little overblown when I heard two different people tell reporters about making that Last Phone Call during the riots Wednesday. You know, the one that has to say."Here's where I am, this is what's going on, I may not survive this, and you need to know I love you and...." I mean, they survived, safely barricaded inside interior offices for as long as necessary, able to tell their stories. It was all just a major prank, right? Just vandalism, stupid stunts, nobody harmed, and the work of the day merely postponed a few hours instead of being stopped, right? And look how many legislators dropped their antics challenging the election. Maybe this would wind up being good?

More news about what actually happened is coming in. Five people have died, including one cop. (Now they will pay attention?) Not enough legislators saw their way clear to stopping sedition. Details about what was damaged, what was or may have been stolen, (some listed in eBay),  who did what, who didn't do what but should have, how this was treated differently than the predominantly peaceable summer BLM protests. We hear what the world thinks of us now, all the credibility we used to have in informing and monitoring other countries' democracies, gone. Poof. Putin and other Friends-Of-Trump are laughing at us.

There's plenty of stupid going around, meaning not only was there rioting, there are plenty of photos and video. Let's all do selfies of ourselves committing these crimes, eh? The FBI will have months or years worth of evidence for prosecutions, trails of connections detailing who conspired with whom, who stopped intervention by the National Guard (Trump, until Pence stepped in), lack of prevention by adequate preparations made for a long telegraphed plan for violence. Evidence is emerging that for many the plan wasn't just mischief but total destruction, not scaring Congress from its task, but actually killing them? Even Pence was a target for not doing what he had no actual power to do. Funding is being traced to an organization for Republican Attorneys General, not your usual basic definition of yahoos. Well, not until now, anyway.

For me the final straw, bringing home what might have actually happened that day, is summed up in the cell phone video of the celebration by Trump, Ivanka, Donnie Jr., along with many others, smiling and chatting away while they watched, and Kimberly Guilfoyle actually dancing while the rioting went on, thinking that finally here Trump was going to get that second term. In my utter disgust and alarm at the possibilities, with information mounting from all sides and sources, I began to realize just how real those "last" calls might have been.

Can you imagine? 

Unfortunately, I have a very vivid, and increasingly better informed, imagination. Who do you call first? What happens when you only get voicemail? Do you have to tell somebody else how to get into your home laptop? Your cell? Where the insurance records are kept? The special health needs of your pet? Do you keep calling people until your battery dies? How much do you risk being heard and having somebody break in rather than pass by?

When you've got all that thought out, rehearsed who you would have called, what you would have needed to say, felt the taste of terror in the back of your throat, paste this last picture in your mind: the woman out in the street coming towards the camera, supported by the man next to her, repeatedly wiping off her face, crying, and whining repeatedly that, "They maced me! They maced me!" When asked what happened, she continued her whining about being maced, totally unbelieving it could have been done to her, before relaying she had actually made it three feet inside the Capitol "and then they maced me!" Her given justification for her outrage was "It's The Revolution," as though she/they had just performed some noble act. 

Now they can also arrest her. She'd given her name and where she came from to the reporter before her proud confession. That, I too can imagine.