FROM THE DESKTOPS OF THE COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA. JAN 7, 2021. 4:15 AM ET. We just want to make clear that, like so many others in so many parts of the world today, we are altogether appalled by the happenings at the US Capitol (and various state capitols as well) on Wednesday, January 6, 2021.

At this point in the early morning of January 7, with the boardroom TV running overtime, we don’t have the energy to note down so many deeply disturbing details. Anyone interested in our more specific thoughts can consult the counterweights Twitter profile for the many re-tweets we’ve also indulged in, to provide some group record of how we reacted as the “attempted coup” or “insurrection” by pro-Trump activists unfolded.

For public consumption, so to speak, we support the initial reaction of our prime minister and other Canadian democratic political leaders. (As in Prime Minister Trudeau’s 6:17 PM tweet : “Canadians are deeply disturbed and saddened by the attack on democracy in the United States, our closest ally and neighbour. Violence will never succeed in overruling the will of the people. Democracy in the US must be upheld – and it will be.”)

We’d underline as well some remarks by Canada’s UN ambassador Bob Rae : “The stolen election thesis is actually a lie, and a dangerous lie. The fomented chaos tonight reflects that danger.” (We’d similarly agree with Senator Mitt Romney’s urging that the “best way we could show respect for the voters” who have been upset by this lie “is by telling them the truth.” And we say this without any prejudice flowing from Senator Romney’s family cottage and summer retreat in Grand Bend, Ontario, Canada!)

We are disturbed by the results of an instant YouGov poll, suggesting that 21% of US registered voters – including 45% of Republicans – “strongly or somewhat support” the “storming of the Capitol building.”

And then there are the Republican senators and members of the House still offering sustenance to what Bob Rae calls the “stolen election thesis” – even after the storming of the Capitol has shown just where refusing to take Mitt Romney’s advice to tell the voters the plain truth can lead.

Whatever else, however, the most recent past in US politics does equally have its more forward-looking, getting-stronger, even buoyant notes, starting with the Democrats’ two new Senate seats in Georgia (thanks to Stacy Abrams and her many fellow street-level patriots and democratic organizers).

Back down on earth, at our quick meeting to review and approve these hastily drafted notes from several hands, someone also remembered a “country folk” tune from the older generation so dominant among our counterweights editors’ numbers.

It was written in 1971 by Steve Goodman, and then recorded most memorably twice – by Arlo Guthrie in 1972 and then by Willie Nelson in 1984. Somehow the haunting refrain seems to work as a conclusion for our quick comments here: “Good morning America how are you? / Say, don’t you know me? I’m your native son / I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans / I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.”

(And btw it appears that the at-great-cost democratically elected US Congress has now made it completely official that Joe Biden has won the US presidential election of 2020, with 306 electoral votes and 51.3% of the popular vote from sea to shining sea. And here’s hoping, praying even, that the new Biden-Harris administration will manage at least five hundred miles further, on the great continuing journey of Democracy in America in the four years that lie ahead.)