We know a lot of very disturbing facts about what happened on January 6 when a mob of thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building and held it for two hours.

We know the mob was incited by Trump, Guiliani, and others at the Trump rally that morning. Trump said repeatedly that Congress was meeting to certify the election of Joe Biden, that the election was stolen, that his followers must “stop the steal.” He urged the mob to march to the Capitol and falsely claimed that he would march with them. Of course, he didn’t, but they did.

When they entered the Capitol grounds, the Capitol Police were quickly overwhelmed. For some reason, though they knew about the Trump rally, they were not prepared for a mob. The barriers were knocked over, the domestic terrorists entered the hallowed halls of the Capitol, where they vandalized the building, went searching for Congressional leaders who had “betrayed” Trump, broke windows, smashed doors, smeared feces on the floor, and entered Congressional offices in search of Trump’s enemies.

Somehow they knew where House Minority Whip James Clyburn’s secret office was, although it was behind a marked door. They broke into Speaker Pelosi’s office and stole her laptop.

Some of the terrorists had a plan. Not only did they know the layout of the building and where to locate the key members of Congress, but they had flex cuffs, preparing to take hostages. Fortunately, the members of Congress were in a secure, undisclosed location.

The Pentagon and D.C. officials traded accusations, but there is little doubt that the Pentagon was very slow to provide aid and blocked state officials in Maryland and Virginia from sending in their National Guard.

A timeline released by the Pentagon late Friday says Capitol Police twice declined help from the Defense Department in the days prior to Jan. 6. But it also shows that when the city officials and the Capitol Police requested additional National Guard troops after rioters breached the Capitol, it took four hours for those troops to arrive...The Army secretary, not the city, set the number of National Guard troops at about 300, decided not to use armored vehicles and “established that the guard members were not to move East of 9th Street NW,” roughly nine blocks away from the foot of the Capitol, said mayoral spokeswoman LaToya Foster.

According to the Pentagon’s timeline, officials became aware of demonstrators moving to the Capitol just after 1 p.m. The timeline says that the Capitol Police ordered the building evacuated at 1:26, and that Mayor Bowser and Capitol Police Chief Sund requested help from the DoD by phone at 1:34 and 1:49 respectively.

The acting secretary of defense verbally authorized deployment of additional National Guard troops 75 minutes later, at 3:04 p.m., according to the timeline. The timeline describes an additional conversation with Bowser and a separate discussion of the Sund and Bowser requests by top Defense officials in the interim, but there also intervals of 33 and 30 minutes with no phone calls or meetings listed.

The timeline also lists a call between Bowser, the D.C. police chief and the Army secretary at 3:26, in which the defense official tells the local officials their request for troops was not rejected, and that the deployment has been authorized.

According to the timeline, the D.C. National Guard troops did not leave the D.C. armory until 5:04 p.m, and arrived at the Capitol at 5:40, four hours after they were first requested by the mayor.

At 5:45, the acting secretary of defense formally authorized Virginia and Maryland National Guard troops to support the Capitol Police. The governors of both states had offered their assistance hours earlier. Virginia’s Ralph Northam had tweeted the offer at 3:29 p.m.

You may recall that Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the election and replaced him and the top echelon of leaders at the Pentagon with Trump loyalists.

Jim Bourg of Reuters said he heard some of the rioters say they were looking for VP Pence so they could hang him.

Reuters photographer Jim Bourg, who was photographing protesters trying to break down doors to the Capitol building, said he heard three older white men in red “Make America Great Again” caps talking about finding Vice President Mike Pence to hang him from a tree as a “traitor.”

Bourg said shouts of “traitor” were common among other demonstrators as well. Pence was presiding over the electoral vote count, a largely ceremonial duty to confirm Biden’s victory. Trump had falsely suggested to his followers that Pence could ignore the official count and hand Trump a second term. Security agents rushed Pence from the Senate chamber after protesters breached the Capitol building.

There is a video on Twitter of the mob inside the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” posted by @59Dallas.

Snopes confirmed that there was a noose erected outside the Capitol building

All of those who participated in this seditious action should be arrested and charged with sedition, not just trespassing. They were trying to stop the democratic process ordained in the Constitution, so they could install Trump for a second term, despite the fact that he lost the election. They are traitors, as is Trump. He was the instigator of the Insurrection and he should be held accountable. His enablers in Congress should also be held accountable.

When Congress meets to accept the results of the vote of the Electoral College, a large number of Republicans say they will object. They will object not because of facts or evidence or court decisions, but because they want to prove their devotion to Trump, the most incompetent and unhinged man ever to hold the presidency. The Republican members of Congress who deny the election of Joe Biden are, in the contested states, denying their own election. The Republican members of Congress from Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, andMichigan who support Trump’s challenge—even though the courts in their states threw out his claims—are saying that their own election was invalid. They should resign at once and wait for a new election.

Denis Smith, retired from the Ohio Department of Education, wrote the following:

“At least 12 Republican senators and potentially upwards of 140 House Republicans will formally object in writing to the electoral results submitted…”  says one report about tomorrow’s vote to accept the Electoral College results.  That number represents about 2/3 of all Republican members of the House, a startling figure when you consider that all of these people were democratically elected, that every state had their votes audited and certified, and that 60 court cases have been dismissed due to the sheer lack of evidence.

This would be laughable except for the fact that this whole spectacle is a challenge to democracy, an affront on majority rule – even though the Electoral College itself is a contradiction and a relic from the slavery era . In fact, Joe Biden won by more than 7,000,000 votes, yet we have at least 152 Members of Congress that are challenging that simple fact.

In light of all of this outrageous conduct and seditious behavior by Republicans, here are two quotes which I hope will be shared far and wide in the days ahead. I pulled them from my collection of favorite quotes assembled over the years, and do believe they are perfect for Americans to read before the debate in Congress tomorrow:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Attributed to several humorists, including Mark Twain, Josh Billings, Artemus Ward and Will Rogers)

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” — Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951)

This quote from the iconic HBO series, The Newsroom, which aired from 2012-2014, has turned out to be particularly prophetic. Think about this observation spoken by Anchorman Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels:

“We have one party that has these characteristics:

“Ideological purity. Compromise as weakness. A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism. Denying science. Unmoved by facts. Undeterred by new information. A hostile fear of progress. A demonization of education. A need to control women’s bodies. Severe xenophobia. Tribal mentality. Intolerance of dissent. Pathological hatred of the U.S. government. They can call themselves the Tea Party. They can call themselves conservatives. And they can even call themselves Republicans, though Republicans certainly shouldn’t. But we should call them what they are – The American Taliban.”

Who would have ever thought that this nation would come so close to becoming an authoritarian state? The distance on the road from authoritarianism to totalitarianism is not that far. In the meantime, get out the popcorn for tomorrow’s authoritarian spectacle. What you see and hear should be much more frightening than entertaining.