Some musical escape.
The whole video is interesting, but I find this part especially so:
Some details emerge about what happened at the Capitol
I asked some questions yesterday, and slowly – ever so slowly – some details are emerging to shed light on a few of the answers.
On how the demonstrators got into the Capitol – apparently at one entrance the doors to the Capitol were left open, and although police there seemed to be standing around they didn’t make any attempt to stop people from entering. The people in the crowd don’t look especially hurried or disorderly either; not at that point (you can watch the video here). I’d love the “why” of this to be addressed, but so far there’s been no light shed on that. (And I’m going to assume that’s a bona fide video until told otherwise.)
Here’s an article on the subject:
Protesters who were part of an unprecedented, four-hour siege of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday told the Washington Examiner they planned a peaceful occupation of the building, but some people in their group turned violent…
While the Capitol siege was described by many as a coup, the dozen protesters interviewed by the Washington Examiner denied it and said their demonstration was intended to be akin to demonstrations in which activists occupy public buildings.
“If they are sitting there as a peaceful protest, it’s basically a sit-in,” a protester named Nick, from St. Louis, Missouri, said. “Eventually, they are going to run them out of there.”
One small group of men said they walked into the Capitol without resistance through the House side door and were allowed to enter by the police but told to stay away from certain areas. “They were not blocking people from coming into the building,” Nick from St. Louis said.
Nick and his group sat on benches in the Rotunda for about 15 minutes “until a cop comes up with an AR-15 strapped to him and says, ‘You guys got to get up. You can’t sit there.’” The officer did not make them leave the building but rather told them to remain in the center of the Rotunda…
Some of the protesters “were breaking windows and kicking doors,” Jeff said, adding that he and a friend blocked a protester from breaking into one room outside the Senate.
This all makes sense – people thinking they were going to have what amounted to a sit-in, and then a much smaller segment of people (identities as yet unknown but which may emerge over time) turning violent.
And do we know whether at least some of the people involved in the violence were Antifa? Possibly:
As for who actually broke windows to get into the Capitol, this video suggests at least some of that was carried out by antifa and was stopped by Trump supporters.
They have video of some of this that is probably clear enough to be able to identify people. But I think the Preferred Narrative is now set in stone for most of the public, and whatever emerges to exonerate the Trump-supporting protestors will not matter.
I’ve noticed the MSM and the left on Twitter calling the Capitol incident a “coup.” Pretty ironic, when it seems to have been nothing of the sort, and coming from those who tried to engineer a four-year coup against Trump through the Democratic Party and its impeachment over nothing, intelligence leaks to the press, phony charges, warrants based on lies, and the cooperation of the FBI and DOJ in the endeavor.
The cancel culture bell tolls for thee
I think that “cancel culture” is too mild a word for it, but until we come up with a better one it’ll have to do. Here’s a sample of what’s going on in the corporate realm:
My statement on the woke mob at @simonschuster pic.twitter.com/pDxtZvz5J0
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 7, 2021
Josh Hawley is (or was) an up-and-coming young conservative. The left is attempting now to cancel the entire Republican Party except perhaps for RINOs and NeverTrumpers (although I believe the crocodile will come to eat them eventually, too), and to make those on the right not only subject to harassment wherever they go (actually, that already happened some time ago), but to also make them unemployable as well as politically radioactive.
It’s been clear for a long time that this was happening, and now the effort is escalating. You probably already know that Twitter locked out Dan Bongino, who has departed for Parler; that a liberal activist group is campaigning for Apple and Google to remove Parler from their stores; and that Twitter and Facebook have locked Trump’s accounts and almost certainly have plans for a lot more:
Trump’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, where he regularly communicates messages to his followers, were locked Wednesday, in the aftermath of the Capitol riots, which the president then called a “heinous attack” Thursday in a call for “healing and reconciliation.”
Former first lady Michelle Obama called on the country’s major technology companies to permanently ban Trump from their respective platforms.
“This is going to be the moment that is used as an excuse to shut down, to shutter, to undermine, deplatform everyone, not just people who are political actors … just regular human beings who happen to support the president or be members of the Republican Party,” Domenech told FOX Business.
He said Big Tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are going to extend their restrictions far beyond the office of the president, especially for anyone who attended the “Save America” rally Wednesday.
“They are going to see their businesses libeled,” Domenech told host Lisa Kennedy. “They’re going to see themselves deplatformed, undermined, and make it impossible for them to run advertising, engage with people in a normal manner.”
As I said, this is just an expansion of what’s been going on anyway for at least the past four years. The demonization of Trump by the left wasn’t just about Trump, or even primarily about him. He was a vehicle to get at the enemy: the right, and anyone on it. It was necessary to make him into a demon in order to make all the rest into demons as well, and the entire thing has the goal of driving people on the right ever more underground and into effective silence.
Soviet dissidents at least had the West to smuggle their writings to in order to send a message to the Free World. Where is the Free World now? Does it exist anywhere?
[NOTE: Yes, it still exists – for now – online at places like this blog. But for how long? Also, Google no longer links to blogs; as far as I can see they are very far down in the algorithm if they appear at all. News outlets on the right are a little better, but they are still way way down below all the liberal outlets. DuckDuckGo is better, but how many people use it?]
Leftists triumphant
History tells us that leftists are not what you’d call magnanimous in victory. And now they feel very victorious indeed.
Whether the main perpetrators of the Capitol incident were actually from the right or whether it was some sort of false flag operation of the left, the effect is the same: the actions of a small group are used to signify a whole (the right) that is not guilty but will be considered guilty of whatever the left wishes to project on them.
But really, hasn’t that been happening for many many years? And wasn’t something like this in the cards anyway, even without the group of demonstrators/rioters at the Capitol? And hasn’t the left been trying to remove Trump from the presidency this entire time? Why would they let him leave voluntarily now, if they can successfully impeach him at the last minute? I don’t know if they have the votes in the Senate to convict, but they certainly would be eager to remove him if they do have those votes, and they would do it even if he had only one day left in his term.
The rule for the left is that they will do to the right whatever they have the power to do. Orwell wrote of the left when it gains total power:
Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.
Whether that will actually happen here or whether other events will occur to stop it or change the picture, that is the impulse I see right now on the left. It’s not limited to politicians, either. So many things have gone to create it and feed it – not the least of them COVID and the social checks put in place in reaction – and it’s now come to fruition.
Two and a half years ago David Foster, who sometimes comments here, wrote a post entitled, “Conformity, Cruelty, and Political Activism.” I recommend reading it, but here I’ll just reproduce a passage he used from John Dos Passos, written about 1926 and describing a Sacco and Vanzetti case protest Dos Passos had attended:
The protest meeting is over and I’m standing on a set of steps looking into the faces of the people coming out of the hall. I’m frightened by the tense righteousness of the faces. Eyes like a row of rifles aimed by a firing squad. Chins thrust forward into the icy night. It’s almost in marching step that they stride out into the street. It’s the women I remember most, their eyes searching out evil through narrowed lids. There’s something threatening about this unanimity of protest. They are so sure they are right.
I’ve seen this attitude as well, and it chills my blood. Whatever is happening now is not because of the Capitol incident; that was an excuse, and if it hadn’t happened they would have found another.
[ADDENDUM: Fifteen years ago I wrote this post on Dos Passos and his reaction to the Spanish Civil War. It’s still timely, I think.]
Trump: time to transition
“My campaign vigorously pursued every legal avenue to contest the election results. My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote. In so doing I was fighting to defend American democracy. I continue to strongly believe that we must reform our election laws to verify the identity and eligibility of all voters, and to ensure faith and confidence in all future elections.”
I can’t argue with a word of his speech.
His presidency is over – or will be on Inauguration Day – now that he has conceded. Of course, this speech doesn’t mean that Trump won’t continue to be excoriated by those heady with what they see as their complete victory over him. Nor does it mean that any healing will actually occur.
Both before the election and shortly after, I had a discussion with a beloved relative on the left who insisted to me that Trump would have to be dragged out of the Oval Office by federal troops or police; that he would never leave voluntarily if he lost. I said that if Trump lost he would fight tooth and nail in the courts, but when it was over he would go voluntarily. We had quite a few discussions about this, and the gist of that argument never changed.
I guess now I’d be able to say “I told you so” – except for one thing. I’m pretty sure that his response now would be that Trump only conceded because they threatened to remove him. I don’t think that’s what happened, but I can never prove it.
I see so much hatred of Trump online today that it actually eclipses what I’d seen previously, and that’s saying something. Now it has the flavor of dancing on a grave. It disgusts me, but that’s the way it is.
When I was very young, I read a child’s version of The Iliad. I remember reading in it that after Achilles had killed Hector, he triumphantly and in rage defiled Hector’s corpse:
Hector lies slaughter’d here
Dragg’d at my chariot, and our dogs shall all in pieces tear
His hated limbs…
Even as a small child, I felt a horror so strong that I recoiled and had to put the book down for a while.
There’s something about today that reminds me of this, although of course Trump’s not dead. Neither is the right, although it’s badly divided and most of the GOP politicians in Washington DC are scrambling to get as far away from Trump as fast as they possibly can. What they do in the next year or two will determine their political fate – and ours.
Questions for this evening and beyond
And I want to see them answered by someone both objective and knowledgeable.
Yeah, right; dream on, neo.
(1) How many people actually gained entrance to the Capitol, and who were they?
Rumors on the right that a lot of them were Antifa, are just that – rumors. At the moment, I’m not buying it, unless a lot more evidence emerges to back those rumors up. The right blaming Antifa seems to me to be similar to those on the left who insisted that the violence during the BLM/Antifa riots was really being perpetrated by people on the ultra-right who were masquerading as leftists. Each thing is theoretically possible, but most likely untrue IMHO unless more emerges to substantiate the claims. And the argument that there were at least a few Antifa people there egging the others on doesn’t wash, either, because – as parents of old used to say – “if they told you to jump off a cliff, would you follow them?” The woman who was killed by a Capitol police officer, Ashli Babbit, was most definitely on the right, and she was inside the Capitol.
(2) Why was Ashi Babbitt killed?
What was actually going on at the time? It’s not crystal clear from the videos. See this and in particular some of the comments there; large differences of opinion.
(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?
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. My guess is that Trump rally crowds have been so peaceful in the past that it was expected that they’d be peaceful once again, although in the heat of the current political crisis this would have been a stupid calculation on the part of the police.
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.
It’s hard to have anything intelligent to say about this yet, since I have no idea what’s true and what isn’t in such a report, and even if true it’s hard to know whether negligence was involved or something more. One thing that appears to be quite true is that some of those trying to get into the Capitol actually scaled the building as though it was a rock-climbing exercise; photos at that link.
If security had held and the group hadn’t gained access, this would still be a story, but nothing like the huge story it has become. I believe it will be used as a justification and golden opportunity for further crackdown and de-legitimizing of just about everything the right stands for and does.
(5) What’s going on at this point with Trump?
Trump’s addressing the rally gives his opponents ammunition to say that he incited a riot. The laws of what constitutes “incitement” are too complex for me to go into in this post, but even without that issue I believe that (a) his addressing the rally was a bad idea (b) the people who did this came prepared to do it no matter what Trump said or didn’t say; and (c) even if Trump hadn’t spoken at the rally, the subsequent actions of these people would have been blamed on him.
So far, 2021 isn’t exactly an improvement on 2020. But I can’t say I expected it to be.
[NOTE: Remember this, when leftist Kavanaugh protestors got into the Senate office building, and were massed on the steps of the Supreme Court and pounding on doors while the Kavanaugh proceedings were going on? No big deal was made of it at the time, and security held.]
[ADDENDUM: I want to add something I just wrote in a comment at another thread –
I think that Trump has held up well for these four years, compared to how well the vast majority of people would have held up under the same intense pressure and attack for the same lengthy amount of time. But I still think that, since the election, he’s not been holding up well, and definitely not well enough.
No, he’s neither insane nor incompetent to finish out his term. But I think he’s exhausted and striking out impulsively.]
A bit of a delay
I’ve had some computer problems today putting up my earlier post, and now I have some other obligations, but I plan to post more in the early evening. There’s a great deal to digest, isn’t there?
Thoughts, the day after
As a thought experiment, just think for a moment if yesterday’s Capitol demonstration/protest/invasion had been perpetrated by BLM or some other leftist group. Does anyone doubt for a moment that the condemnation from the left, the Democrats, and the MSM would have been tepid and spotty, and the story would have died rather quickly?
The double standards we’ve had for years are a pernicious part of the problem, and they’re not going away any time soon, because yesterday was something people can sink their teeth into.
Some on the right are saying that the left will be using this like the Nazis used the Reichstag fire. If they mean “to stoke hatred against the right as well as to repress it further,” then I agree. I’m not sure whether most people saying this realize that there is no historical consensus on who set the Reichstag fire: Communists as accused, or the Nazis themselves. But there is no dispute on how it was used by the Nazis.
I was going to write a long article today on the double standard on political violence, but I see (hat tip: Ace) that John Hayward has already covered that territory quite thoroughly. So I’ll quote Hayward:
…Once “protesters” threaten lives and property, their grievances and ideology should become absolutely irrelevant to the situation…
Some of us warned all last year that treating violence as acceptable, even laudable, from SOME people would mainstream it and touch off an arms race. Everyone would start getting the idea that only groups with a demonstrated capacity for violence are taken seriously.
When violence becomes acceptable from one party and its clients, one ideology, it becomes an instrument of authoritarianism. That’s why authoritarian regimes frequently have violent vigilante groups roaming the streets in addition to their vast security and military forces.
Antifa has been similar, a case of a vigilante force not aligned with the present government but aligned with one party, masquerading as a group fighting fascism according to its clever name, but using tactics that derived from fascism and having goals of repressing the opposition.
More from Hayward:
Iran, for example, has all sorts of heavily armed police and security forces, working for both its secular and theocratic governments, but it ALSO has ultra-violent “vigilante” groups indulged by the State whose “grievances” supposedly justify vandalism and murder.
Either political violence is rejected in total – from everyone, for any reason, no matter who they are or what they believe – or it isn’t. Once the tolerance level is no longer zero, we become locked in a vicious and endless struggle to control exactly what the level should be.
Agreed – and, unfortunately, that horse has left the barn. There is a differential. The left justifies violence from special interest groups who are deemed victims, and for the most part the right still does not justify it for either side. Thus, the near-universal condemnation yesterday from the right of the people who stormed the Capitol.
More:
This is similar to the detestable way modern society handles racism. The tolerance level should be zero, but it isn’t. Racism, prejudice, and discrimination are acceptable from SOME people toward SOME people. “Anti-racism” is an instrument of totalitarian power, not a principle…
Every time a left-wing group gets violent, we’re immediately told the protest was Mostly Peaceful, and the people who assembled peaceably – and their political leaders, no matter how incendiary their rhetoric – are 0% responsible for any injury or destruction that occurred.
We’re told it’s really all OUR fault for not listening to the grievances of the “protesters” who turned violent, even as we watch video of them merrily looting retail stores. We forced them to steal those TV sets by not yielding to their political demands!
Irresponsible political leaders who fanned the flames of left-wing violence and help the perpetrators escape accountability for their actions are never held to account, never told they must resign, rarely even advised to tone down their rhetoric.
The obvious double-standard is that there are very different rules for the right.
And the following is a point I have been making for quite some time, one I think is extremely important considering all those Democrats and members of the MSM who keep saying, for example, that there is no “evidence” of election fraud in 2020:
And many – most – of the left-wing riots and killings of recent memory were based on falsehoods and misinformation. Outright lies were blasted by left-wing politicians and media without consequence, entirely BECAUSE they wanted to whip people into a frenzy.
And we were told all of that was fine, acceptable, even praiseworthy because their violence brought CHANGE and their lies illuminated DEEPER TRUTH. Okay, sure, we got everything about Mike Brown or Trayvon Martin’s deaths wrong, but there were legit grievances to be addressed!
Actually, I don’t believe the media or the Democrats ever admitted that they got those stories wrong. A few people may have made that confession, but if any significant number did then I missed it.
More:
We have to stop doing that. We have to insist that every quarter of our political spectrum renounce violence, and the willful incitement to violence, completely and absolutely. No more cutesy-poo nudge-nudge wink-wink when lefties burn and pillage. No more double standards.
No more celebration of Noble Lies that illuminate Deeper Truth by the light of burning homes and businesses that were destroyed by mobs with Legitimate Grievances. No more indulgences for those who wantonly break the laws of the System That Failed Them.
That is a principle, and we should all be able to agree on it, no matter what else we disagree on. Absolute zero tolerance for political violence is a message that can save lives and prevent destruction if we all say it together and demand our government acts accordingly.
We should. But unfortunately there is zero chance of that agreement. That’s not the way the left functions, and the left is now in charge of the Democratic Party. Even back in the 60s that was starting to be the case – I remember a certain amount of justification from the left for domestic terrorism of the left, and for groups such as the Black Panthers. Fifty years later – which brings us to now – the takeover of the Democrats by the left is nearly complete, and for all intents and purposes it is complete.
So that’s our dilemma in a nutshell. When one side plays by one set of rules and the other doesn’t, sooner or later there are people on both sides who will decide that violence is necessary, and they will resort to it whatever their leaders say. I can’t imagine that we’ve seen the last of this; au contraire.
The crowd in the Capitol
Everyone’s used to rallies on the right being orderly, except for the extremely occasional neo-Nazi vs. Antifa skirmishes (and I maintain that neo-Nazis aren’t right or left but occupy some other spot).
Conservatives tend to be – well – conservative. They don’t demonstrate at the drop of a hat, and when they do they usually pick up their own garbage afterwards. But at least some portion of the large crowd that rallied in Washington DC today decided to go another route, literally, and has entered the Capitol where Congress was getting ready to approve the election result, and tear gas reportedly has been used in an effort to disperse them.
I’ve watched post-election anger and frustration build now for several months, and my gut feeling is that this anger is actually more against Republicans than Democrats. That may sound odd, but I’ve noticed for decades, and certainly ever since I’ve started blogging, that the right seems to hate Republicans perceived as part of the swamp or the “Uniparty” as betrayers, even more than they hate Democrats on the left. Most of the GOP – whether it be Kemp and Raffensperger in Georgia, or members of Congress who are seen as having abandoned Trump – is regarded as having stabbed the right in the back.
What’s more, we’ve all seen many months of often-violent “protests” by the left, winked at by authorities in blue cities and in DC, or even praised as necessary and just despite COVID. The people who stormed the Capitol probably feel that what’s good for the gander is good for the goose. It’s not just a way to vent steam and show anger, it’s a way to show that the right has numbers too and will not always turn the other cheek.
What do I think? I’m emotionally exhausted from the last couple of months, for starters. Sometimes I get tired from having to react in real time to the constant stream of events. But hey, no one’s forcing me to do this blog thing; I took it on myself. Right now what I’m thinking is that although this crowd action is understandable, it’s not going to do a particle of good and will be billed by the MSM as mob violence even though so far this group apparently really has been “mostly peaceful.” I think that this will cause further backlash against the right, but on the other hand what doesn’t?
I also think that people expected to have a day in court on voting fraud, and the fact that no case was ever heard on the merits really rankles. I think it would have been better if the evidence had been aired in a courtroom and at least evaluated, even if it was found wanting. To have the cases all thrown out on procedural grounds just underlines and amplifies the idea that the system is deaf to the concerns of those on the right, and that this system even involves the majority of so-called conservatives in government.
I agree with this:
…[Y]ou will have people who say that the left-wing riots during the summer were met with cheer and applause by the media so what’s the point of being any better? On the other hand, this is logically dumb and counter-productive. One of the last vestiges of Trump’s movement was that his followers didn’t do this kind of thing. They kept their cool and showed their support in a way that made sense and was effective. Instead of burning things, they got out and knocked on doors. Shoving police at the Capitol while trying to storm the building accomplishes nothing but marginalizing the movement.
The thing is, though, people will do this when they perceive that all those other things haven’t worked. They will do this if they feel their country slipping away, if they feel demonized and hated already and betrayed and that they’ve got nothing to lose.
I don’t think things would have been any different today if the GOP had won those two races in Georgia, either. I think one of the reasons they were lost is this same anger at the GOP. Neither Loeffler nor Perdue engendered any enthusiasm and both were perceived as GOPe, whereas Kemp and Raffensperger aroused rage on the right for what has been seen as their coverup of fraud and their hostility to Trump.
Trump was both the symbol of the rage of many ordinary Americans on the right and a result of that rage. He never would have been elected if the rage didn’t already exist. Right now I think he’s making things worse rather than better, but that doesn’t surprise me either. It’s not that I have a better solution; sadly, I don’t. I just think that this will not end well, certainly not in the short term. It’s like watching a Greek tragedy play out, only without the poetry, and with an uncertain ending.
[ADDENDUM: It’s being reported that a woman was shot, probably by Capitol police, and is in critical condition. I have no more information on that for now.
Also:
While the White House refused to comment on the protests, Trump said on Twitter, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”
Others inside the President’s orbit tweeted their calls for calm as the mob repeatedly attempted to take over the building.
Donald Trump Jr., the President’s son, said that his supporters who mobbed the Capitol were “wrong and not who we are.”
“Be peaceful and use your 1st Amendment rights, but don’t start acting like the other side. We have a country to save and this doesn’t help anyone,” he tweeted.
Seems to me that those statements qualify as comments on the protest.]
Put it this way
If we’re not in it now, we are hurtling towards the abyss. They’ve captured the government, the courts, the media, and most crucially the schools, where all of this metastasized from so many decades ago. My only consolation is that there are at a minimum over 74 million people who did not vote for this and perhaps twice that number not down with “the struggle” so to speak. Some have stated that the only way to really fight back is to run for office, get involved with school boards and community boards, enter the teaching profession, etc. etc. The problem is, with the Enemy in control of virtually everything, do you think they will now allow voices of dissent within the institutions that took them nearly a century to take over to wrest control away from them?
So, the question remains, how best to organize and focus the potential energy of tens of millions of us into a force to be reckoned with. Actually, the question is, given what I just stated, can it be focused at all into a force to be reckoned with?
I plan to say more later today, but for now I’ll just keep it to this: I expected this result and dreaded it, but it’s still very very hard to see it come to pass. I can sum up the speed of the changes this way: twelve scant years ago in 2008, Obama felt he had to distance himself from Reverend Wright in order to win. This year, a Reverend Wright clone has been elected to the Senate from the previously-red state of Georgia. What was once unacceptably radical has been nearly mainstreamed.
Georgia returns
This is a new thread for the Georgia election results.
But I’m not going to report on them moment by moment. My plan is to do something else for a few hours, and then check back. Too much tension otherwise. I’ve been worried about this night ever since November 3/4, when it became clear that a Georgia runoff would decide the fate of the Senate and that the left was well aware of that fact and determined to win it at any cost.
All eyes turn to Georgia
The Georgia runoffs are today.
I make no predictions. Polls are useless. And between turnout unknowns, fraud possibilities, and motivation differentials, all bets are off.
One thing I can say is that I’m extremely apprehensive.
I plan to post another thread tonight for the results.