I recently borrowed an old movie from our great local library called “Judgement at Nuremberg.” It was about the Nazi War trials after WW2. Justice was served on those who committed crimes against humanity.
Justice moves slowly, though. On January 6, 2021, the USA experienced the most serious challenge to our democracy since the Civil War–an insurrection against our democratic process and the peaceful transfer of power. There were violent, pre-planned disruptions in the normally mundane process when we formalized the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our chief executives.
We are learning daily how certain government officials purposely planned to discredit and disrupt the counting of electors. Led by the defeated former president, teams of lawyers, government officials, even members of Congress, there was a concerted effort to ignore the voters’ choice by not accepting the electors of certain states, including Wisconsin.
Those who supported this effort were deceived by the ‘Big Lie’ of a stolen election and encouraged to come to Washington to disrupt, by whatever means necessary, the process of counting electors. We saw on live TV how our elected officials were threatened, their offices ransacked and a Confederate flag flew on the Capitol rotunda. All the while, brave Capitol police were overrun by violent and organized mobs.
As I said, justice moves slowly, and we wait for the process to play out over the coming months. This doesn’t mean we have to move slowly. Right now we can make some commitments:
- We will not support any of our representatives who chose NOT to accept the duly chosen electors.
- We will not support a former president who fosters the Big Lie and refuses to concede the 2020 election.
- We will support efforts to strengthen our democracy by ensuring all states follow a basic set of voting rights to make voting safe, easy and secure.
- We disavow support for the ongoing partisan efforts in Wisconsin to sew discord and distrust in our state elections process.
I encourage you to watch “Judgement at Nuremberg.” It is a long movie, 3 hours and 15 minutes–almost exactly the length of time our former president let the Capital insurrection go on before he tepidly intervened!
Ben Adams, Watertown
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