“Do not be numb to this, we are seeing history unfold,” John Berman, co-anchor of CNN’s “New Day,” told viewers Monday in follow-up to a report on the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump this week.
Berman is right, and “numb” is the proper word. In the last four years, many Americans have become numb to the evil and once unimaginable damage this man has done to our democracy and to families who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 through his inaction and indifference.
The Republican politicians who shamelessly promulgated his lies, racism, misogyny, greed and hate now urge us to “turn the page” and focus on “healing the nation.” Judging from my mail, many of his followers who wrote letters to newspapers praising him and denouncing any criticism are suddenly silent. They don’t want to talk about their fearless leader any more, and it is a fair guess they surely don’t want to revisit the mob violence at the U.S. Capitol he instigated on Jan. 6 that will be on full display at the trial this week.
But we must not just turn the page and move on. We must watch, process, reflect and remember what happened on Jan. 6, just as we remember the horrors of fascism in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and the evils of slavery in the 17th, 18th and 19th American centuries with museums, monuments, books, films and other forms of lasting media. Otherwise, we will surely replay it with someone else down the road of history.
Media companies cannot make us watch the impeachment trial this week. But to the credit of cable channels like C-SPAN, MSNBC and CNN, they will be doing everything they can to make it easy for us to watch and stream live or revisit coverage with video replays in the evening.