Republished with permission from D. Earl Stephens

Few people remember that before devolving into a nightmare that will forever stain the United States of America, Wednesday, January 6, 2021, actually started off as one of the most inspiring days in our nation’s long history.

Just hours before the chilling anti-America, rightwing terror that fueled the grotesque attack on our Capitol that day, democracy was flourishing hundreds of miles to the south in Georgia.

Two sons of the Peach State had just improbably won their senatorial runoff elections to even up that chamber at 50-50, and capped a miraculous showing by the Democratic voters in a state whose calling card over the decades has always been one of bravery and pure inspiration.

The home of Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, John Lewis, Andrew Young, and Stacey Abrams, which had only two months before delivered the state to Joe Biden for President, had just gifted America two new Democratic senators.

And man, did they ever do it with panache. These were not just two ordinary men elected in extraordinary times … They were historic.

By the time their elections had been called in the wee hours of the morning on January 6th, Reverend Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of King’s iconic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta would be Georgia’s first black senator ever elected to office.

Warnock’s buddy, Jon Ossoff, would become the South’s first Jewish Senator since the 1880s, and the youngest man to be sworn into the Senate since none other than Biden won his Senate race in 1973 as a 30-year-old upstart from Delaware.

It gets better yet … because with the Senate now improbably deadlocked at 50 apiece, the tie-breaking vote in that chamber would fall to the first woman and person of color to ever be elected Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.

This was one of the greatest American stories ever told.

Decades of hard work had finally paid off, and it was time for many of us to rejoice and bask in the glow of our hard work on behalf of an evolving America.

Let freedom ring.

Just 14 hours later we were attacked, and that American story took a wicked turn when an evil, broken sociopath who had been voted out of power by the citizens of the United States of America did everything he could to hold onto that power and set the match that led to the most gruesome homegrown attack on this country since the Civil War.

And when that attack was at full boil, the entire world watching with horror, the outgoing President of the United States, the foul lout who triggered the onslaught, did absolutely nothing to stop it for more than three hours.

Instead, he furiously paced the White House dining room hoping it would prevail.

Even the monster’s ghastly family begged him to call off his rabid dogs, while brave, overmatched police officers were stomped into the pavement and beaten with American flags—FLAGS!

Lawmakers—Republicans and Democrats—ran for their lives. The monster’s vice president was whisked away by the secret service, so as not be hanged.

Finally, after nearly 200 minutes of doing nothing but root for its success, the America-attacking Trump finally relented, and tried to quiet all the dark voices that live deep inside his broken mind. He pushed himself away from his TV, and huffed and puffed his way to the White House lawn, where he grudgingly recorded a message to the nation in which he ordered his fascist thugs to go home—but not before telling them that he loved them.

This foul, disgusting man actually told the people who took a hammer to our country, and killed and beat on cops that he loved them …

Once these gruesome thugs got the orders from General Mayhem to disperse, they packed away their ropes, flags, pepper spray, zip ties and radios into their duffle bags and hightailed it the hell out of town …

Our Capitol burned. We had survived that attack, but just barely.

The war pitting good verses evil still rages four years later, and right now the enemies of America are having their day. That should blow the mind of every sane, democracy-loving voter in this country.

This is the true story of what happened over the course of 14 breathtaking hours in America on January 6, 2021. It must be preserved for the ages, because we know for a sure, Trump and his soulless Republican Party will do whatever they can to spin this into a tale littered with their alternative facts, and excuse their bloody part in it.

Just hours after the voters in Georgia made history, Donald Trump attacked the United States of America and tried to incinerate our votes to remain in power. Fake electors were lining up in states across our country to overturn the election. Law enforcement officers were beaten to a pulp. He watched, did nothing, and told his thugs who carried out his attack that he loved them.

Never forget.