Now senators, congressman, please heed the call:

Remember that Congressional Republicans could stop all of this at any time. They choose, every day, not to. They own this.

— Waldo Jaquith (@waldojaquith) January 28, 2017

Week one.

There are all these things it’s important to remember, like how standing up is always better than sitting still and speaking is always better than staying quiet, like how there are more of us than there are of them, like how no despot or tyrant has ever held a whole people by force of arms against their will forever, like how surviving isn’t the goal but saving very definitely is.

But this is perhaps the most important thing to remember now, when things are so crazy that between my beginning to write this and ending it four more insane stories have come out about our federal government:

This isn’t all on us.

There are people we have elected, we have hired, we have chosen, to do a job here, and they are NOT DOING IT. They are sitting by while an unhinged neofascist and the man-baby figurehead he controls are attempting to destroy every strength this country has.

Republicans are sitting by, and it’s hard not to shrug and say of course they are. They’ve put party before country for more than a decade now. But they are sitting by while this happens and it’s important to remember that. They have a choice here. We shouldn’t let them off the hook just because they made the bullshit craven one we thought they’d make.

Democrats are sitting by, the club of the most of them, and for the life of me I can’t tell if it’s because they’re stunned by the pace of the insanity (PAY ATTENTION) or if they’re trying to figure out where to fire first but listen, if thousands of protesters can show up in airports and find places to park and figure it out, then surely our congressmen and women can huddle up and come up with an opposition plan that goes beyond deploring the tone in the room.

It’s important to remember that this is their job not in order to let ourselves off the hook but to put them on it. They have to be reminded. They have to be held to account for what they’ve done and not done. They have to present a united, coherent, effective opposition to every single thing Donald Trump and his ten-a-penny fascisti come up with, every time.

It’s important to remember that this is their job, one way or another, because if we remember that now, we stand a better chance of remembering it in the next election. In the next election, there are going to be a lot of excuses made for why Trump was unstoppable, why the chaos just occurred, why the horrific DC custom of behaving oneself at the cocktail party was more important than American values or American lives. And it’s important to remember that those excuses are bullshit.

Know that they are. Know that this could be stopped by the people in power. March in the streets knowing that they could make those marches unnecessary and choose not to do so. Remember the ones who march with you. Remember the ones who stayed home. Support the former.

AND VOTE THE LATTER OUT.

A.