It happened. I suppose it was inevitable. Ginned up by the president himself, Trump's white supremacist extremists and election fraud delusionists laid siege to the Capitol on Wednesday. When it was done, five people were dead, including a Capitol Police officer. At a rally immediately before the mob stormed the Capitol, Trump had exhorted his cult of followers—who call him their "God Emperor"—to "stop the steal" by marching to where Senators and House Reps were at that very moment counting electoral college votes to certify the Biden-Harris win. Like all of you, I watched the violence and mayhem with my jaw on the floor. Members of Congress were whisked out of the House and Senate chambers as armed rioters were breaking down the doors, shattering glass with crowbars, endangering the lives of men and women who were only doing the people's business. No one, absolutely no one, failed to notice how law enforcement handled these white insurrectionists with kid gloves. News anchors contrasted their mild response to the paramilitary violence unleashed on peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors last summer, including on that day when Trump wanted to hold a Bible aloft for a photo op.
At the height of the siege, one officer even pointed two rioters in the direction of soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's office. They didn't find his office, but their cohorts found House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, where they posed for pictures with their feet on her desk, going through her mail and her laptop. Hours later, when the building had finally been secured, Congress returned to its ransacked chambers and finished the job of certifying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the next American president and vice-president. They were determined not to let insurrectionists stop them from doing what the law prescribed, though more than one hundred Republicans, led by Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, still objected to the votes as being illegitimate.
Of course, their objections were completely performative, with no basis in law or possibility of success, staged only to appease the cult of Trump. Arguably, these Republicans overplayed their hands, which are now bloodied by the dead on their doorstep. This was a dark day for our country. The siege on the Capitol was nothing less than a failed coup, incited by the American president and his henchmen. Whether Trump will escape the consequences of this dastardly act, too, remains uncertain.
Image: BBC/Reuters
Do you think it will be brutal for the insurgents? I think most will get off scott free.
ReplyDeleteit's worse than just an unruly mob enflamed by Trump's rhetoric. the White House was coordinating with the leaders of this attack. The WH refused to allow the police to be fully prepared and armed and prevented the DoD from authorizing the National Guard and there are reports that the insurgents were in contact with the WH during the attack. Trump and family were partying down watching it unfold on TV. and they are planning a bigger attack on the 19th and 20th and they aren't even trying to hide it.
ReplyDeleteI am truly ashamed and embarrassed...and just lost for words at the moment. Praying things get better...before they get worse😟
ReplyDeleteShort, sweet and to the point.
ReplyDeleteIf this had been a BLM protest the halls of the Capitol would have run with blood. But of course, the BLM protests have been non-violent. These scumbags, knowing there would be no real push-back, did what was tantamount to the rape of our very heart of democracy.
It's astonishing to me that no one in the security agencies was able to read the crap on Parler, look at the Facebook groups, snoop on the chat boards and see what was being planned in plain sight. It was obvious - but the Pentagon was concerned about the optics of National Guard in the Capital. I guess optics are only important for white people. They should all be fired.
ReplyDeleteTrump should be removed from office NOW. He is a danger to our country.
ReplyDeleteI read that, about the police giving directions to Schumer's office. Unbelievable! I think the role of the security forces in all this needs to be seriously investigated. I want to know if they were just trying to de-escalate for their own safety, or if they were directed by the White House to allow those people into the building, or if they did so because they sympathized with the demonstrators. I don't think it was just about optics.
ReplyDeleteTruly horrifying. A dark, dark day in our nation's history, and one that was entirely predictable.
ReplyDeleteI read one commentator who said that the 'steal' idea was based on the fact that black votes were important to Biden's win. You know what? That makes me sick. Sitting up here in Canada where we are surely not very good about race matters, but where we do at least try some of the time to improve.
ReplyDeleteWednesday was one of the most horrific and heartbreaking moments in our country's history. We witnessed an insurrection driven by the most dangerous and absurd president our country has ever had. Oh there are others, but this one is a narcissistic psychopath. What the Capitol police did and did not do will be written in our history books as well as our psyches. He unleashed a racist antisemitic army of lunatics. It will take us a while to recover from this assault.
ReplyDeleteWho died during the violence? and have you read anything about demonstrators defecating or urinating in the building in an attempt to deface it or the people in it? I ask because both were mentioned during a conversation I had this afternoon. Horrible but not surprising, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteWe watched it here in the UK and thought Biden's speech was good. The sooner they get Trump out the better. He's a sick man with blood on his hands.
ReplyDeleteThe WH and infiltrators within the Security forces clearly were complicit in this attempted Coup, may Heads roll... tho' honestly I'm not even certain Justice will prevail against these Traitors... they've been handled with Kid Gloves too damned long already and January isn't over yet. So, the Dry Run that succeeded beyond what they probably even imagined it would, I suspect could get worse and we better have our shit together better this time and handle them like we handle all Terrorists... Domestic Terrorism is even more dangerous to the Nation than external Terrorism.
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