<begin rant>
Hey America. What was that? “Happy New Year! Here’s an insurrection put down with a velvet glove! Come back in a couple of weeks for an extra edition of PANDEMIC!!”
People have compared it to lots of different things : BLM protests, ANTIFA riots, Benghazi… (here’s a helpful article tho : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence ) and yet nothing like this has ever happened before. At no time in our history has the President of the United States spent four years riling up his base, lying to the public with little if any consequence other than newspapers saying things like “unproven claims” and “without evidence”, then proceeded to speak to a mob, told them to “fight like Hell”, point them at the Capital and let them loose resulting in the deaths of a cop and four protesters, the theft of materials ranging from podiums to laptops and a social media PARTY to document it all.
The fact that it’s unprecedented certainly doesn’t mean it was unforeseen and for all the organizers and chiefs of police and whoever else in the chain of command didn’t call in extra cops, or said “no” when Maryland’s governor tried to call in the National Guard, “no thanks” to the FBI, etc… fortunately most of these fascists only give the barest lip service to their religion because it’d be good to see every one of them crucified.
I think I might mean that literally. Yep. Been reading too much Game of Thrones. See them strung up with one hand nailed and pointing towards the White House… we’ll run out of space in DC. Have another couple hundred pointing the way to Mark “Better Late Than Never!” Zuckerburg’s place. Save some for Jack “ooh! What’re we doin’?” Dorsey and whatever jackass launched Parler. And then, yeah – overturn Section 230 and charge THEM with sedition to boot.
Over the years I’ve always stopped short of at least outwardly expressing any desire for violence. But here I am. You’ve got photographs and video of individuals breaking into the Capital, some have webcast threats about what they were going to do to anyone they found there. Track them down. Now. Get it done while you’ve still got an administration in office that believes in capital punishment.
I’ve been struggling to write anything about ANYTHING these last couple of days – I don’t think that elevating the events of yesterday to the term “insurrection” is really appropriate. It was a mob, a protest (encouraged and allowed to) run amok and a pathetic display on both sides. As above – I try not to advocate, encourage or fantasize about violence but there’s long been a part of me that would LIKE to see these “militias”, Neo-Nazis and the second-coming of the failed Confederate revolution go head-to-head with the Army… or just the National Guard… or a fully-mobilized (and for better-or-worse militarized) police force. But the United States (again, for better-or-for-worse) simply didn’t play the game. They didn’t show up.
There’s probably a humanitarian argument that if you don’t have the power to resist fully you should let the tide roll over you till you CAN resist effectively. You let them occupy the Capital till the cavalry arrives just like you hand the mugger your wallet… but why the cavalry wasn’t there already… why anyone was allowed to claim an “optics problem” or whatever… I FEAR that actually there was legitimate concern that “our” army or “our” National Guard might’ve just joined the party. Apparently a number of “our” militarized civilian police force did.
I’ve got friends who’re cops. They say that the number of police officers who believe that Trump’s the rightful ruler, that the election was stolen, are numerous enough to be comfortable speaking up about it.
Misinformation and lies have reached everywhere and at that point it’s no longer practical for me to have sympathy for those who’ve swallowed it. It’s possible to maintain a level head and a relatively balanced stream of information. It’s possible to counter the lies by not being lazy about what news you ingest. I think I’ve lost my sympathy for the stupid. At a certain point you can no longer say “I’m racist because that’s what my parents told me” and you NEED to take responsibility for your own thinking. And it’s long past time to … yes… CRUCIFY those who’ve taken advantage of that stupidity. Whether it’s the trolls on Facebook or Trump on Twitter, lying politicians or smirking antivaxxers and selfish anti-maskers. Crucifixion didn’t make a martyr. Let’s see which of them actually rise again.
<oh dear… I haven’t closed my rant tag>
Here’s something nabbed from someone else. It expressed what I’m feeling pretty well too.
An Open Letter to all Trump Supporters:
There is just so much to process….it is overwhelming.
January 6 is Epiphany, a Christian religious holiday. Traditionally, it was held that this was the date that the three Wise Men reached Bethlehem. When I was a child, my family had a Nativity scene, and the three Wise Men and their camels would move closer to the Manger, every day, until they finally arrived on January sixth.
How did the United States celebrate Epiphany in 2021?
Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol Building, climbing over walls, smashing windows, constructing a gallows, stealing podiums and Pelosi’s mail, and laying bombs. Their intent: to overturn the results of the election, which they (wrongly) believed to have been fraudulent. Four of them died, one being shot by Capitol police. One of the Capitol cops was beaten to death, he just died last night. Congress and other employees scurried to safety, in fear for their lives. And rightly so, when thousands of people hang a noose and scream for your death, fear is appropriate. At least one of the insurrectionists that made it into the building had zip ties and a pistol.
Some of the Capitol police tried to hold back the tide. At least some used tear gas, some drew weapons. But, others moved barricades in order to let the insurrectionists in, others took selfies with them.
Either way, security presence was absurdly sparse, orders of magnitude absurd. Hundreds to hold off thousands. It is a stark contrast with the response to BLM or OWS or the Water Protectors. Clearly, there are two very different sets of rules, de re, if not de dicto.
Although many Republicans are now decrying these actions, these pathetic acts of sedition, although they were expressly called for and encouraged by the President of the United States, by Cruz, by Hawley, and by many others. The event was planned, online, and not secretly. Absolutely no one should be surprised, but of course we are.
“It was Antifa!”
No it wasn’t. It was the Republican Party. The blame-it-on-antifa line is just yet another lie, so many of you are willing to let yourselves believe. I am reading this line, and others like it–Republicans and Trump supporters trying to distance themselves from this failed insurrection, saying things like “That isn’t what I voted for!” Yes, it is.
And who were these pathetic insurrectionists?
They form an interesting, motley crew. We shouldn’t “paint them all with the same brush”, and try to distinguish some of their different components. We have:
Proud Boys
A white supremacist and misogynistic domestic terrorist group. Oh, they might claim to be something else, but that’s what they are.
QAnon
The woman who was shot was a QAnon believer. They are a cult that believes, without any real evidence, that the federal government has been infiltrated by a child sex ring, and that only Trump can save us from them.
Neo-Confederates
Although they will tell you their battle flag is about pride and states rights, we all know what the symbol means: white supremacy.
Nazis
For this group, six million murders of Jews wasn’t enough.
THIS is what has become of the Republican Party.
THESE are the people you are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with when you vote for a Republican, regardless of your motivation.
Was it lower corporate tax rates? A desire to balance the budget? Deregulation? A moral opposition to abortion? Fear of radical Islamic terrorism? Fear of hordes of Spanish speaking immigrants pouring over the southern border? A desire to legally own fully automatic weapons with high capacity magazines? Opposition to gay marriage? Outrage over Starbucks’s Christmas cups?
What was it that made you throw in your lot with the Nazis, the Confederates, and QAnon? The antimaskers and the antivaxxers? This sickening mélange of American racism, conspiracy theory, and anti-intellectualism?
I do not seek an answer from any of you. These are questions you should ask yourselves while staring at pictures from Washington, D.C. on January sixth, 2021. Because that’s a MIRROR.
That’s right, it’s YOU.
That guy with the big horns? YOU
That guy walking off with the podium? YOU
That guy with his feet on Pelosi’s desk and his hands on her mail? YOU
Climbing the walls? YOU
Smashing the windows? YOU
That guy with his work ID hanging around his neck? YOU
That guy that beat that cop to death with a fire extinguisher? YOU
That guy with a tee shirt that announced that six million murdered Jews weren’t enough? YOU
Words and symbols don’t get to mean what any one individual wants or wills them to mean. THIS is what you have been calling for, demanding, threatening for YEARS.
The only comforting thing about it, for me, was just how PATHETIC it was, how ineffectual, how incompetent. Even with an absurdly inadequate security presence, THAT’s your coup?
Y’all managed to delay the counting of the votes by a few hours. Kudos.
You killed a cop, and hospitalized a few others. Congratulations.
You smashed some windows, breached security, and stole a few things. Bravo.
You got four of your own number killed. Good job.
But, above all else, this accomplishment stands above the others:
You showed the whole world, yet again, who and what you are.
<oh noes… rant tag still not closed… still angry>
1 thought on “January 7th, 2020. The Day After.”
Whew!!! This certainly has me all steamed up this morning and I thank you for it! I see how you feel about “don’t say anything“ and Your words are an inspiration to those of us who can’t say it quite as eloquently!