Thread by @DavidPepper

THREAD

I don't talk much about it, but @AOC 's brave comments brought home my own experience, decades ago, when I was abducted at gun point for an hour.

The feeling that your life may end, that your fate is wholly in someone else's hands, that you have no control...

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...never leaves you.

The emotions don't disappear after the situation ends, but they do evolve, from fear to anger--that anyone else would claim for themselves the role of determining whether you live or die. That anyone dared place themselves in that position is enraging.

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And when you see similar situations that arise--a video on the evening news of a 7/11 being robbed at gunpoint, for example--you remember it all again. The feeling of seeing that gun pointed right at you. The lack of control.

And now someone new just joined the club.

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Or for years, when you read in the news about someone else being abducted at gunpoint, who didn't live to tell about it (because most people abucted in a car at gunpoint don't live to tell about it), you remember it again, and wonder how you got so lucky.

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But I also was in politics when this happened, so I also know the whiplash of having the whole thing politicized. People questioning the story. Media doubting it. Personal attacks. Innuendo. A judge, of all people, still telling people years later you made it up...

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even when the perpetrators pled guilty and served lengthy jail terms.

But on the flip side, you also see the best in people. They far outnumber the cynics.

Especially people who've been through the same, strangers or even a Congressman (Chabot), reaching out to tell you...

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...in person, or through small notes, that they know what you're going through. That they prayed for you. That they too are in the club.

Know how uplifting that outreach is.

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But for all I dealt with in my small personal experience, I can not imagine the feeling of @AOC and the other victims of this attack of having their own colleagues, and US Senators, say, "move on."

Forget it.

Or mouth procedural BS.

Or walk past metal detectors

Etc.

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What an absolute, unforgivable outrage it would be to push this all under the rug. Both for democracy's sake. Precedent's sake.

And for all the victims who endured it, and are owed justice.

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For God's sakes, GOP Senators.

Take your duties seriously.

Forget politics for once and do your damn jobs.

You have no business whatsoever looking the other way.

END

(Note: the judge in the case itself didn't doubt anything. He was perfectly appropriate. It was another judge in the courthouse who enjoyed sharing his personal view.)