My journal entry from 9:57pm on Tuesday, January 5, 2021, the night before the Insurrectionists disrupted democracy and trashed the Capitol.

I don’t know what to write tonight. I am tired, and I am anxious. Anxious enough to puke. The Senate race being tallied in Georgia tonight will determine the balance of power in the Senate. Not normally something I’d want to puke over but these are not normal times. If Republicans pick up the two seats, we can count on two years of impasse and obstruction from do-nothing, Grim Reaper McConnell. We don’t have time to waste with the pandemic ranging, the economy crashing and the environment burning. The future is burning and Trump’s idiot band of enablers are crowding into the clown car. They either don’t understand that the world is burning or they don’t care. Ask yourself who profits from the status quo. At least for a little while, corporate captives wringing the last drops of profit from civilization. If Democrats pick up two seats, then the Democrats have a narrow advantage with Kamala Harris’ tie breaking vote. Not a mandate but a possible path to get some things fixed. What an absolute shit show.

And I’m feeling sick because tomorrow is the Congressional vote to certify the Electoral College votes and officially declare Biden the next president. Except it won’t unfold as a formality. It will be a spectacle of fake outrage and pretend concern, a show for the dummies and fools like the Georgia voter quoted in an interview today saying she voted for Trump today in the Senate election because we need someone to “rule with an iron fist”. Far-right extremists, racists and actual Nazis are gathering in DC tomorrow at the President’s behest. People are going to get hurt. People are going to get killed. This is all so painfully stupid and repellant and you cannot bear to watch but you cannot afford to look away. And so we bear witness, feeling sick with anger and frustration and fear and disgust.

A hard moment in which to be writing, which is what I am meant to be doing. But I think tonight I will give myself an actual break. I’m so tired. I’m so worried. I’m so distracted. Let’s just put a cap on today and get some rest. Wake up when it is time, check the skies and keep our backs to the wall. It is going to be absolutely ugly. A true nightmare.

I knew in my bones it would be bad. I didn’t know how bad.

What strikes me most in that night’s journal entry is how much I was thinking of the moment to come in terms of normal politics. Jackson’s blog Life on the Blue Highways has it right: “Every Day is January 6 Now”. It wasn’t politics, and it wasn’t normal. And it isn’t over.