History Moments

There are these moments in your life where you sit there and watch what's happening and think: "Yup, this'll be in a history book some day." I imagine people my parents' age have a lot of those moments, given what happened in the '60s, but I can really only thing of maybe two or three things in my own conscious lifetime where I've been 100% certain nobody is going to forget this soon.

The first one was 9/11, obviously. That was a "WTF is reality anymore" moment on a truly epic scale. And despite the many huge catastrophes that have happened since, the only other two that register the same way are the Fukishima nuclear accident (remember: my wife is from Japan) and the start of covid-19. Those things just shook the snowglobe of the world a little too vigorously, and are impossible to ignore.

The thing is, I was getting used to the idea that earth-shaking events happened in 10-year intervals. 2001, 2011, 2020 (er, well, ok). But then today, in Washington DC, a mob of deranged psychopaths amped up by a frankly criminal would-be despot of a president, stormed the Capitol in search of, I guess, insurrection?

I mean what would have happened if they'd actually found someone important in there? And if they found one and killed them, what would have happened next? Those are dominoes that can fall in very dangerous ways, very easily. "The rioters killed a congressman" turns into "the national guard is using live ammunition" turns into "militia groups are invading the capital" turns into... what, exactly?

Trump clearly didn't want to stop this from happening, despite (or evidenced by) his tepid and late responses, but I can't help but think this has got to be one of those moments in history where things change for the better, right?

Because if not...yikes. I think January 20th is going to be a very dark day indeed.