January 6th and seeing the shape of the stork
When the incursion into the Capitol occurred, it just didn’t make sense to me. The Trump rally was going to be yuuge. The security should have been massive. The National Guard was offered and refused. The security arrangements were not much more than for a normal day in D.C.
From the start, the actual events of January 6th were surrounded with much confusion and the incident was obviously being used for political gain. As time went on, many of the initial “facts” were refuted (for example, the supposed killing of Officer Sicknick), and other obvious questions were never answered. I asked some of those basic questions back on January 7, only one day after the incursion, and most of them have yet to be answered with any clarity. Here’s the list:
(1) How many people actually gained entrance to the Capitol, and who were they?
(2) Why was Ashli Babbitt killed?
(3) How violent were the protesters? Did any have weapons, and were they using them on police?
(4) What did police do to stop them from gaining access to the Capitol?
There’s a lot more in that January 7 post, including this:
It is very curious that this security breach was successful. Surely, with such a large crowd, it should have been anticipated that a splinter group of more radical people might break off and try something like this, and the security forces should have been prepared…
There also are reports (I don’t know if they’re true) that some Capitol police enabled the demonstrators: “Capitol Police were not armed in riot gear to begin with, as law enforcement on crowd control duty have been at almost every large protest against police brutality in D.C. in recent months. When the mob breached the guardrails, the building was locked down, yes. Tear-gas canisters were shot, and yes, some police inside the chambers drew their guns. But others tried to “let them do their thing,” according to the New York Times. Videos also emerged of some police personnel opening up the barricades and taking selfies with the intruders once they were inside the building.”
We still know far less about this than we should, and far less than the government knows. Just to take two obvious examples: we still don’t know the name of the officer who killed Ashli Babbitt and the exact circumstances, and there still has been no release of the enormous numbers of surveillance videos of the entire demonstration.
But even without that information, now we can better see the shape and pattern of the event. It’s far from clear, but it’s more clear, and we know much more about the possibility of previous FBI involvement with and possible incitement of some of the groups that were involved. That’s an especially awful aspect of the whole thing, but knowing about it affords a conceptual satisfaction that comes from getting more pieces of the puzzle.
I’ve already written about the Whitmer kidnapping plot, the FBI, and what it means for January 6th. But here’s an article that connects a few more dots. An excerpt:
The problem is not that we’re going to find out that the January 6 case is going to be full of FBI agents and informants, just like the Whitmer kidnapping case. The problem is we are starting to understand this is standard procedure for counterterrorism. This is a 20-year-old charade the FBI brass has been pulling.
Actually, it’s much older than 20 years. But let’s just say it’s very old.
There’s something satisfying about seeing a possible bigger picture, even if that picture is an ugly one. It reminds me of something written by Isak Dinesen, explained here:
In a vignette entitled “The Roads of Life”, the author remembers a story she used to hear as a child, where a man hears a terrible noise and goes out in the night to investigate, falls in ditches and goes through all sorts of problems. As his trajectory of pain is described, the storyteller also draws a little map detailing all his troubles.
The punch line is that, the next morning, the man wakes up and sees a stork. This is also the shape that the map has made—the images on the map end up combining to create a picture of a stork. Coincidence? We think not. The Baroness uses the image of the man falling and getting up, over and over again, in order to make the stork’s feet, to comfort herself in times of trouble.
Here’s a quote from Dinesen:
The tight place, the dark pit in which I am now lying, of what bird is it the talon? When the design of my life is completed, shall I, shall other people see a stork?
—Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa
In this case it may be a vile stork, but now at least we believe we can see its shape better.
From start to finish, it was a set up by the “authorities” with the left’s minions doing everything they could to create an “incident”. There was nothing accidental or unplanned about the Jan. 6th “insurrection”… except by the clueless deplorables.
It was a version the old schoolyard bully ploy. Sucker punch the target and when they turn to respond to hit back, yell out to get the teachers’ attention, so that only the victim is seen to have engaged in hitting the “innocent” bully.
Antifa, FBI operatives and the Capitol police acted in collusion to instigate the whole thing. Murdering Ashli Babbitt was the Coup de grâce. It couldn’t be labeled an insurrection, if the insurrectionists were unarmed and nobody died. But now ‘5’ deaths… case closed.
Among the mysteries: why didn’t the police say “Hands up! You’re under arrest.” instead of just hauling off and shooting her dead?
And then … immediately … those odd videos came out which purported to show Ashli had not been shot. That there was some involved misdirection happening.
In the end I don’t care if the guilty get away. As long as the MSM gets theirs, I’ll pass on the remainder of the retribution. Should we be so lucky as to prevail.
Isolated evil will always arise. For the media to enable it and aid it is truly unforgivable.
It is becoming more and more clear to me that, the foolishness of some of the protesters notwithstanding, this was a set-up.
They stole an election… They made fools of a bunch of naive Flyover Folk and now have 600 or so of them held in pretty inhumane conditions.
This is all bad.
But it’s also good.
Every time they pull one of these egregious stunts, some of the Right opposition learns and adapts… the smarter ones at least. Even the most retarded knuckle draggers won’t fall for the old ‘Step Right In, Fellow Citizen’ con again. And both sides have their Stupid People Problems — their side hasn’t faced real pain yet and therefore has experienced no Teaching Moments. Per Zhou Enlai’s inscrutable verdict on the French Revolution: “Too early to say.”
My feeling, seeing a few posted videos immediately after January 6, that the videos being held back would show Antifa personal doing the actual break in of windows and doors then stepping back hoping for a mad rush. Others will show FBI informants charging up the crowds. Of all those charged or being held so far none seem to be any of the ones I describe.
Between social media (a terrible term for an unsocial institution) and the MSM, pretty much all of America was lied to and misled. I don’t know how we remove any power from either institution, but if we cannot, we are truly lost and being led around by the nose at the behest of a small number of maleducated “elites”.
Zaphod:
Today I was foolish enough to read a NRO piece by the ever annoying Jay Nordlinger on Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast star from the 1976 Olympics. (She was hot stuff in 1976.)
However, double trouble, Nordlinger led with this egregious quote from George Will:
___________________________________________________
Yesterday, I spoke with George F. Will, for my Q&A podcast: here. “I happen to have been rocked to my very foundations by what happened that day,” said Will, referring to January 6. Twenty years ago, “9/11 proved that we have external enemies. Knew that already.” But “we did not know that we had mobs that could be incited by a president to try to halt a constitutional process.”
___________________________________________________
So long, Jay Nordlinger, George Will.
The good news is Nadia married an American and moved to Oklahoma where she and her husband teach gymnastics. Still looks great and moves like a jungle cat, we are informed.
How well she would handle an obstacle course of stationery supplies was not specified.
This is a very troubling article about some of those being held for January 6.
https://radixverum.substack.com/p/january-6-the-faces-of-political
JimNorCal- “Among the mysteries: why didn’t the police say “Hands up! You’re under arrest.” instead of just hauling off and shooting her dead?”
If I you watch the video, Ashley Babbitt was just starting to crawl through a small opening in a broken window when she was killed. The cop could have just pushed her back with one hand and announced that anyone else trying that would be under arrest. Instead he stood back with his gun drawn as though waiting for his chance and then shot her dead.
@Huxley:
People and especially public figures seem to be snapping into sharp relief. Almost daily one gets some kind of new revelation about this or that individual. That’s the bit I never really picked up from the history books before. Probably because we all of us were born and lived most of our lives while History was asleep.
For many years, and despite my less than 100% rah rah admiration for your nation’s Greatest Ally, I have enjoyed reading the escapist Gabriel Allon Mossad assassin novels of one Dan Silva (no… really). Remembered it must be about time to put the feet up again since hadn’t read one in a year or two. So the other day go off to Amazon to see if he’s written another one.
Imagine my surprise to read in the reviews that his latest effort is full of Trump and January 6 rants in addition to the expected Evil Russian Kleptocrat Max Boot Spritzing. Oh well. Pass. Maybe Next Year in Jerusalem if he’s calmed down and back to normal. Guess just have to go slum it with more Mosca and Pareto or something.
huxley:
George Will was already awful long before January 6th. Here’s a post I wrote three years ago about him.
neo:
I know. The bloom was off Will’s rose a while back.
Still, his Jan 6 remark was worse that I would have thought.
The most confounding thing in this modern age, with its overabundance of media technology, with its encyclopedia of techniques and tricks to capture the attention of the audience, the most confounding and odious thing is when the basic rules of coverage are withheld.
By now, we should have seen volumes of comparisons of the Saint George race riots / murders / fires / looting sprees to the January 6 protest, we should have seen dozens of comparisons to the riots around the White House the previous summer, and so forth. There is none of that.
There is no compare & contrast, there is no numerical / statistical breakdown, there is only steadfast refusal of the media to engage in any way, save to portray January 6 as a grave, serious, deadly catastrophe – ‘worse than the Civil War’, ‘worse than 911’, practically worse than a nuclear bomb. It is the biggest and most cynical dereliction of journalism that I think I’ve ever witnessed on a single important issue – except maybe the 2020 election.
So long, Jay Nordlinger, George Will.
James Neuchterlein, who is just three years older than Will, retired as editor of First Things in 2004. His explanation at the time was that in 40 years as a college teacher and editor, he had said everything he had to say. Will’s been running on fumes for a good while.
I don’t know anything about the reporting requirements manifest in the IRS 990 forms (though I’ve seen some embarrassing tidbits in them). Looking forward to upcoming forms from National Review to see if we can find out just for whom Ponnuru, Klein, and Nordlinger actually work.
Still, his Jan 6 remark was worse that I would have thought.
Well, you expect the elderly to provide perspective. He’s not getting the job done. Which raises some interesting questions of its own.
Helps to have a longer attention span when you’re trying to Limn Leviathan:
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/for-the-times-they-are-a-changing
“…My first hypothesis is that, as usual in complex systems, the only choice of any latent power which conceives itself sovereign over this system, and has some desire to reassert its sovereignty—whether the American people, or the Queen of England—is to keep the system more or less as it is, or delete and replace it completely. Changing it is so impossible that the very word “change” has become a sinister Orwellian jargon.
My second hypothesis is that the only way for the American people to replace the regime is to elect a chief executive who dismantles the unconstitutional legislative branch and the theocratic oligarchy behind it, replacing both with a new executive branch. This can only be done by electing a President with a popular mandate for absolute power—or one who, like FDR, just takes it anyway.
Since the current Presidency has no power, the only way to grant it any power is to grant it absolute power—a statement which is just as true for Elizabeth II. FDR in 1933 demanded, and largely got, “the powers that would be granted to me were we in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” While these emergency powers, impressive as they are, were sufficient to establish FDR’s regime, they are quite insufficient to disestablish it.
Rather, the depth of the necessary process—which cannot stop at the formal borders of “the government,” since many of the most powerful institutions of the 20th-century regime are nominally “private”—is best compared to the denazification of Germany. This process of lustration or demarxification will require not just the powers of a general defending against an enemy invasion, but the powers of the enemy general.
Americans can only act, and should only act, in an orderly way. But the usurpation of their constitutional order by forces broadly coterminous with Marxism, a century-long process, cannot be reversed with the instruments those forces have contaminated. This reversal cannot have a lawless quality; it must have a law-like quality; but, beginning with the perversion of their republican constitution into a bureaucratic oligarchy, even the concept of law has become no more than a tool of the old regime.
To disestablish the total regime of the NSDAP required the total regime of AMGOT. In fact, all regimes are total. If you see a partial regime, the rest is just camouflaged. The 20th-century American administrative state is both unconstitutional and absolute. To think that this unconstitutional and absolute legislative branch can be unseated by any power, except a new executive branch with absolute power, is mere idle fancy. And to think that this bureaucracy is the regime itself, not the tool of a theocratic oligarchy which, safely situated outside the formal limes of the state, yet dictating all its beliefs and hence all its actions, is absolutely supreme and absolutely unaccountable, would be yet another fatal lenity. There is no such thing as a gradual, partial or incomplete regime change—just a failed regime change, a common thing and a dangerous one.
My third hypothesis is that 21st-century America can replace its government and even its regime without any kind of violence or bloodshed. The reconstruction of Germany was a rough business, at least in ‘45 and ‘46; the reconstruction of Japan was far better handled. Yet in neither of these countries, both previously considered the most violent and nationalist of nations, was there serious, violent resistance to denationalization. Unless you understand why this was, do not immediately dismiss the third hypothesis.
Human beings are not werewolves, or even wolves. Human beings are naturally easy to rule and govern. And Americans, or any 21st-century Westerners, are as governable as any humans in history, because they have no living tradition of political violence—or even authentic (bottom-up) political organization.
We still think of ourselves as a very violent and spontaneous people. This is another of our stupid 18th-century larps—just another piece of mythical baggage we cart around. Actually, not only are Americans completely harmless, apathetic and atomized—any last exceptions to this rule are no friends of the 20th-century regime, but its enemies. Even our black-clad friends (Salud! A luta continua!) are embarrassingly-tolerated.
The supporters of the old regime, for all their weird, nonsense-riddled lawn signs, can believe in anything—which is just what their signs demonstrate. If Bronze Age Pervert came to power tomorrow, they would replace all their credoes with BAP quotes—and believe them no less completely. All they know how to do is is lick a boot; one boot is as good as another. “In this house, we believe: chimp in state of nature never jerks off.”
Imagining that the wine aunts of the late but not unlamented “Resistance” would form actual resistance networks, perhaps not ISIS-tier but at least to the Days of Rage levels that real Americans, living in the real America, reached 50 years ago, is like imagining that the Stasi officers put out of work in 1989 would form revolutionary underground movements. Which is exactly what they would have imagined! It was not what they did. As Nancy Pelosi’s neckline demonstrates, even the ‘60s were a long time ago. “And the first one now will later be last.”
And my fourth hypothesis is that, as unconvincing as these first three hypotheses may be, they are as convincing as many hypotheses that professional intellectuals use to justify their various intellectual onanisms.”
Zaphod:
It still seems possible, even likely, that the current Woke Tyranny will peak, then burn out. Most people are already tired of it. It will become Uncool and then it will die.
If you drew a straight line from 1960-1980, then extrapolated, you sure wouldn’t have seen Ronald Reagan coming.
Wokism is so unconnected with reality that I just don’t see it sustainable. Which is not to say there won’t be a great deal of wreckage and massive cleanup necessary after it passes. Nor that we will return to 1950s America.
@huxley:
Could be… Could be… And let’s hope so.
I’m more of a pessimist myself and take a pretty dim view of Western Liberalism. These days am inclined to think that there is an inevitability to the leftward march of any political system based upon the foundational assumptions and tenets of same — whatever those are this week anyway — I haven’t received latest system updates from Claremont (Apple) or NR (Microsoft).
My most optimistic take is this could be our Crisis of the Third Century. Might yet be one more bounce in the almost dead cat.
http://donmarquis.com/home/2011/10/25/the-song-of-mehitabel/
“i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai”
Like a lot of people, I thought the FBI actions in foiling numerous terrorist “plots” post 9/11 were pretty sketchy. But I convinced myself that even if the feds bent a few rules, it was in the cause of keeping the country safe. It is now pretty obvious that they did much more than bend a few rules and now they have turned their considerable powers on the populist right. The FBI acts like the Terminator and can’t be reasoned with. They have acquired a new target and will use all the weapons at their disposal to destroy it. I don’t see a solution to this without the abolition of the FBI and a new agency built to replace it. In other words, I can’t imagine a solution to this problem that doesn’t involve the collapse of United States government. I hope I’m wrong.
@Gregory Harper:
“In other words, I can’t imagine a solution to this problem that doesn’t involve the collapse of United States government.”
You’ve just neatly summarised the millions of words Curtis Yarvin has written on this subject.
huxley,
Theyre playing for keeps and have an ‘American’ version of the CCP in mind.
Zaphod,
“To think that this unconstitutional and absolute legislative branch can be unseated by any power, except a new executive branch with absolute power, is mere idle fancy.”
I’m NOT advocating for a Military coup. But one with quick and speedy trials, mass executions, followed by an Article V Convention would accomplish a complete regime change. Armed Americans will back it and snowflakes will cower in their homes.
“We still think of ourselves as a very violent and spontaneous people. This is another of our stupid 18th-century larps…”
Heh. That’s what Hitler thought. Put a man’s back up against the wall with no other way out and civilization’s thin veneer melts right off.
Theyre playing for keeps and have an ‘American’ version of the CCP in mind.
Geoffrey Britain:
The Dem leaders are a disgrace and have unpleasant ambitious plans. But! Obama, Pelosi and Biden aren’t exactly Lenin, Stalin and Mao. They are not even Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Chesa Boudin.
If Democrats had the discipline to be dangerous revolutionaries, Michelle Obama would be Prez or Veep right now.
@Huxley:
There enough fanatical believers in the New Religion to make life very ‘Interesting’ for a decade or so if not brought to heel soon — issues of competence or grand strategy aside.
If there is going to be an auto-da-fé, I for one prefer to be Fra Zippo and not Mister Negative Carbon Credits. If there must be a bonfire, let it be a bonfire of *their* Vanities.
Zaphod:
Could be … could be … back atcha!
Life is already more interesting than I like. I don’t know how far things go. Back in my 20s I figured that in the future I would scrabbling around in the ruins of civilization or living in Pepperland.
No score for me.
It has been reported that the killer of Ashli Babbit is Lt. Michael Byrd. He is also reportedly the cop who left his loaded pistol in a Capitol bathroom by mistake.
I think it’s possible that the shooting was accidental.
I have read that cops have a higher percentage of negligent discharges, than law-abiding civilian gun owners.
Wesson,
Yes, this was reported about two or so weeks back, I believe (in a kind of “OK-move-along-nothing-to-see-here” kind of way, so it seemed to me…)
Regarding “mistake”, methinks you’re being far too kind….
Anyway, “insurrection”-related…(“caveat emptor”):
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1421499047777652739
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1421520092416851970
“…or one who, like FDR, just takes it anyway.”
IOW, “Biden”… (but even more egregiously than FDR’s attempts—not always successful—since AT LEAST FDR was elected legitimately…AND, as well, did face difficult economic-social crises AND loved his country…. YMMV…)
If Democrats had the discipline to be dangerous revolutionaries, Michelle Obama would be Prez or Veep right now.
I have no clue what is the origin of the Mooch fixation on these boards. All the evidence indicates her interests include her children, decorative arts, clothing and cosmetics, and exercise. And not much else. She has shown little interest in any discernible profession. For 17 years she held bull$hit jobs in the public and non-profit sector wherein she was paid handsome salaries to push some paper, goose the ‘diversity’ numbers, and launder the bribes to her politician husband. She has more in common with Nancy Reagan than she does with Hellary. (If she’s fortunate, her children will turn out better than Nancy’s).
Good article at the American Thinker:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/chinese_justice_comes_to_america.html
“The judge presiding over Hodgkins’s case, Randolph Moss, put Bovard’s formula to good use: By carrying a Trump flag into the hallowed halls of Congress, Hodgkins was guilty of ‘declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation.'”
Wesson,
“I think it’s possible that the shooting was accidental.”
Have you seen the video? No way in hell that shooting was accidental. That was an execution.
Not sure where the best place to post this is, and I might put it on the Open Thread tomorrow as well. Listen to the five-minute podcast, linked here, about freedom. Very powerful.
https://redstate.com/kiradavis/2021/07/31/must-watch-british-commentators-monologue-on-the-nature-of-freedom-will-make-you-stand-up-and-cheer-n419415
Kate:
I watched it yesterday and thought about “open threading it.” The anti-Z, it seems to me.
The Dinesen quote about the man struggling through ditches in the dark is a good analogy of our struggles to see what really happened on 1/6. For me it”s not a stork, but possibly a raven – dark, mysterious and threatening.
How is what the FBI has been doing for political purposes different from the old KGB? Well, they’re not quite as overt as the KGB was, but they appear to have become the secret police for a political cause. How many FBI agents would admit to that? How many agents are ashamed of what’s happened at the agency? I see the occasional retired agent on Fox News saying that the agency leadership has lost its way. Are they outliers?
Interesting videos posted by Barry M. at 3:28. It does appear that the Capitol Police may have initiated violence. And who was the protestor that was being badly beaten by the police? What had he done to deserve such a thrashing? From those videos, it seems clear that the police were disorganized, badly lead, and exhibited shoddy discipline. They.Were.Not.Ready. Did they invite an incursion through inadequate preparations and inappropriate aggressiveness? Many more questions than answers. Will we get the answers from the House select committee that’s investigating 1/6? Not a chance. hopefully investigative reporters like Julie Kelly will uncover more.
Stop drinking poisoned tap water. Figure out what sodium fluoride is first before trying to take on the dark hydra state.
Wesson,
“I think it’s possible that the shooting was accidental.”
Wouldn’t work. Still a homicide then. The only way to exonerate the shooter is to (supposedly – we know the truth) show a reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily injury of someone. Anything is is some sort of homicide, either manslaughter or murder. Or, to maybe be more accurate, they legally need it to be legal homicide. The only thing that I can see making it a credible threat is if they believed (or pretended to believe) that Ashli’s pack contained a pipe bomb. There were supposedly rumors that the interlopers in the Capital that day had pipe bombs. Of course, as far as we know, none were found (and if there were, there was no provenance, and were more likely brought there by AntiFA instigators).
And congressional video of what happened is being withheld.
And supposedly flash bangs were used on the crowd, my gut feel a deliberate provocation.
And the head of the proud boys has not been charged.
Stranger and stranger.
@GB I took another look and agree, looks deliberate.
@Bruce H. Was not trying to exonerate him. Needs impartial investigation, stinks to high heaven!
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Need a little more weird sauce? Two Capitol Police officers committed suicide within days of the “insurrection”. Today we learn that another officer has committed suicide. Seems like a lot for a rather cushy job compared to, say, Chicago PD.