The Speaker Has Spoken

Nancy Pelosi is my Congressional representative. I’ve not always been happy with her. Sometimes she struck me as more of a bag woman for Democratic coffers than a tribune of San Francisco values. I even voted against her one or two times during the Democratic primary, as a protest against her endless reign. But I’ve never been prouder of my Congresswoman than during the last week.

Democracy, as I’ve written many times, is a fragile eggshell in the tumult of history. And American history has seldom been as tumultuous as it’s been in recent months and days. During these times, we need strong leadership — power that recognizes it’s founded in the majority will of the people. Fortunately for our beleaguered, bleeding country, we have leadership like that now. In representatives like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff of California and Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jerry Nadler of New York.

Opening the impeachment debate today on the House floor, Speaker Pelosi solemnly declared that Trump is “a clear and present danger to our country” and “feeling his power slip away,” she declared, he unleashed a mob on the sanctity of the Capitol to terminate “nearly two and a half centuries of democracy” in “a fiery clash.”

Pelosi was firm in her constitutional certainty, but also in a state of mourning for what America has become. She wore, appropriately, a dark blue suit that was nearly funereal. And she invoked the hallowed words of assassinated martyrs Lincoln and Kennedy.

We now know how dark a day that January 6 was. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the primary targets of the bloodthirsty insurrectionists, just declared she feared for her life, adding she was unable to provide further details for security reasons. The aim of some militants was clearly to decapitate not only the leaders of the Democratic Party, but any Republicans they deemed traitors to Trump’s cause.

So when Nancy Pelosi tells Pentagon officials to man up and approve the carrying of weapons by the National Guard troops now protecting the Capitol building in advance of next week’s presidential inauguration, I’m all for it. I’m also for increased security in state capitals around the country — especially in Lansing, Michigan where goons planned to kidnap the governor and where the statehouse was invaded by apes with long guns to protest coronavirus public health mandates. The ire of these unhinged militia types is often directed against women in office, with the Capitol mob chanting last week to get “that bitch” and “cunt” Pelosi. Misogyny and fascism often go hand in hand.

But yes, we also have to guard against 9/11 fervor and block any legislative hysteria aimed at rolling back the rights of peaceful protesters. Trying to exploit public horror over January 6, some state legislatures — unsurprisingly in Mississippi and Indiana, and elsewhere — are trying now to penalize BLM activists. https://theintercept.com/2021/01/12/capitol-riot-anti-protest-blm-laws/

So yes — let’s get armored to defend democracy. But never forget the values that we’re defending.