Coup 2021
Jan. 6th, 2021
Going into December, Trump knew two things: (1) he wouldn’t be able to mobilize the military to attempt a retention of his presidency and (2) he wouldn’t need to. His brainwashed throngs, worked into a fevered delusion of righteous patriotism, would arrive upon order to inhibit, delay, and disrupt a peaceful transfer of power. On the morning of January 6th, he held a rally for his acolytes encouraging them to march on the Capitol to make Congress aware that they knew Trump’s truth: that the election had been stolen and only the “weak” would let that stand.
They did more than inhibit, delay, and disrupt.
What began as an unlawful assembly turned into an attempted coup as the MAGA foot soldiers broke into the Capitol building, shutting down the joint sessions of Congress.
This all occurred while a minimal police presence was overwhelmed at a Federal building requiring security clearance for normal entry. It was not the same response visited upon the BLM protests this summer, none of which came close to the actual breaking and entering of a Federal building. There is footage available of Trump’s zombies being allowed access to the Capitol steps by the Capitol Police. It took hours before the National Guard was mobilized by Pence and the rioters were gently escorted from the premises.
Those are the facts as I know them, as of writing.
Now, for commentary.
Donald J Trump committed treason by inciting a violent coup. Even if we are to give him the benefit of the doubt of not explicitly ordering invasion, his lack of immediate condemnation makes him complicit. The further adoration after the fact via Twitter for the group, a following he has cultivated, further assigns him leadership of the mob and, while you can’t arrest everyone present, you certainly can arrest (or in this instance impeach) the leader.
The military response to the breach of the Capitol building is pathetic at best, suspicious at worst. Put aside how we’re still very much in the miasma of a pandemic, federal buildings are supposed to be secured against citizen disruption. Set aside, also, that, if these were simply black Americans instead of white: what if this misguided mob was a weaponized terrorist cell? Those types of terrorists wouldn’t politely follow a velvet rope into the chamber. Rioters were videotaped taking selfies with cops as they roamed the Capitol halls. There are wolves among the sheep. Cops vote too and don’t kid yourself into believing that many of them don’t make up the 70 million people who voted for an autocrat.
These extremists believe they are patriots. This group who usually also associate themselves with the Blue Lives Matter group, are so brainwashed to believe that even police officers who don’t join their “revolution” are traitors. They’re cemented delusion was fostered by Trump, Senators, Representatives, social media, and news journalists. There is responsibility in the self to seek and learn truths, no doubt. However, there is also culpability fully at the feet of those whom citizens trust to inform them. This coup, as relatively feeble as it was, is not just the fault of an egomaniacal man child, but those that support him and chose to put his lies ahead of the betterment of those they serve. They put blood and thunder, headlines and news bytes, above the fragility of democracy. Vengeance was requested, incited and inspired, and delivered.
Trump unleashed his beasts, the hellhounds his party helped feed and groom to maturation, and ultimately cut the Republican’s case against the Biden election out from under them. Further objection to the election results in November would align elected individuals, by name, to the assault on the Capitol. The party allowed Trump, and his incitement of their party’s least common denominators, to take control. Then nobody, until McConnell and Pence were forced to put country over career today, had the courage to reign him in until it was too late.
I was previously working on a piece, of which the thesis was that Trump was nothing but a bogey man who was too lazy to rise from under our nation’s bed. That, for all the fear we held of the resources at his disposal, he played more time golfing than taking interest in systematically removing our freedoms. Sure, what he did do was most often evil and some, not at all, can be quickly reversed. But, for the most part, what we feared was nothing more than a playground bully.
That piece is now ash in the wind. For he was as dangerous as we feared, but it wasn’t the intellectuals, minorities, or Democrats that should have been afraid. It was the Republican party. For they are now in a full blown identity crisis and have their party attached to the first domestic insurrection since the Civil War.
Enjoy the spoils, you disconnected fucks.
Shipp
