The rioters entered fearlessly, looking straight into cameras as they destroyed and desecrated a people’s building. Urged and fired-up, by an unhinged Trump they stormed the Capitol building, smashing doors and windows and terrorizing those who were there to confirm the people’s presidential vote.

They were as unafraid and arrogant as the policeman with his knee on the neck of George Floyd looking calmly into the camera. No one stopped the murder of George Floyd. No one stopped the hooligans in the Capitol. To the contrary, some Capitol police took pictures with the smirking rioters. In Minneapolis we witnessed brutal power terrorizing Black people, in Washington we saw with our own eyes how White Supremacists pushed and shoved law officers with impunity.

And the truth emerged, what is so risky for innocent blacks, is allowed for rioting thuggish whites. In Washington, Trump and a bunch of Republican House Members and Senators Cruz, Hawley, and their ilk gave the mob its power; from a literal fist-salute, to the gift of objecting to confirm Jo Biden as president. These Republicans, not just Trump, are the co-conspirators behind these Nazi thugs with fascist shirts and signs mocking the Holocaust and waving Confederate Flags. Republican elected officials fed the arrogance of the rioters by choosing to subvert the people’s vote betraying their own oath of office. They, and not just Trump, have been giving political sustenance to the attackers of democracy. These vote-objecting Republicans, and Trump of the wild lies, put the smirk on the face of the rioters as they smashed and punched and kicked democracy in broad daylight.

And now as we celebrate the new Biden-Harris administration and Georgia’s two senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, we must remember how perilously close we came to lose so much. If we want to support those who worked so hard for a democratic victory we must hold on to truth. There can be no two systems of justice in a democracy. Trump and all those who took part in the terrorizing act in the Capitol must be held accountable. No one, including elected officials, is above the law.