By Emil Guillermo

That James Webb Telescope is so amazing. NASA pointed it into the darkness of space, and suddenly saw the truth—-stars and galaxies we never knew existed.

At the speed of light, that’s a look back 13 billion years.

I wish all of America could see more clearly right here on Earth just about Jan. 6, 2021.

It doesn’t take a telescope.

You just need to keep watching the Jan. 6 Select Committee hearings.

If you think all that is nonsense for government nerds, consider the statement of Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-Mississippi) the chair of the Jan. 6 Select Committee.

He knows how important it is especially for the African American community.

“I am from a part of the country where had it not been for the federal government and the Constitution, my parents and many more Americans like them would have continued to be treated as second-class citizens,” Thompson said. “The freedom to be able to vote without harassment, travel in relative safety, and dine and seat where you choose is because we have a government that looks over the wellbeing of its citizens.”

And that, Thompson said, did not happen on Jan. 6, 2022, on Trump’s watch.

“It was an attack on our country,” Thompson said. “An attack on our democracy, on our Constitution. A sitting president with a violent mob trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another. It still makes my blood boil to think of it.”

Yours should be boiling, too. If you were hesitant to call Jan. 6 a planned coup, just watch the July 12 hearing. There’s more corroborating testimony from people in Trump’s inner circle like White House Counsel Pat Cipollone who knew what happened from December of 2020 leading up to Jan. 6.

The story is not good for our democracy. Trump knew he lost the election but kept searching for ways to hold on to power. Things became “unhinged” at a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting when Trump personal advisors Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn (a.k.a. the “crazy ones”) suggested everything from foreign election interference to voting machine fraud to a massive rally with the most rabid Trump supporters.

Cipollone suggested conceding the loss. The argument was loud, but the normal Trump loyalists lost.

Then Trump tweeted: “Big protest in D.C, on January 6th. Be there. Will be wild.”

Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D/Fla) called it a “siren call.” The Asian American member of Congress shared how she was the only member of the committee “who was not blessed to be born American.” She was born in Vietnam, from where her family fled a communist government and was rescued by the U.S. Navy and given sanctuary in America.

She noted how decades later she was serving as a congresswoman and under attack on Jan. 6.

It was another moment of context from an Asian American perspective that let us know that every American is a stakeholder in these hearings.

Murphy also read text messages that Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale wrote on Jan. 6.

“This is about Trump pushing for uncertainty in our country, a sitting president asking for a civil war,” Parscale texted to Katrina Pierson. “I feel guilty for helping him win.”

When Pierson tried to relieve him of blame, Parscale texted: “Yeah, but a woman is dead, and yeah, if I was Trump and I knew my rhetoric killed someone…”

When Pierson again pushed back, Parscale insisted it was the rhetoric that killed.

People of color know the acts of a killing mob, and this hearing featured the testimony of repentant rioters.

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former propagandist for the nationalist group, “The Oathkeepers,” warned that the country is “exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen because the potential was there from the start.” And it could get worse if Trump wins again.

Stephen Ayres, a Jan. 6 rioter who went to D.C. because he felt called by Trump, testified he feels lied to. He said Jan. 6 changed his life for the worse. He lost his job, and nearly his house. He warned Americans who still believe the ‘Big Lie’ to “take the (horse) blinders off.”

Doesn’t take a telescope to see how close a failed coup imperiled our democracy on Jan. 6.

Emil Guillermo is a veteran journalist and commentator at www.amok.com

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