A Sad Day
Yesterday was an incredibly sad, frustrating, and infuriating day. Thousands of insurrectionists/domestic terrorists/rioters/whatever the hell you want to call them stormed the grounds of the US Capitol and broke in. They broke windows and doors, desecrated offices and chambers, and unleashed gun shots and tear gas, something that hasn’t been seen in the US Capitol since 1814 when the British invaded during the War of 1812. One of the most frustrating things to me was not that it happened or why it happened, but HOW it happened. Hundreds and hundreds of people were allowed to walk through barricades and checkpoints scot free, and in numerous instances, were guided in by Capitol police and security. Hundreds of members of Congress and the Senate, and their staffers, were forced to lockdown, huddle in place, and put on gas masks to protect themselves from the tear gas. I guess you could say that Congress and the Senate know a bit now what it’s like to be involved in a mass shooting, another issue that plagues our country.
Per the Capitol Police as of 1/7/2021, fourteen people were arrested. 14! During the protests in New York after the death of George Floyd, I witnessed more than fourteen people be arrested for violating curfew in less than 3 minutes. But when thousands of people broke through a locked US Capitol to force it into lockdown, they were allowed to walk out as if it didn’t happen. I can’t qWHITE put my finger on why that would be the case…
Social media has been filled with “what-about-isms” in the hours since this horrid incident. Dozens of my Twitter/Instagram/Facebook followers have shared platitudes that refer back to Black Lives Matter protests (as if people aren’t still protesting and as if police brutality isn’t still a massive plague in this country). To them, I share a message from Kirsten Powers, senior political analyst and USA Today columnist: “If you don’t know the difference between people protesting police brutality/hundreds of years of racism and people storming the Capitol of the United States to disrupt the certification of an election b/c of a conspiracy theory the PRESIDENT OF THE US created, I can’t help you.”
Over the next thirteen days, you’ll hear talks of impeachment, censure, and invoking the 25th Amendment. You’ll see staffers and ambassadors jump ship, way too late for that (as one tweet I shared put it, “rats abandoning ship at the eleventh hour are still f**king rats”). You’ll see FAR too many people claiming that this siege on the US Capitol was actually led by ANTIFA, as those same people allow the roots of fascism to continue to strengthen. After Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in to Office on January 20th, you’ll hear from Trump administration officials who wish they could have done more, and then they’ll write books about their time in the White House, profiting off their inaction. You’ll hear Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell spew some more BS rhetoric (also, Josh Hawley, “irregardless” is not a word, I would figure a Stanford/Yale Law grad would know that…). You’ll hear people ask, “How could this have happened?” and the only response to that should be along the lines of this quote from Jake Tapper, “How could this have happened? Ask Trump-enabling politicians and media who have for years ignored warnings that something like this would inevitably happen.”
I’ll end this with a quote from George Orwell’s 1984 which hits the nail on the head of what’s currently going on: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”