Learning, Rather Than Repeating

 APPROXIMATELY EIGHT HUNDRED still alleged but soon to become convicted criminals attacked, invaded, and ransacked the U.S. Capitol bldg. on January 6th, and just over four hundred of them have been criminally charged. So far, so good, but in a more perfect world every last one of them would be rounded up, charged, tried, convicted, and incarcerated, at length. In an entirely perfect world Donald Trump would be summarily executed after being processed through the legal system, duly. So would everyone still claiming that the election was stolen from Trump, or at least deprived of citizenship and voting privileges. well meaning people of the anti-Trump variety now seem intent on wiping the insurrection, and Trump and his big lie about the stolen election form memory, and "moving on", since, after all, Trump is gone, ostensibly, and the nation has been saved from this unprecedented attack on democracy. The danger and inadvisability of this are two fold. First, Trump isn't gone. his behavior lately strongly indicates he plans to remain involved in politics, likely as a candidate for president in 2024. Contrary to widespread belief, no matter how many felony convictions a criminal accumulates, they do not disqualify the criminal from being president of the United States. By 2024 Trump is likely to be a convicted felon, appeals pending. that will not stop him. Nothing will, except the voters. Secondly, Lord Acton was quite correct; failure to learn the lessons of history requires their being learned anew, later. Normally it is considered inappropriate, even rude to repeat one's self, an insult to the comprehension capabilities of the listener. We Americans are an impatient lot, and poor listeners, always wanting to move on to something new, not always intent on learning. But some messages and lessons are so profoundly true and important, so central to who we are as moral beings, that they bear repeating, as often as necessary, to embed them indelibly into the consciousness. Attend this if you will: Donald Trump is a pathological lair and a traitor, especially after the election, and everyone who still supports him, especially after January the sixth is no better. They are traitors to the democratic electoral system, thus to democracy itself, which is the foundation of American civic life. This is no exaggeration, and cannot be overstated, nor stated too often. The election of 2020, and the traitorous response to it by the losing candidate and his supporters, constitutes the single greatest mass betrayal of the United States by Americans since the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln and its disastrous consequences. There is no other way to describe it, and nobody should ever describe it differently.