infamy

one day the heirs of our misfortune will look back on this moment and ask us about the madness of it all—about the masks we wore and the shots we took, about the jobs we lost and the checks we got, about the distance we kept, about the tears we wept. we'll recount the lies we were told, the truths we ignored, and the votes we cast behind the glass. we'll remember what gave us the strength to rise. we'll mourn the ones we had to wave goodbye. the tunnels went dark, we'll say, and in our indefinite isolation we aged rapidly into fear and division, reacting frantically to the crises and the symptoms masking our greater malady: an america in decay. for too many, for too long, injustice kept finding the innocent, plague inflamed the inequality of a heartless economy, representatives abandoned their voters, news and facts fell to the lucrative spell of opinion and fantasy, the despair of millions crossed the paths of smiling charlatans, and on january 6, 2021, emboldened by his enablers, a sitting u.s. president incited his supporters to storm the seat of american democracy—the hallowed halls of the u.s. capitol during a joint session of congress. sinclair lewis in 1935 said "it can't happen here" by warning us that it could—the erosion of our repulic from within—and last week it did happen, once again, this time by a mob of insurrectionists. left unchecked, left to the "let's just move on" lines of the past, left to impunity for those responsible and culpable, this will happen again, but with the fire next time—eclipsing what has become not just a day of national shame, but an era of infamy

—jk montane