Americans Have Found the Enemy, and It Is They
I want to return to this once more.
If you’ve watched videos of the protestors who got past security in Congress you know they weren’t exactly the A-Team. It’s true they had a little bit of inside help, and that the cops clearly didn’t want to seriously oppose them. Even so, it wasn’t a super-sharp operation.
Yet, they did get in, and if a few of them had automatic weapons in bags, they could have killed a lot of Congress members. It is fortunate for Congress that’s not why they were there.
The conclusion I draw from this, though I’m no military man, is that an organized attack could easily take Congress and kill or take hostage almost all its members.
Even if the Capitol cops made an effort to fight back, I don’t think they’d stand a chance against people who knew what they were doing.
The defense is essentially intelligence: If you know an attack is coming, well, the Capitol cops have plenty of backup they can get onsite. That was, apparently, offered before the protest/attack and refused.
So, anyway, anyone with decent op-security can eliminate most of the legislative branch any time they want. Good to know.
(America continues to amaze. With the largest military and police budgets in the world, they persist in the legacy of 9-11, when they couldn’t get any armed planes into the sky, despite having the world’s largest air force.)
The next thing to note, AGAIN, is that the people who did this appear to have genuinely thought they were saving democracy. Had that been the case, they’d be heroes. What they are, instead, is suckers. The people who convinced them are the primary criminals here, not the schmucks who believed them — who are now likely to get a hammer dropped on them, as a cop has now died.
Next, note the following:
I have seen polls where about 70 percent of Republicans think the election was stolen. So what happens next is the creation of a myth:
There was an election, it was stolen. We tried to intervene, mostly peacefully, and we lost.
Trump has now backed down fully, and his partisans appear to be furious. They feel used, but that will turn into a “stabbed in the back” narrative.
In other words, the ideological justification for a coup will be in place: “They stole the election, and mostly peaceful efforts didn’t work, and the patriots who tried it are martyrs.”
Now this doesn’t automatically mean a coup, or revolution, or anything, but understand absolutely clearly that what has happened is a consequence of the swamp of American politics and governance. You have a massively polarized electorate and a media system which repeatedly lies to people or lets them believe lies. Slamming the barn door isn’t going to work, because what will happen is a complete distrust of remaining media.
This distrust is rational in its own way. It’s not like the “liberal” media doesn’t lie all the time, about consequential things too, like Iraq or whether Russia is putting bounties on American soldiers. They just lie about different things, in service of a different set of elites.
Once you lose trust, as in the case of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, it’s hard to get it back — even when you’re telling the truth. There’s no reason to trust the New York Times, say, or CNN, or MSNBC. They might be telling the truth, but they’re serial liars.
Add to this the fact that the US has spent 40 to 50 years dealing with economic decline for a plurality to a majority of the population, especially the young, and you have a classic recipe for bad times, including the possibility of insurrection, coups, civil wars, and so on.
There’s no way to be certain what will happen, but we can recognize that the necessary conditions are in place for very bad events.
The US has no real enemies who can harm it, except Americans. It has been that way ever since the Revolution; it’s a simple matter of geography (and these, days, insane over-armament.)
The enemy is inside the house, and he’s you.
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Che,
Murder-LARPers has a better ring, no?
And what do they want?
That’s easy. They keep yelling it to anyone who will listen. A mobbed up New York Copperhead making brown people pay for being uppity.
Z– a lot of the gear that was on display wasn’t cheap. Moreover, exit polling show that Trump won the over $100,000 a year vote and lost the vote of those making < $100,000 a year. A lot of those guys had money, or were being supported by people who did have lots of money.
Here's a video of the guy with zipties to use as handcuffs dressed in full military gear at the Grand Hyatt. Do you think he's poor?
https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1347699892421062659?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1347710600298770434%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstory%2F2021%2F1%2F8%2F2007305%2F-Here-s-a-roundup-of-people-getting-arrested-for-their-part-in-Trump-s-failed-revolt
There were also Republican officials and prominent party members from various states amongst the rioters. There was the son of a New York superior court judge present.
Trailer park people, by contrast, don't even have the $ to travel to DC, let alone stay at ritzy hotels.
The attack was as successful as it was, I think, as the defenses were deliberately made too weak to resist. If you want to assassinate a leader, as one saying goes, you don't have to corrupt his/her guard, just make sure it's not there at the key time. That almost happened; the rioters were minutes away from getting to the Chambers to take hostages, and possibly execute them.
Let's compare the BLM protest this past summer in DC vs the Trump Coup attempt:
https://twitter.com/ajplus/status/1347565725863596032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1347565725863596032%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstory%2F2021%2F1%2F8%2F2007305%2F-Here-s-a-roundup-of-people-getting-arrested-for-their-part-in-Trump-s-failed-revolt
6/1/2020
1 block away from the White House
No attempt to breach building
5,000 National Guard mobilized
289 arrests
01/06/2021
Broke into Capitol apparently plans to execute Congresscritters
Offices vandalized and property stolen, one officer killed
Pipe bombs planted
Only 340 National Guardsmen on-hand (and late coming, due to the refusal of Trump's new stooge appointees in the Pentagon to release them)
82 arrests
And for those who think "this wasn't a coup", there's this scene of Trump's allies in the White House bunker watching on the Teevees the unfolding events:
https://twitter.com/trom771/status/1347266916012990476
This was a coup attempt, pure and simple, and I see some here are still in "protect-Trump-at-all-costs" denial. It was to be their Reicshstag Fire.
Nor are things over.
“Apart from Power, raw and naked, what do the golpistas want?”
Easily answered, as they have repeatedly. They want a God-Emperor, a bloated white “strongman” who is always right about everything, never “Loses” (thus he couldn’t have lost the election to the empty suit Biden, that last point viz Joe one of the few points where they contact reality. Trump did Lose, but to a Nonentity, as his shtick got old.) Trump is the Great White Daddy they wish for, looting and lying endlessly, including from them, but he gets away with it because they identify with the Fuhrer, they vicariously feel they ARE Him, just as Germans screwed by losing WWI with their earlier, maybe less narcissistic if not noticeably less insane version did.
Poor in the closet Ms. Lindsey gets trashed in the airport for belatedly jumping ship. Even Betsy deVos jumps ship days after Trump pardoned her brother’s mass-murdering minions.
The Dems will do little or nothing like they always do, they might prosecute a few of the ringleaders or give them light plea deals, assuming that local prosecutors or the Putschist’s sympathizers in the FBI, local Police Departments etc. don’t deliberately fuck up any arrests or prosecutions in advance.
Apart from the obvious Trolls, TG & SB etc. who many others have called out, I continue to appreciate the comment board here for a generally intelligent take.
The biggest red flag I see above comes from those saying give Hawley a 2nd chance as he has sided with Bernie on $2K checks.
Let’s recall our history– the German Reich was taken over by National “Socialists”– the Socialist feint was quickly dropped to serve Capital, as right wingers always do. Also, pencil-neck Hawley throwing his little fist in the air just before the Capitol attack is a reminder about aspirational fascists, little men (a la Wilhelm Reich and others’ psychological observations) who want to picture themselves as powerful killing-machines. Charlie Kirk and plenty of other wannabes are seen on the right fringes playing the same overcompensation game.
These people have no human decency, they are hungry ghosts who will do anything to feed the endless void inside them, just like Dear Leader Trump . . . btw, sorry for 2x bringing in the Nazis in commentary but at this time sadly it is evidently relevant. But as several commenters note above, America is no longer the competent machine that FDR, Truman et al ran in the 40s to 50s, much less the orderly, obedient “good Germans” who made up the Reich when it began. It is a failed state of disconnected alienated denizens of Social Media dominated by an increasingly small, insular and uncaring Ruling Class which has little idea of what pain the majority of the populace now feels.
At least the good news is– if Joe and his Obama style Cold Warriors attempt to get the global War and Terror Machine up and running to attack the Chinese, Iranians or whomever, that will be a massive FAIL and will hasten the end of US Gov’t. 1.0 which we all see coming.
Spot on, Ian. You are correct is your assessment. I suspect that someone like Dimitri Orlovsky is having himself a smug and smirky time right now, but for us who have to live here and deal with what’s coming, there’s nothing funny or ironic about it. It sucks.
@Anon,
I used to read Dmitri Orlov before he paywalled himself. He did some good work at the time.
I too feel confident that he is laughing and smirking.
He is a Russian Nationalist. He may live long enough to see 500 million Chinese and 500 million Indians seek to move to Russia to escape the Global Hotting. And the parts of Russia which the Russian elites dream will turn into a tropical paradise will probably turn into a burn barrel instead. I hope Orlov lives long enough to see it. It would be amusing to see him laughing out the other side of his ass when that happens.