Heartbreak in Our Nation's Capital

I had the good fortune and honor to serve as a Congressional Science Fellow for the 106th Congress of the United States from September 2000 to February 2002. I would take the metro to work every morning and walk to the Cannon House Office Building from the Capitol South metro station. Before mounting the steps to Cannon and walking through the building to my desk next door in Rep. Rush Holt’s (NJ-12) Congressional office in Longworth, I would pause to look to my right. There I would see the Capitol dome gleaming in the morning sun, and I’m not embarrassed to admit to having been thrilled at the sight. Yes, I was a rebellious hippie in the 1960s and 70s who didn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance or stand for the National Anthem in defiance of a government that didn’t respect the civil rights of all of its citizens and was lying to us about the war in Vietnam. But from my vantage point as an adult and through the lens of a more just society, I had grown to appreciate what this country was capable of and wanted to help it achieve that “more perfect union” we’re always talking about,

My eighteen months in Congress began a year before our country’s lock-down over the 9-11 terrorist attacks the following September, and the anthrax attacks that contaminated our Congressman’s office and staff (and me) merely a month later. But before all of the barricades went up around the Capitol, I had a chance to wander the halls of Congress and explore the public and private recesses of the Senate and House. I rushed through the surprisingly narrow and dingy tunnels under the Capitol building to meetings. I attended Bush 43’s first State of the Union address, met with the Sargent-at-Arms in his splendid office full of memorabilia, marveled at the historic significance of Statuary Hall where your whisper from a certain location can be heard across the entire hall. At night I would stand in the subdued light of the Capitol Rotunda and look up at the interior of the magnificent dome. I ate in the House cafeteria, staffed meetings in ornate meeting rooms, met with celebrities who wanted to lobby my boss, and attended countless briefings on a wide variety of subjects. It was thrilling and humbling. I witnessed how the federal government conducted the business of the people. Yes, some members and their staffs were rather dense and some were despicable self-promoters or just flat out wrong, but there was a common sense of purpose and mutual respect in the air, albeit sometimes tainted with partisan rancor. I rode in the Senate train between the Dirkson Senate Office Buiding and the Capitol with former Dixicrats and staunch liberals alike, and never lost my appreciation for the act of legislating in our nation’s capital.

That’s why I was not only furious but heartbroken at what took place there on January 6, 2021. My anger at Trump and his corrupt and incompetent administration had been growing over the four years of his tenure but I thought, with the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the country would recover. But to see that mob of insurrectionists, the ignorant fools inspired by the biggest fool of all in the White House, breaking windows and battering open the doors of this revered building . . . to watch those uninformed rioters pompously march through the Rotunda, to lounge with their feet on the Speaker’s desk while wearing snug smiles, to sit in the well of the House raising their fists in defiance and self-satisfaction. . .it broke my heart.

Many of them thought it was a big joke and could be seen giving each other high-fives back out on the street, as if they had accomplished something noble or notable. Unfortunately, one person was shot to death by the Capitol police, some of whom were also injured. But many of the rioters seemed to harbor the delusion that they were acting as patriots, that being outvoted was simply unacceptable, an act of sabotage, and that they were somehow saving their country from those evil liberals or socialists bent on destroying it. I can only partially blame them for their willful ignorance, for allowing themselves to be manipulated by a narcissistic sociopath. How was it that they didn’t see what they were doing defied the very “principles” they claimed to cherish? Chants of “USA” would have been comical if it hadn’t been so tragic.

It was more than simply glass that was shattered that day.