If the recent political rhetoric is a clue to the coming year, we are in for a rough ride. Friends, fasten your seat belts.

While I have no prediction for the future, I hope the public will get some straight answers for a change.

Our elected leaders went home for the Christmas holiday. Much of the Capitol was vacant. Even the highly paid TV personalities and their paid expert guests were absent, giving the second-stringers a chance to shine. Twelve months ago, it was a different story.

That was when we saw history made when a mob attacked the U.S. Capitol as part of an unprecedented effort to block the Senate from counting the votes in the electoral college.

Since then, opinion-makers have bombarded us with theories about what caused the attack. Some blamed the former president, while others say it was a put-up plot hatched inside the dark chambers of the deep state, whatever that is.

If you are interested in some of the goofball conspiracy theories surrounding the Capitol attack, take a tour of the internet. Many supporters of the former president believed the rioters acted because they thought the election was stolen. That theft began with Arizona. Yet, the former president’s party controls Arizona. Does anyone believe Arizona Republicans stole votes from other Republicans?

There are reports that some Republicans, including some members of the former president's inner circle, believe that theory is horse hockey. They opine that he lost that state because he attacked the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, a hero to many Arizona citizens.

But many of Trump’s supporters believe it was theft. Across the nation, we hear cries alleging the current president defeated the former because of massive voter fraud.

Polls confirm this belief. Yet, despite the noise, no one has shown evidence of any massive voter fraud. All we have seen are allegations from lawyers. They filed suit after suit, before federal and state court judges on the right and left. These judges laughed the fraud-claiming lawyers out of court.

And the FBI has arrested more than 700 of the rioters, many who admit they acted in error.

After a year of making stolen election claims, do you think someone at that big political poker table would finally show their cards face-up?

Do you think the public is getting a bit tired of people yelling fraud and theft and corruption without providing proof to back up their claims?

The House of Representatives Select Committee is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Some documents from their probe seem to indicate there may have been a plot to overturn the electoral college votes and give the former president another term.

Even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) the Republican leader in the Senate, who opposed the creation of the Select Committee, recently voiced his concern about this alleged plot.

“I think the fact-finding is interesting. We’re all going to be watching it,” McConnell told Spectrum News. “It was a horrendous event, and I think what they’re seeking to find out is something the public needs to know.”

If my memory serves me right, when the courts overturned President Richard M. Nixon’s claim of executive privilege and gave Watergate investigators access to voice recordings in the Oval Office, it was not long until the president resigned.

Our former president has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold his executive privilege claims on certain White House documents. If the court rejects his claims, as many legal experts predict they will, could this be a key to the public finding out what was behind the Jan. 6 mob riot?

It seems to me if there was a plot to overturn the will of the voters and keep the former president in office, then the plotters should be held accountable.

If there was no planned plot and the mob just acted on their own in reaction to speeches and the loss of their favored candidate, then that is a different story. We have another election scheduled for November 2022.

If there was massive voter fraud, someone should go to jail.

In any event, it is time for the braggarts and bomb-throwers on both sides to sit down and let the grownups on all sides get to the bottom of the whole thing.

Sen. McConnell is right: “It was a horrendous event, and I think what they're seeking to find out is something the public needs to know.”

Our Republic deserves no less.