The day my country broke my heart
Being able to quantify the anguish over January 6th doesn't make it any easier to bear
I often end up telling folks who ask me about my job that I unironically love Congress. They usually respond by raising their eyebrows into the stratosphere and backing away slowly, as if from a rabid mongoose.
I know Congress’s reputation is in the toilet, and I understand why. But Congress, I tell my students, is supposed to be us. The United States is too big for all of us to vote on every issue, and it’s too important to let any president, no matter how virtuous, make all the decisions unilaterally. Whether we like it or not, Congress is the most critical branch of the federal government, the first listed in the Constitution, and the cornerstone of our representative democracy. And so, as with anything we love, we should want it to live up to our highest ideals; we should care for it lovingly; and yes, we should feel free to give it constructive criticism from time to time. Never, ever, should we tear it down in anger or misunderstanding.
Given these overwrought feelings, it shouldn’t surprise that my course on Congress is my favorite one to teach. After all, once I went to all the trouble of writing a textbook about it, I figured I might as well make a couple dozen people pay for it. The last couple of times I’ve taught this course, I’ve made it a point to open with a bit of empirical evidence for just how much I care about Congress — and, implicitly, why my students should, too.
The chart I made below displays data collected from my Apple Watch between mid-2019 when I first acquired it, and the first days of 2025. What we’re seeing is the daily average of my resting heart rate for each of the nearly two thousand days within this period, save for a couple of brief stretches where I experimented with leaving off the watch.
I have my ups and downs, but as a trained scientist I was naturally curious about any patterns or standout days in the data. So instead of just looking at time trends, I sorted each of the 1,840 days in this dataset by average daily beats per minute (BPM), with the highest-BPM days ranking at the top.
I can’t say what accounts for my truly zenlike sub-45 BPM days down at the bottom (those have been elusive for awhile now, as you can see). But there are some clearer notables among the high-ranking days, when my heart was clearly working overtime. My wedding day, for example, clocks in at a respectable #68, due I’m sure to a wonderful glut of romantic effervescence rather than agony, anxiety, or fear (I promise, honey).
But one day (I was both dejected and darkly vindicated to see) outshone them all as the #1 least-restful day of the past five years as far as my soft beating heart was concerned. And it was definitely not for the same reason as my wedding day:
Yesterday was the four-year anniversary of January 6, 2021, the day that a mob of election-denying supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol Building (where Congress resides) in the hopes of overturning the results of the 2020 election and installing Trump as a re-elected president. Quite a few people, including police officers, died on that day or in its aftermath, and members of Congress, as well as the Vice President, were forced into hiding for hours while the area was secured. It was probably the most serious violent political threat my country has faced in most of our lifetimes. Like many Americans (and non-Americans, too, I’m sure), it shocked me and shook me to the heart of my body. It’s small comfort that, unlike many others, I have a sad trove of numbers to bear that out.
That four-year anniversary (January 6, 2025) is the day I’m writing this post. Fittingly, I’m doing so from Washington, DC while I visit on a work trip. As I write, I’m looking out the window of my hotel watching a snowstorm blanket the region, bringing America’s capital to a beautiful, peaceful standstill. Most of the normally-bustling roads are silent; schools and many businesses are closed; and the same area around the Capitol where rioters scaled the walls, broke the windows, and trampled and killed police officers exactly four years prior lies empty, quiet, and undisturbed.
When I booked my travel to DC to kick off another spring of our student internship program, it was in the middle of a wild political summer of 2024. Felonious nominees, disastrous debates, and switched-up candidates were the political story du jour, and the election and its eventual outcome were as uncertain as ever. I tried not to take it as a bad omen that my last day in town would be January 6, 2025, should Trump lose again, and his insurrection-adjacent supporters feel compelled to treat us to a violent sequel.
This past Sunday (the 5th), I took my students on a walking tour of the area around Capitol Hill, where many of them will work at internships for the spring semester. It was a stunted and subdued tour, however. In advance of the electoral vote counting that took place yesterday, and which prompted the violent events of four years ago, police have erected enormous black steel barricades for several blocks around the Capitol, preventing anyone other than members or staff from getting anywhere near the building.
Given what happened last time, it’s little wonder why they felt they had to do this. I had the same fears just a few months ago. And I’m obviously pleased that instead of an angry riot, the process that unfolded inside the Capitol yesterday was as peaceful as the snow falling softly outside, as it always had been prior to the 2020 election.
But as we walked by the barricades, they felt like the reification of a sick joke, mainly because of how utterly unnecessary they were. If it didn’t upset me so much, I would have laughed. Everyone in this city, and everyone outside of it, knows that unlike four years ago, there was simply no danger of the losing side staging an attempted coup this time around.
Meanwhile, the Americans who staged one last time around seem poised to go free; and the sad, selfish man who Mitch McConnell told us was “practically and morally responsible” for the desecration will take the oath of office for a second term in just a couple of weeks. Only two Republicans remain in the House who voted to impeach Donald Trump for his actions, and only a handful of Republican Senators remain who voted to convict.
These are hard truths to face, but we have to face them. A democracy in which only one of the two major parties commits to a fair and peaceful transition of power is not a sustainable state of political being; but we still must try to sustain it. We have no other choice. Inhabiting the peaceful, just, nonviolent side of an interminable conflict is lonely. It’s a painful and difficult political strategy to pursue, especially when other actors refuse to play by the rules. It’s frustrating and egregiously unfair, but it is also righteous and necessary.
I’m not out to recreate the circumstances of that troubling heart rate spike for me or for you, at least not today. There’s much to say (and many are thankfully saying it) in the weeks ahead about the dangers in the future, the mistakes of the past, and the warnings of the present. I could go on for paragraphs about the failures to hold Donald Trump accountable, the hypocrisy of Republicans who denounced him on the 6th only to kiss the ring in the months and years that followed. I could go for many more about my own haunted memories of that day, the personal anguish it caused me, and the lasting damage it did to my silly little patriotic heart.
Instead, I’ll just humbly ask that we not forget what happened, or how it made us feel when it did. If the result of this last election is any indicator, so many already have. I never can, and I never will.
Finding quiet, peaceful moments in times of trouble has been a common refrain of this newsletter; partly because it’s so hard to do, but equally because it’s so crucial, both inside and outside of politics. I’m not sure of much right now, but I do know this: Locating the moments, places, and people that bring you peace is an absolute prerequisite for staying sane and focused during the next few years of whatever madness is likely to come.
In that spirit, I’ll offer a peaceful poem I’ve been saving for just this occasion, in the hopes that it does a tiny fraction of the healing that our hearts (mine, at least) are still doing.
The Sixth of January
by David Budbill
The cat sits on the back of the sofa looking out the window through the softly falling snow at the last bit of gray light. I can’t say the sun is going down. We haven’t seen the sun for two months. Who cares? I am sitting in the blue chair listening to this stillness. The only sound: the occasional gurgle of tea coming out of the pot and into the cup. How can this be? Such calm, such peace, such solitude in this world of woe.
Great post Charlie! I think your beating heart shows you, and us now, how truly sensitive and caring you are. And how analytical too! I hope the next four years goes quickly in US politics- and that there’s somebody more sensible waiting in the wings. There’ll be drama for sure!
I collect a lot of data too in hopes that it can find value someday. You knocked it out of the park with your hidden treasure!