Every year in England, Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated across the country on November 5 with fireworks and bonfires, similar to the big national celebration on the Fourth of July in the United States.
Although most Americans are probably familiar with the Guy Fawkes mask, my guess is that many are unaware of who Fawkes was or what Guy Fawkes Night is all about.
It’s been celebrated since the 1600s and marks the day in which a group of traitors, including Fawkes, was apprehended in 1605 attempting to blow up the House of Lords in London with a hidden cache of gunpowder (“Remember, remember, the Fifth of November” is a familiar refrain across England). Their ultimate goal was to kill King James I and install a Catholic head of state to replace the Protestant king. Their plot failed, and the men involved were tortured, executed and then quartered in a gruesome manner. To this day, England celebrates the Fifth of November as Guy Fawkes Night, commemorating the thwarted coup. Along with fireworks, Guy Fawkes mannequins are often burned in effigy in the center of a big bonfire and children watch in glee as a traitor from hundreds of years ago goes up in flames.
Why bring this up?
Here in the United States, we saw a despicable event on January 6, 2021, involving a group of plotters led by a sitting president who lost a fair and honest election (as dozens of court cases and audits have now proved). That president fed the public lies and goaded his followers to storm the nation’s Capitol in an attempt to overturn a democratic election.
Sadly, with the help of a wide swath of gullible people, some not-so-gullible-but-morally-compromised insiders and a few all-too-willing-to-mislead media personalities, the former president has managed to stay out of jail. He’s also avoided the widespread revulsion befitting a traitor who deliberately tried to sabotage our sacred democratic process, a process fought and died for by hundreds of thousands of true patriots over the past couple of centuries.
We’re just now learning the extent to which Republicans in Congress and White House staff were involved in plotting to overturn the election and roles they played before, during and after the January 6 attack on Washington, D.C.
The system that ensured Guy Fawkes would be quickly tortured, executed and displayed as mutilated body parts in Great Britain in the 1600s is the opposite of a democracy. The king had ultimate power, and his enemies were dispatched quickly and without mercy. A very public execution and mutilation ensured the public got the message.
It’s ironic that Donald Trump, a traitor who’s demonstrated admiration for autocratic rule, should be thanking his lucky stars that we live in a modern democracy where the type of ruler he seems to admire and emulate has never made it into our highest elected office. Otherwise we might someday be having big celebrations on the Sixth of January called “Trump Day” — a day in which a plot to overthrow the government was foiled and the plotters tortured, executed and put on public display to discourage any future traitors from trying to disrupt or overthrow our fairly elected government.
Greg James
Publisher