By Chris Satullo

Oh, so now you want to talk about unity and healing?

Now, you think it’s time to urge everyone to cool it with the divisiveness?

Yes, I’m looking at you, Kevin McCarthy. And every one of your Republican House minions who failed Wednesday to do their constitutional duty and vote to impeach Donald J. Trump for a second (and, God willing, final) time.

Let me ask you this:

Shouldn’t unity now entail rallying behind the man about to be sworn in as president, as he begins to clean up the gruesome hash the aforementioned DJT has made of things, from the pandemic to the economy to the racial divide?

President-Elect Biden, that is. You know, the guy who won the election by 7 million votes? The guy who thrashed an incumbent who is now disapproved by 67 percent of the populace? (Talk about unity!)

Instead, you continue to hedge and feint and mumble and contort yourself to avoid admitting those plain facts; avoid coming clean that everything you’ve said about massive voter fraud – not just in the last two months, but for the last 20 years – is a big, fat lie.

Instead, trembling for your own necks, you seek to placate the mob whose bat-wielding, gallows-building, Viking-hatted violence brought our Republic to the brink last week. You look at the Furies whom you summoned to the Capitol from the fever swamps of the internet with your winks, shrugs, dog whistles and outright howling lies – and you say: Let’s not talk about that; let’s talk about Antifa.

Instead, you drop-kick the Constitution into the Potomac as you call for “healing.”

You’re right, there’s healing to be done, after you and your colleagues had to dive beneath desks on the House floor, hearing the fists on the door, the bloodlust chants, as you grabbed your cells to dial loved ones for what you thought might be the last time.

In that moment, finally, there blazed in your guts the very same trembling terror felt all too often by schoolchildren and their brave teachers as gunmen stalked school hallways lined with crayon drawings.

After which, time after wrenching time, you all did nothing.

In that moment, finally, perhaps you grasped the helpless embattlement felt by the good people of Charlottesville as a torch-bearing mob tromped through their town chanting fascist slogans.

After which, you all did nothing.

In that moment, if you’re honest, you finally heard what Black citizens of this democracy have had to hear over and over and over for their entire forced journey through our history: the fierce howl of white supremacist hatred coming for them, whether it be vigilantes with nooses or authorities in blue with Billy clubs, pepper gas and zip-ties.

After which, time after time down through the decades, you and your historic ilk did absolutely nothing.

Perhaps it’s time, Kevin, for you and your crew to consider that, maybe, just maybe, it’s not your place to lecture anyone else about unity and healing.

Maybe it’s time for you to undertake Steps 8 and 9 of the Alcoholics Anonymous program:

8) Make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.

9) Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Among those you’ve harmed, frankly, are so many who’ve become consumed by dark conspiracy theories fueled by your lies. Some of them are going to go to jail, because they believed your lies, not just about elections and fraud, but about your rival political party and what it really plans, about immigrants, Blacks and “elites” and who they really are and what they really believe.

In making amends, here’s where I might suggest you start:

Tell your own supporters, gripped by the evil fantasies you helped weave, the truth. At long last, tell them:

• The election was clean, and their candidate lost fair and square.

• Stop the Steal actually was the steal.

• QAnon actually is the conspiracy, not a path to the light.

• Antifa is no dark, masterful army of vengeance, but a scattered group of anarchic provocateurs less numerous than the mob that stormed the Capitol.

• Pretty much everything you’ve told them about voter fraud for decades is falsehood, born of your desperate realization that your party is losing both on demographic trends and the battle of ideas, that it can’t win elections without cheats such as gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Even after you do that, given the last four years, it’s going to take you a whole lot of time to comply with AA’s Steps 8 and 9.

Among those you’ll have to make amends to:

• All the families of all the people who died needlessly from COVID-19 while you called the pandemic a hoax, mocked and undermined wise health precautions, and underfunded the government response.
• All the working class folks whose jobs either were wiped out by the pandemic or became daily dances with risk – while you stinted on their jobless benefits or tried to dismantle their workplace protections.
• All the peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters whose righteous anger and moving witness you libeled with your endless nattering about Antifa.

I could go on, because government run by people who don’t believe in government, who regard taxes not as the dues we pay to live in a decent society, but as an intolerable nuisance to the wealthy donors who keep them in power, well, such government is going to harm a lot of people. Always has.

But I’ll stop the list there, Kevin and friends, and I’ll conclude this way:

If you really want unity, healing and a calming of divisiveness, then your path for the next four years has to run through the 12 Steps, particularly the ones I’ve cited here.

Take your time; let us know when you’re done pondering your sins and making amends. We’ll keep you up to date on what the rest of us are doing to clean up the unholy mess you and your Orange Autocrat have made of everything.

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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia