21.01.07 Shame On You

By Scott Shephard

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My hands are shaking as a write this. If you are upset by images of the seditious acts that occurred yesterday, you have a right to be. If you aren’t, you shouldn’t be reading this. If you are inclined to say, “But these people are really antifa folks” or “What about the BLM protests across the country this summer?” or “ But the election was stolen and they/we have the right to overthrow a government that robs us of what is ours,” you need to go somewhere else. You aren’t welcome here today.

And if you observed that this picture is captured from MSNBC and are inclined to say, “But that is the fake news network. . . “, I will say this: the network has its biases, as do all of them. But this image is real, it is not Photoshopped and it is not taken out of context. It shows a mob of opportunists, most of whom are Trump supporters, having breached police barricades, streaming into what I have long seen as the very symbol of American democracy, our nation’s Capitol Building. Sacred American property was vandalized, a life was lost and what was gained? I’ve read that white supremacists and some MAGA folks are joyous this morning. But what are they celebrating?

You may have noticed that this is a photo of my TV screen. Somehow I felt the raw moment was worth capturing. The last time I took a photo of a TV image was on a summer night in 1969. Americans had landed on the moon and I was 15 years old. Like so many Americans of my generation, I had been a fan of the space program since grade school and this was one of the most exciting nights of my life. I set my camera up in front of my vintage b&w TV and took fuzzy photos of fuzzy video streaming from a quarter million miles away. What a paradox: in my mind’s eye I have an image of one of America’s brightest moments and before me now an image of one of its darkest.

To calm myself this morning, I stepped outside, looked up and found a beautiful half moon floating in a clear, dark morning sky. The silent moon looked down on our world without judgement and the moment brought tears to my eyes. The tears were (and still are) for what is, for what was and for what will be.

Canon R5 1/15 sec f/4.0 200 ISO