January 6, 2025. Tempus fugit, eh what? Can it really be several years ago already? Well, it is. It’s a psychological/emotional kind of perspective. Are you thinking back on the covid shutdown, now years in the rearview mirror? We all went through that once-in-a-lifetime event. A solid 15 months of rigorous hand washing, mask wearing, keeping a distance when going to the few establishments allowed to remain open to re-supply food and drink, and vital medical assistance.

While that is a recent bad memory starting in early 2020, even more recent a dubious memory is January 6, 2021. Early that year, we were still in that shutdown mode, but with covid vaccines on the medical science horizon. There was a sense of hope we’d all be free to frolic anywhere, anytime again. And made stronger for having survived its indifferent potential deadliness. Unfortunately, that upbeat attitude was confronted by another concern. Five years ago today, while the rest of the world was also still dealing with covid, here in the US another source of concern surfaced. It too was dangerous and deadly

I am now going to bring politics into this posting. Is there anything else out there? Everywhere and nowhere there’s politics in the air. January 6, 2021, the televised attempted insurrection, with the now officially unassailable connection made linking the rioters to a former reality TV show host, who had only two weeks remaining to be US President. President? A former reality TV show host? Of course. Hey, he was well qualified by being a US citizen and was over thirty-five years of age. Not to mention being popular on television. He charmed enough people with his atypical approach to appealing for a vote, and got elected in spite having almost three million less votes than his opponent. The System (including that electoral college thingy) said lets put him in charge for the next four years. Quickly the New Guy ran the country like a reality TV program. He was the star. No one else counts but the star. So he governed minus any actual governing, Unscripted. Unpredictable Outspoken. Irreverent. Polarizing.

After four years of his abrasive style, We, the People next elected a US Senator as Commader-in-chief, scheduled to be sworn -in on January 20, 2021. Ah, but on the 6th of that January came that aforementioned attempted overthrow of the US government. Which was violent and deadly. Alas, the New Guy– who by contrast to the reality show guy was ipso facto a towering statesman–was waiting to be sworn-in as The New Guy on the 20th. Of course. As the System would intend to be the proscribed constitutional way forward.

With the New Guy now in charge our democracy is saved and scores of the Capital rioters are held to criminal account, and the reality show host is taken away. He is formally banned from ever running for any public office again on threat of deportation to Russia. The sour-grapes loser is gone and now the US is a beacon of freedom projecting that warm beam of righteousness around the world. USA! USA!

Okay, most of the above is based on fact. Until those last three sentences. For some of We, the People those last three sentences should also be factual. But the fact is that such an alternative ending only mingles in the mind of some. Fantasy, wishful thinking, now quickly pushed aside by a daily dose of dystopic dyspepsia. Those sentences in the previous paragraph are what logically, legally, and politically, should have come next. But we do not live in that kind of logical, legal and political world. That is a fact. The System allowed him to run again, despite his convictions for sexual assault and thirty-four convictions for falsifying business records to conceal his scheme to corrupt the the 2016 election. He’s back in charge of a friction fest.

There are those happy with our current chaotic, dangerous and deadly reality show of a government. I believe there are many more who are extremely distraught about where we are on this fifth anniversary of that televised attempted coup d’etat. I also believe some of the people who supported the return of the reality TV show guy, now wish they hadn’t.

In about eleven months from today, here in January, 2026, there will mid-term elections. Well, at least that is what is our System requires. That may or may not happen. In fact, with the now daily dose of authoritarian style governing, and with zero accountability being enacted for any transgressions, violations of the Constitution, international law, or proscribed laws in general, much more twisted, toxic reality TV is certain to come. Currently, he and his cronies are busy taking control of sovereign countries or plotting to so at will in the Western hemisphere. Crazy, huh?

In an article in today’s on-line edition of the Guardian regarding our national state of affairs, it asserts that the Party currently in power is essentially, day-by-day, engaging in a near-complete effort to rewrite the history of how we got to where we ae are. The object, according to the Guardian, is to erase any memory of then or now from the American memory. What remains of ethical journalism in print or digital platforms now regularly invoke the writings of Orwell, Huxley,, Atwood, Arendt and others, each now clearly prescient in their prose that virtually predicted how and why this authoritarian style is able to take hold, a frightening place in which only the most venal, vile and vacuous amongst us are taking comfort.

A rational calculus of current affairs concludes that this Orwellian reality show is unsustainable. Collapse, as history shows, is inevitable. Of course it is. How it dissolves, dissipates and ultimately disappears is not yet apparent. The Guardian article’s tone was that at the five-year mark since the coup attempt, nothing has been learned from its live-streamed lesson about our fragile democracy. As far as that goes now, civics class is always in session.