Posted on 01/07/2021 9:35:42 AM PST by Kaslin
A little over a decade ago, I was tear-gassed for the first time. It was the first day of September in the Twin Cities, and the anti-globalist, anti-war protesters were milling about with giant papier-mache heads of the people they hated. Mark Hemingway was there. My future wife and mother of my child was inside. It was painful. Afterward, I left and set up my laptop at a nearby rooftop bar and had the best Guinness I’ve ever ordered in my life. The reports about the protesters were overwhelmingly sympathetic. These were justified because of the wars. The New York Times said so.
A few years later, I covered Occupy Wall Street, and the tone was similar. These people taking over public parks, shitting all over the place, yelling at each other in circles, and setting up occasional rape tents were to be accepted, because Wall Street exists and is a thing. The sympathy for them was even greater than for the war people because of a lot of guilt about how media is funded. Zephyr Teachout wrote a thing.
Around the same time, there was another form of protest, something very different, which emerged. It was called the Tea Party. It was, unlike the anti-war, anti-globalist, anti-Wall Street folks, a fundamentally dangerous and racist entity, bent on destruction and violence, that threatened the very foundations of representative government and only existed because people couldn’t accept a black president. They were basically the Klan. Alan Grayson said it.
It was odd. In all my years of covering the Tea Party, I never saw them be rude to a cop, even by accident. They were upper-middle-class people who drove up in SUVs. They had no designs on destruction or occupation. Their taxes paid for that park, so they would clean up after themselves. They took pride in it — that they weren’t like the dirty, filthy leftists who left graffiti and literal shit on the ground.
Of course, it was these people who were absolutely marauded by the media. Their shouting at politicians — confined of course to town halls — was an act of political sabotage that threatened everything we hold dear. They were basically terrorists. Mediocre politician Joe Biden literally called them “terrorists.” He can be a nice guy, but he’s also kind of an asshole that way. That’s Delaware for you.
Politics is interesting in America. There’s a repeated pattern that emerges when you look into it. Certain factors and elements rise up, and the media lies about them aggressively. They frame the new emerging development as something it is not — as the most extreme version of what it could be. And then the call engenders a response — the very thing the media frames this development as comes to fruition in a new and more virulent form.
This absolutely happened in response to the 2012 election. As I said a few years ago about Democratic attacks on the misogyny and heartlessness of Mitt Romney, if you cry wolf about extremism long enough, you lack the vocabulary when the actual beast shows up. The rise of Donald Trump is a piece of that — a takeover of the Republican Party by a politician who represents everything the media has framed a cliched view of the party as for decades: a rich, old, white racist who likes to fire people. Yeah? So suck on that. Go write a million pieces, they don’t care.
What happened yesterday didn’t depress me the way it seemed to depress other people. Maybe that’s because I don’t view the institution of the Capitol as sacred the way others do. As a former staffer, I’ve known too many stories about the nooks and crannies where Ted Kennedy did stuff to get too verklempt about it. And the invaders stayed inside the velvet ropes in Statuary Hall, which I actually care about. But it’s disturbing for a lot of reasons, two in particular that stick out.
The first is a comment from an apolitical friend who wandered into the room where the roiling crowd was on the screen in the early afternoon yesterday: “Is that Black Lives Matter?” No, it’s not — but also, it is. An apolitical viewer of the summer of 2020 would learn one distinct lesson: If you want to be heard, if you want to be listened to, you need to go into the streets, make a ruckus, set things on fire, and tear down icons of America. This disrespect will be welcomed, hailed, and supported if your cause is just and your motives are righteous.
Just about everyone who showed up on Capitol Hill yesterday believed that about why they were there. The only difference between the horned man standing in the Senate chair or the smiling man hauling the speaker’s podium out the door and the fellow who attempted to tear down Andrew Jackson’s statue or the criminal who set fire to St. John’s Church is a matter of jersey color.
The second is that blaming this on Donald Trump isn’t just too simplistic, it’s whistling past the graveyard of our norms. Of course, he egged on his crowd to go up to the Capitol and be loud and irritating. But he didn’t tell them to break down doors and crash the gates, and he didn’t need to. Blaming this on Trump assumes this type of attitude will go away when Trump himself does. That’s way too easy — it’s wishful thinking. The iconoclasm of the right is a real development, and it is here to stay. You’ll wish for the old man in the tricorn hat waving a Cato Constitution when you see the new right blasting statues with graffiti.
The crowd was not a Tea Party crowd. They brought their folding chairs and their canes. They drove more than they flew. They spat their dip on the ground. They peed on the trees. And they didn’t just disrespect the cops guarding the Capitol, they crushed past them.
Capitol Police are fine people. They’re nice and generally accommodating. But they’re also the TSA of Capitol Hill — mostly used to telling people to go back and get their badge, not deal with a security issue. They rarely train. Most of them would fail a basic fitness test. But that’s understandable because what’s typically required of them is not a major security conflagration, but removing some loud Code Pink lady from a hearing, or grabbing a jumper from the Gallery. The norms of politics prevent them from having to be more aggressive.
On the eve of the protests yesterday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who gives all the evidence of having a brain mostly composed of pudding, demurred on offers of extra law enforcement, saying they were unnecessary and would cause confusion. The result was a group of Capitol Police who seemed woefully unprepared for the crush of the massive crowd that showed up, without riot gear or moveable barriers or the equipment necessary to peacefully quell a potentially violent gathering.
The breach yesterday has been long in the making. Even as a young staffer I was shocked at how unsecure the Capitol was — there are numerous gaps in their security that you will easily witness if you spend any time there. It’s only the intimidating columns, the confusion about which door you can use, and the institutions and norms that keep people at bay. And those, alas, are now gone. They are dead, they are in the ground, and they are not coming back.
This same reality applies to the conservative movement. The obvious result of yesterday’s conflagration will be a feeble attempt at a purge by the Mitt Romneys, Liz Cheneys, and Adam Kinzingers (ha!) of the GOP. This will fail because their constituency is not just outnumbered, it is utterly dominated by the populist iconoclasts. A party of the right that rejects the mob of people who spent their hard-earned, working-class money to drive to Washington, D.C., and wave a flag as deplorables will never win, or deserve to, any more than a party of the left could reject naming something Black Lives Matter plaza.
What will happen next is obvious: A total crushing, anti-free speech effort that treats Trump-supporting groups like Branch Davidians. An effort to restore the fundamentally unserious neocons as the voice of reason in the room. A hardening of the bounds of the People’s House to keep people away from politicians. A use of any levers of government power — including audits, regulation, and lawfare — to harass conservatives now categorized as seditionists and terrorists by the incoming president who falsely claims to want to unite the country. And above all, a doubling down on all the policies and efforts put in place to crush exactly the type of people who showed up at the Capitol yesterday in a foolish, desperate attempt to make themselves heard.
The rioters failed in their effort and ensured their marginalization. But marginalization doesn’t mean evaporation. They’re still here. They’re still Americans. And they’re not going away. How our politicians handle that will dictate a lot about the next several years. And that shouldn’t give people a lot of hope, considering that four years after his election and two weeks before his departure, the only person they’ll apparently listen to is still Donald Trump.
I got flamed yesterday for posting that “the storming of the Capitol” was a terrible thing that would hurt MAGA and the president. So many Freepers were essentially fist pumping in support of this mob. Now they’re saying it was actually antifa posing as Trump people - an admission that I was right and it created a huge setback for MAGA and Trump
Apologies accepted
The rioters failed in their effort and ensured their marginalization.
_________________________________________
Couldn’t be more wrong...the Left (and apparently many “conservatives”) think that only the Left can engage in civil disobedience.
And while there were certainly Antifa pukes there, there were also many sincere, angry patriots there as well. The political Left can try to censor conservatives at their own peril. We will continue to speak, communicate with one another, and get our voices heard.
The iconoclasm of the right is a real development, and it is here to stay. You’ll wish for the old man in the tricorn hat waving a Cato Constitution when you see the new right blasting statues with graffiti …Nobody who does such things is part of the right, new or old. Stop with the left-wing-inspired false labels, Mr. D.
Actually you’re talking nonsense.
If the Capitol had been “stormed” there would have been a lot more that would have happened.
You play the MSN deep state narrative.
You won’t be getting any apologies.
That’s my best guess. Nor will I offer one.
I agree with the author and will take it a step further: Plan on defending yourselves from Waco and Ruby Ridge style raids. In the very near future I expect police raids on conservatives of all stripes and they’ll be ‘justified’ with the usual buzzwords like “compounds”, “assault weapons”, “white separatists”, “white supremacists”, and “sovereign citizens”.
The police and the media will use these words to justify murdering people in their homes.
And I’m not a doomsayer for saying this because this is what these people do every time they take power.
Stand back a little farther and look past the wringing of hands and clutching of pearls. The events of 1/1/21 have identified exactly who is who in the chaterati and political spheres. Aside from the murder of a perfectly decent person, which will go unpunished, what harm was really done? The writer is right on target, those marble halls reek of villainy, they are not holy.
Too many people are trying to make yesterday out as a loss.
It wasn’t.
It was a tactical and strategic victory.
The people who never stand up stood up.
The Democrat propaganda machine is in full swing, but yesterday scared them.
For the first time in their political careers, the people put the run on them.
And they ran like chickens.
Brave people, honest people would have talked with the people.
The cowards ran.
That’s who we are dealing with....
Loud mouthed
Arrogant
Greedy
Lying
Thieving
Bullying
Cowards
Cowards.
Yes!
They are lucky it was not like a 1789 storming in Paris. Mobile guillitines would have been a nice touch.
Real slick rintintin, you shrill GOPe troll. Go ahead and falsely claim yesterday’s Capitol protesters for the culmination of a 4 years long rolling coup. The coup was going to happen regardless with no excuses needed.
You are just giving the leftists cover.
Despicable.
I think we will see some common ground between Antifa/BLM and Patriots when it comes to the Police.
“The rioters failed in their effort and ensured their marginalization.”
This is generally a good article but I don’t know what he means above.
What was their effort? Nothing other than showing their disgust.
And if he thinks our marginalization isn’t ensured by the MSM/deep state techno-totalitarians no matter what he’s a moron.
We need to move the power from DC by centralizing our own representation and communicating to the illegal and illegitimate “government” in DC via liaison.
Hot take - tactical loss, but strategic victory. Yes we didn’t flip the election but let’s be honest, that should have happened LONG ago including installing OUR people in the county election offices. Me and some friends are working on doing that at our level, locally. Long story—would take a whole new thread but let’s just say we will NOT allow a repeat of 2020 in 2022 and we’re not the only people who think this way.
On to the strategic victory - I know the popular talking heads point is that now the left will crack down on the right, but honestly were we expecting the media and Kamala Harris to reach out with an olive branch otherwise? The system was discredited yesterday. It was supposed to be the big celebration. “A historic moment.” Instead, guy in a Viking suit.
“They are lucky it was not like a 1789 storming in Paris. Mobile guillitines would have been a nice touch.”
Yes, they don’t understand the word storm.
Our side are not murderers and destroyers, though, and will do this peacefully and methodically.
They are the ones who use force and strength of power, mayhem and destruction.
They ran through the corridors and they ran through the halls where a lobbyist would not go. They ran so fast the protestors could not catch them all the way back to their homes. Props to Johnny Horton
I don’t think you’re going to see that, but who knows? The problem with this movement - which is what it is, a movement of mistreated people who want justice and respect - is that it contains everybody from the aforementioned group to a handful of nutcases. But at the same time, what it does not have is a leader, so there’s no way of sorting out or controlling the nutcases.
Trump is perhaps not really the leader, but more of a symbol; however, he’s the closest thing there is to a leader, and if the left gets rid of him, they’re opening the way for total chaos.
And don’t forget that we’ve actually been living in a sort of chaos for the last 10 months, many of us separated by our very own government from our jobs and livelihoods, our families and churches...all moderating social influences. So the average American was already in a pretty fragile state.
But the detonating thing in all of this is the interference by the left with the selection of a national leader and their suppression of the voices of the people. Doubling down on it will only make it worse. But they don’t care.
The only way to defend ourselves is to organize and get what state governments we can to refuse to cooperate with the His Fraudulency. Start a movement for states to nullify the acts of the Federal government which are now wholly illegitimate, with both the Presidency and the Senate stolen. We need lawyer networks to combat lawfare. We also need alliances of patriots willing to show up -armed- when the NKVD comes knocking on our doors or local gun shops. Because they are coming.
Frankly, IMHO this won't stop until some heads are blown off.
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