Insurrection

[acg]

3. I Heard the Sound of Time

J HEARD THE SOUND OF TIME
By Al Garcia

I can hear the chimes of time begin to ring, as the shadows of betrayal begin to lift from the darkness that concealed the treachery and duplicity in the crippled minds of unhinged wretched compatriots, marching blindly into the abyss of destiny.

I could hear the angry cries of rage drown out the calm that obscured the smoldering and building wrath that laid beneath the tempered souls of desolate and isolated minds. And I found myself shaken and outraged, saddened and wounded by the false allegiance and respect in the faces of betrayal that stormed the gates of our citadel of hope and bastion of promise.

It was a day of insurrection and of mutiny. A day that made America cry and shed tears of anguish and disgust. It was a day when the worst of us betrayed the best in us. It was a day unlike the many days before. It was the day America’s golden crown fell to the ground -- the very ground once thought to be humanity’s hallowed field of glory, grandeur and splendor.

Now stained with the blood and fury of discontent and disloyalty, there remains inside the shattered and splintered remnants of what was, unmoved hearts and unyielding minds that seek to fulfill the unfinished act of betrayal. And I find myself again discouraged by the sights and sounds of the evil that remains unrestrained and unconcealed for all to see.

I can hear the chimes of time begin to ring. This time, they ring for us. If only we could hear the cautionary warnings in the echoes of time. On January 6, 2021, while many heard and saw the chaos and the hate, I heard the sound of time as it once again erupted with fury and with rage.

I heard the sound of the shattering of glass as on “Kristallnacht,” the Night of Broken Glass, when German Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property on November 9, 1938. I heard the muted cries of men, women and children in more than 40,000 concentration camps like Auschwitz in Poland, Westerbork in the Netherlands, Mauthausen in Austria, and Janowska in Ukrain, where the genocide of human souls laid bare the depth of human depravity. And I heard the silence of betrayal, as men and women of character and wisdom, tasked with upholding and preserving our form of government, bowed down in submission to the wave of tyranny that marched up the steps of our Capitol and attempted to rekindle the flames of history that many of us thought had died with the executioners and predators of our past. And when I heard the sound of time return, I bowed my head in shame and cried. Even men who have been in war can still feel ache of betrayal of honor, of reverence, of country.

I can hear the chimes of time begin to ring --- like a cry in the night – shattering the quiet of hallowed fields of dreams, where fallen patriots lament the treachery and duplicity of the rants and rage of unhinged wretched compatriots, marching blindly into the abyss of destiny.

I heard the sound of time, and it was a sound the world has heard before. And it frightened me.