2021 Life Logs, Day 7: On Edge
Date: Thursday, January 7, 2021
Weather: Partly Sunny; High 43, Low 26 Degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I don’t know about you, but I have been shaken to the core by what happened in our nation’s capital yesterday. I have been on edge all day, almost like I had been personally attacked. I have never been a flag waving American, but I love my country. When our country was attacked on 9-11, I was saddened. But yesterday when I watched our country being attacked from within, it did more than made me sad. It made me mad, it made me sick to my stomach, and I just have not be able to recover today. Maybe tomorrow will be better. But as long as Donald Trump is the President of this country, I don’t think I’ll be able to relax.
I did manage to get up and call Bennett Plumbing & Heating. They sent a young man named Tyler who I met when he came recently to work on Shirley’s furnace next door. My problem was a quick fix. Evidently, someway, somehow, the water supply to the furnace had been shut off. All it needed was a little water and I am no longer freezing. That was a positive thing, but it didn’t really help me feel any better. I walked with Shadow, rode my exercise bike, worked on my jigsaw puzzle, and made it through the day. Tonight I got a little help when I watched The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. 
She had Timothy Snyder on her show. He is a professor of history at Yale and the author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. It is a tiny little book jam-packed with wisdom. Snyder is a master of making “bold connections between past and present.” Today he Tweeted out a list of ten truths that we need to face to deal with what he calls Trump’s big lie. He points out that Trump is the originator of this big lie, but he goes on to say that it could never have flourished without his allies on Capitol Hill. If you don’t already own a copy of On Tyranny, you should get a copy. And we all need to read the ten truths copied here and think long and hard about each one.
Timothy Snyder
@TimothyDSnyder
1/10. The claim that Trump won the election is a big lie.
2/10. A big lie changes reality. To believe it, people must disbelieve their senses, distrust their fellow citizens, and live in a world of faith.
3/10. A big lie demands conspiracy thinking, since all who doubt it are seen as traitors.
4/10. A big lie undoes a society, since it divides citizens into believers and unbelievers.
5/10. A big lie destroys democracy, since people who are convinced that nothing is true but the utterances of their leader ignore voting and its results.
6/10. A big lie must bring violence, as it has.
7/10. A big lie can never be told just by one person. Trump is the originator of this big lie, but it could never have flourished without his allies on Capitol Hill.
8/10. Political futures now depend on this big lie. Senators Hawley and Cruz are running for president on the basis of this big lie.
9/10. There is a cure for the big lie. Our elected representatives should tell the truth, without dissimulation, about the results of the 2020 election.
10/10. Politicians who do not tell the simple truth perpetuate the big lie, further an alternative reality, support conspiracy theories, weaken democracy, and foment violence far worse than that of January 6, 2021.
