January 6th, three years later

On January 6, 2021, my son was a week old when Americans stormed the Capitol at the urging of a President who didn’t want to give up power. I had always been a proud American—until that moment. For the first time in our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power wasn’t honored, and we were watching it live on TV.

One of my first jobs was interning for a Republican Congressman at the Capitol when I was in high school. That building was sacred. I used to give tours through the Rotunda. Now people were assaulting its police, vandalizing its halls, chanting to hang members of their own party, and searching for politicians from the other side to harm.

Our country was founded on the rule of law. I understand that some laws should be challenged and changed; working in the cannabis industry, I clearly believe that. But the peaceful transfer of power? That isn’t negotiable.

I come from a family of lawyers and had a life in law once. My best class in law school was constitutional law. I studied political science in college. I’d worked for both Republicans and Democrats in past jobs. My dad and his brothers served in the Army, Navy, and Marines during Vietnam, with one serving during Korea. My granddad’s companies supplied natural gas for the Manhattan Project in WWII. His father served in the Army Reserves during WWI. His grandfather was a Union Colonel during the Civil War. My family believes in America, and we have been here since its inception.

I’ll never forget or forgive that day. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and we watched it on full display on live TV. People who were there to serve and protect died that day because of self-aggrandizement, a hunger for power, and an insurrection fueled by conspiracy theories against our democracy. And some people will gaslight you into believing it never happened or claim that others were really at fault.

Are we a democracy or are we an autocracy? Do we love strongmen so much that we’re willing to cede our rights to self-govern? Are Republican and Democratic ideologies so polarized that we’d rather align with other superpower governments than compromise with each other?

Now, I may be just some guy, but I’m an American. I don’t stand with traitors, and I never will. I’ll tell my sons the truth of January 6.

I was in the D.C. area on 9/11/2001. I was a senior in high school in Alexandria, Virginia, when I saw the planes hit in NYC on TV. I heard the boom of jets deploying when the Pentagon was struck, and I saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon from the top of my school. It happened. People attacked our country that day. And they attacked our country on January 6, 2021, too, as I held my son, McCain, and watched it unfold on TV for hours while the President in power did nothing to stop it.

We must protect our democracy, or we will lose it. Without it, we’re no different from our enemies, oligarchies run by a small group instead of democracies governed by “we the people.” I could be cynical and say that’s already the case, but I still have a vote, and I vote for democracy. I vote for Biden. And I will forever condemn January 6.