Day 300 of self-isolation - The first 300 days

The first 300 days

10 months ago, I started this series with a satirical piece "Day 97 of isolation". I chose 97 because I thought it was very far in the future - but it wasn't.

But I'm not going to look back on the last 300 days. There are so many interesting and terrible things happening in America.

The center of government in the USA, is the Capitol building in Washington. It's their equivalent of the Houses of Parliament.

So on 6th January, Trump held a rally in Washington, in which he invited attendees to walk with him to the Capitol to tell the senators and congress people to reverse the results of the election of November 3rd.

And so they did as he asked. Of course, he didn't walk with them. But his followers arrived at the Capitol, and proceeded to break in. In the riot that followed, the police were heavily outnumbered, because who could have guessed that this would happen? Everyone, actually.

Many of them broke into the building, forcing doors and breaking windows.

One police officer (Brian Sidenick) was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher.

 

One rioter (Ashil Babbi, 35) was shot and died as she tried to force entry by climbing through a window. 

 

One woman (Rosanne Boyland, 34) was trampled to death in the crush as people tried to force entry. Here's a picture of her waving her "Don't tread on me" flag.

Kevin Greeson, 55, allegedly was trying to steal a portrait of Tip O'Neill, accidentally tasered himself in the testicles and died of a heart attack.

This all came as a great shock to many people, but the general consensus is that this was incited by Trump, as part of his lie that he had really won the election and that it had been stolen.

So what do you do when something is stolen from you? You try to get it back.

But it wasn't stolen. There has been 60 court cases, all of which have failed to show that there was anything wrong with the election. The man in charge of election security said that it was the most secure election in US history. The woman who falsely and repeatedly claimed that Dominion vote counting machines flipped huge numbers of votes, is now being sued for $1.3 billion by Dominion. 

Trump went too far this time. You don't incite an insurrection against the US government - there are consequences. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram have all suspended his account. Shopify has closed his online shop for Maga hats and other stuff. And the process to impeach him has been started - his second impeachment.

Trump's drive to "Make America Great Again" has ended in tragedy and farce. To 380,000 deaths in the pandemic, partly because of his non-mask-wearing leadership. To a ruined USA economy, a ruined respect for the US government and an unprecedented division in America.

Biden is probably not the best person in America to be President. But he had the huge advantage of not being Trump. Hopefully, Biden will take facts on board, will follow the science in the response to the pandemic, and will try to bring America together to heal the terrible rifts that Trump exploited and widened.

Perhaps, after four years, the lunatics will no longer be running the asylum.