Category Archives: Politics

The More We Learn, the Worse It Looks

Posted on by

Wednesday could have been even worse. From The Guardian:

Two men who were seen carrying plastic “zip tie” handcuffs during the deadly riot at the US Capitol, suggesting plans to kidnap lawmakers in an attempt to overturn Txxxx’s election defeat, were arrested on Sunday. . . .

The news came as more graphic details of violence and brutality emerged. Before the arrests announced on Sunday, prosecutors had filed 17 cases in federal district court and 40 in District of Columbia superior court for offenses ranging from assaulting police officers to entering restricted areas, stealing federal property and threatening lawmakers.

Alarming footage of the riot continued to emerge. Some captured a bloodied officer crushed in a doorway and screaming. Other officers were reportedly beaten with pipes; one was seen tumbling over a railing into a crowd below. The officer had been body-slammed from behind.

Brian Sicknick, 42 and a 12-year veteran, died after he was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher while “physically engaging” the rioters, according to a statement from Capitol police. . . . 

Police arrested one man alleged to have brought guns and explosives to Washington; another was heavily armed and allegedly threatened to kill House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Chants of “Hang Mike Pence”, the vice-president, were heard during the riot. . . . 

Prosecutors said additional cases remained under seal and dozens were sought by federal agents. The US attorney in Washington vowed that “all options were on the table” for charges, including possibly sedition.

According to the Secretary of the Army, domestic terrorism cases are being opened. Among the items recovered on Wednesday were long guns, Molotov cocktails and other explosive devices.

The Washington Post reported that confrontations between the mob and members of Congress and Capitol staff were imminent:

A mob nearly breached the Speaker’s Lobby with access to the House Chamber while [representatives] and staff were sheltering inside;

There was a similar moment when a right turn instead of left would have taken another mob straight to the Senate chamber; 

Eight staffers huddled together under a table in a conference room, one door away from the terrorists rummaging through Nancy Pelosi’s office;

Behind another door, Senate aides heard a woman praying loudly for “the evil of Congress to be brought to an end”.

Maybe the mob simply wanted to discuss election security with their elected representatives.

A member of the Capitol Police told BuzzFeed that he heard about the coming assault in a message from a friend:

“I found out what they were planning when a friend of mine screenshot me an Instagram story from the Proud Boys saying, ‘We’re breaching the Capitol today, guys. I hope y’all ready.’”

That was a heavily trained group of militia terrorists that attacked us,” said the officer, who has been with the department for more than a decade. “They had radios, we found them, they had two-way communicators and earpieces. They had bear spray. They had flash bangs … They were prepared.

Tonight, CNN has a new video. Someone who’s watched it says it shows “a MAGA rioter (in white hat and backpack) grab a DC Metro officer and pull him down Capitol steps, where he is stomped and beaten with an American flag pole”. These are the “patriots” the president “loves”.

The story that’s slowly being told is that nobody who works for the federal government or the District of Columbia anticipated an attack on the Capitol. They supposedly thought there would be another demonstration, similar to the one on December 12th, during which nothing much happened until after dark, when a few roving bands of the president’s supporters turned violent. That would imply that no government departments were monitoring the discussions on social media and right-wing messages boards that featured detailed discussions of the impending attack (see this article from Pro Publica).Or that whoever is supposed to keep track of domestic terrorism didn’t take the threats seriously. Or that they purposefully kept information about the threat to themselves. The issue will be investigated and at least some of the truth will be revealed.

Meanwhile, Business Insider reports that there are foreign observers who think the lack of security on Wednesday indicates that this was an actual attempted coup by elements in the government:

Insider spoke with three [European] officials on Thursday morning: a French police official responsible for public security in . . . central Paris, and two intelligence officials from NATO countries who directly work in counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations . . . 

They said the circumstantial evidence available pointed to what would be openly called a coup attempt in any other nation. None were willing to speak on the record because of the dire nature of the subject.

While they did not furnish evidence that federal agency officials facilitated the chaos, . . .  America’s international military and security allies are now willing to give serious credence to the idea that [the president] deliberately tried to violently overturn an election and that some federal law-enforcement agents — by omission or otherwise — facilitated the attempt. . . .

“These are not subtle principles” for managing demonstrations, “and they transfer to every situation,” the [French] official said. “This is why we train alongside US federal law enforcement to handle these very matters, and it’s obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored.”

Seditious Right-Wing Apples Aren’t the Same as Illegal Left-Wing Oranges

Posted on by

Right-wing apologists have suggested that it was left-wing radicals acting as agents provocateur who fomented the violence on Wednesday. That’s almost as ridiculous as the idea that the government orchestrated the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as part of a plot to take away everybody’s guns.

The suggestion apparently originated when some idiot(s) using facial recognition software identified three men who invaded the Capitol. Two of the men’s faces also appear on an anti-fascist site. The big problem is that the site identifies these two as hard-core Nazis, not anti-fascists. The third man wasn’t an anti-fascist either. He’s a QAnon conspiracy promoter who’s been photographed in the vicinity of a protest or two. These stupid charges made it into a conservative newspaper and were given more oxygen by one of the worst members of Congress. So much for evidence.

Earlier this week, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, Carissa Byrne Hessick, responded to a somewhat more rational idea about the insurrection:

I have seen so many people (including folks on #lawtwitter) comparing what happened at the Capitol yesterday with the violence and property damage that happened in some cities during protests last summer.

Let me explain what is wrong with that analogy . . . . .

To clarify — my disagreement is not with those who are pointing out that law enforcement didn’t respond with the same level of force and arrests at the capitol as it did during BLM protests.

That comparison deserves to be drawn and it raises some very important questions.

My disagreement is with those who are saying that what happened at the Capitol yesterday is so similar to what happened during protests this summer, that people’s reactions ought to be similar–a suggestion that those reacting more strongly now are hypocritical.

Here’s one example of someone (a law professor) making the argument [“kudos to those who’ve consistently condemned riots”]. But I’ve seen it plastered across the site all day, it keeps cropping up in my mentions, and so I want to respond.

There are a number of things that distinguish what happened at the Capitol from what happened during [Black Lives Matter] protests. The most obvious is the reason that people protested—some protested about factually false claims about election fraud; others about real police shootings.

It should go without saying, but the reasons that people act are incredibly important in judging their actions. People who do bad things for bad reasons deserve more condemnation than people who do things for good reasons.

This is a pretty basic social and legal concept.

There is another, more important difference between the reasons for action.

The people at BLM protests were trying to get changes made to policing practices.

The people at the Capitol were trying to stop Congress from certifying an election.

Changing policing practices so that fewer civilians get shot is a totally legitimate aim. If we were to accomplish it through a court decision or legislation, I don’t think people would object. In fact, most Americans would likely welcome it.

In contrast, stopping the certification of an election is not a legitimate aim. It would be a major problem if it were accomplished via a court decision. And it’s even worse to try and do it via force or intimidation.

But the reasons for the actions we saw is not the only important difference.

There is also a huge difference in how those actions came about–specifically the role that public officials played in the turmoil and protests that led to the storming of the Capitol.

The anger towards and distrust of police in Black communities didn’t come from public officials. It came from people in those communities. In fact, much of the anger was directed at the public officials in those cities. Folks blame Democratic mayors for police violence.

And while some officials in Democratic cities expressed solidarity with the protestors, the mayors were not encouraging people to take to the streets and protest. The opposite in fact. They wanted people to stay home.

Contrast that with how President Txxxx and many other members of the GOP have reacted to the 2020 election:

They have been leading the charge to challenge the result.

They have been engaging in rhetoric that talks about violence and unrest.

They fanned these flames.

The President himself held a rally in which he literally encouraged people to march to the Capitol. He told them that the Republicans in Congress were being weak, and they needed to show them to be bold.

He told them to march to the Capitol, and he repeated it multiple times.

Did Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or any one of a similar stature tell people to take to the streets this summer?

Did they give the protestors a fist pump like [Senator] Josh Hawley did, as he was heading in to try and overturn the election using frivolous legal arguments?

The answers to those questions is obviously “no”

Contributing to a bail fund or saying that you understand why people are angry–things that folks on the right criticized Democratic officials for–is obviously not the same thing as encouraging people to take to the streets.

So were there protests this summer at which some people broke the law?

Yes.

But what we saw at the Capitol yesterday and what happened over the summer obviously aren’t analogous.

And to pretend otherwise seems like it is minimizing yesterday’s attack on democracy [no, that’s exactly what it is].

What Could Happen Next If We’re Not Careful

Posted on by

A scholar who’s studied authoritarians around the world discusses this week’s insurrection and how it might be the beginning, not the end. An interview from Huff Post:

HP:  Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a history professor at New York University and author of the book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”  She [thinks we] could be headed for even more violence and political unrest. 

This historic insurrection was the culmination of five years of fascist rhetoric from the president. You’ve been at the forefront of identifying and documenting how Txxxx and the “Make America Great Again” movement represent a real authoritarian or fascist insurgency. Were you still surprised to see what you saw Wednesday?

RBG:  No, I wasn’t surprised. I was extremely calm when it happened because I just kind of expected it. Of course, it was shocking to then see the lawmakers cowering, and then I became very angry at the arrogance and lawlessness, and the fact that the police didn’t do anything and that these guys went out for drinks later, these insurgents. But no, this has been set up since Txxxx’s presidential campaign, when he actively cultivated all of these various militias and far-right forces, so it’s that cultivation entwined with this victim cult.

Because this doesn’t work if you don’t have the cult leader. And the leader is the victim. So the leader is the protector, he’s going to save the nation, blah, blah, blah, but once they bonded to him, it’s very fascistic. It’s very fascist. If he’s in trouble, their duty is to save him. And so Txxxx has played them like a violin all these years, doing exactly what he needs to do to string them along and keep them loyal. Give them just enough crumbs of affirmation.

And then he called on them because the other things that he was trying to do didn’t work.

HP:  You’ve described this kind of leader-follower relationship like a fascistic relationship. Typically how is that spell broken? How do people get out of that?

RBG:  Unfortunately, they don’t get out of that. What I mean is — the other cases are, in some ways, not analogous, because when you have a real dictatorship, there’s no opposing voices. In fact, in a way, it makes our case all the more scary and remarkable because he didn’t have time to ruin democracy.

You know, we had a very robust opposition press. But yet he still managed to have this huge mass of fanatically loyal people. And so once they bond with a leader, historically the only thing that gets people out of it is direct experience with disaster. So it’s very Interesting that the coronavirus didn’t cause more people to turn away from Txxxx. And again, he’s very skillful at propaganda, so he knew how to present it all so that . . . he wasn’t touched — the mismanagement wasn’t blamed on him. 

But some people did, some people woke up and made videos, saying, “I used to believe Txxxx and my wife died,” so that’s the kind of thing that needs to happen at a mass level. And it’s been horrifying that it hasn’t happened. Indeed he got more votes. 

And in Italy and in Germany — and again, you had many, many years of total dictatorship — but the only thing that ruined or started to dissipate the personality cult was when the Allies bombed Italy and Germany and regular people had immense hardship. And in that sense, what’s parallel is the shock of people seeing the Capitol breached, and lawmakers having to run for cover. That shocked some Txxxxians into resigning, like it woke some people up.

HP:  I think what I’m seeing some people express concern about is that, although it made certain people decide to leave MAGA world or whatever, or at least some people in the White House, the storming of the Capitol could also end up being a kind of a recruiting event.

RBG:  Yep. I think . . . you could easily see January 6 as the start of something. It’s the start of a new phase…. It’s the start of a new phase of subversive extremist activity. It could be.

HP:  Yeah, because it kind of feels like — like they breached the Capitol, they got in, the Capitol’s vulnerable. 

RBG:  Then they got to go out for beer. They didn’t end up in prison. [although more are now being arrested]

HP:  They just went out for beer.

RBG:  So that’s what actually made me not sleep last night. I’m so angry about that…. It’s just everything wrong for our future. 

HP:  We are entering these last couple of weeks of the Txxxx presidency . . . but it feels like Jan. 6 was a significant point of a new, subversive extremism movement in this country. Is there an analogous situation in history of authoritarian figures not being in power but still holding so much power? 

RBG:  Again, it’s not an exact analogy, but [Chilean dictator] Augusto Pinochet was voted out and he’d been in for 17 years and had a real dictatorship . . .  normally these guys, they either go into exile or they die or they’re killed. So one of the only ones was Pinochet, who was voted out. It’s maybe the only one I know about. 

HP:  We’re seeing some people finally starting to distance themselves from Txxxx and his efforts to throw out the results of the election. So we have [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell give this speech on the floor of the Senate, and now his wife, the secretary of transportation, has submitted her resignation. What’s your reaction to that?

RBG:  Partly “OK, great. Better now than never,” but partly I’m rather cynical about it, because this fits the history of such things where these people, once they make their crony deals with the leader, they back them no matter what they do, and the only thing that makes them act is if they feel their personal safety is threatened. Literally them. It’s so interesting to me that only when the Capitol was breached and they actually had to go into lockdown against an armed insurgency did they decide that there was some danger enough to merit distancing from Txxxx. . . .  It’s just their self-interest. 

However, they could have not [distanced themselves] . . . .

HP:  What do you see as the best path forward, for both the immediate future dealing with Txxxx over the next couple of weeks and looking forward at the MAGAverse and how to deal with that over the next few years? 

RBG:  I think every day he stays there it’s like increasing danger. And it can get more dangerous . . . because he’s going to be more inclined to do desperate things, to sell intelligence, to sell out people, to take revenge ― just [ramping] up everything he’s already been doing. And so he shouldn’t be allowed to stay there. . . .

He’s the far-right wacko in chief, and he should be de-platformed for sure. He’s the biggest danger to society we have. So going forward, I mean, unfortunately, I foresee a lot of turbulence, an attempt to make America as dangerous as possible and blame it on “antifa” and other groups; and a lot of extremism and domestic terrorism, all to create the need for “law and order” government so that Republicans can get back into power. I mean, I hope that doesn’t happen, but I could see that happening.

HP:  And that essentially is what you think is the motivation behind this campaign to blame everything on antifa? 

RBG:  A day before this happened, [the Txxxx administration] issued that weird proclamation about antifa being terrorists. And it’s like, what? Interesting timing. But luckily, the attempt to blame antifa hasn’t really stuck. I mean, I know it’s being circulated on right-wing sites, but the visuals are so compelling it’s hard to blame it on the left. [Note: More on this in a future post]

HP:  What do you think happens on Inauguration Day?

RB:  He’ll have some kind of rally. It will be like the victimhood rally, depending on what happens to him, but if he’s just allowed to stay there, he’ll have some kind of rally, and that will help to kick off this next phase that we’re talking about. And it’ll be like super-dangerous grievance stuff, because now that he’s out of power, he’s going to be more unleashed and unhinged than ever. I hope people are realizing that. You know, I feel bad because people want to relax, because Biden’s coming in and we didn’t even get to enjoy the victories in Georgia, and instead they have to prepare themselves, to be ever more vigilant.

HP:  That feels like an argument for arresting him.

RBG:  Yeah. He has to be removed. For the good of everyone.

Unquote.

I don’t know if she’s being pessimistic or realistic. The history of other countries suggests “realistic”. Twitter, Facebook and Google are finally demonstrating some responsibility. Arrests are slowly being made. What happens depends on how the rest of us, including people in the government and media, deal with this right-wing cancer that’s been unleashed. 

Part 2: They Think They Own America

Posted on by

Philip Kennicott, a Washington Post critic, explains why it was predictable and yet quite easy for them to invade the Capitol: 

The whole drama, the body language, the flags and the onslaught, was borrowed from other dramas — genuine displays of revolutionary fervor against autocrats, authentic acts protesting illegitimate governments. But it was a charade. Not civic or selfless, but corrosive, destructive and illegal.

In real time, journalists and pundits expressed disbelief and wondered aloud: How can this be happening? There was a simple, terrible and chastening answer, and one that will sicken decent Americans for generations to come: It happened because we refused to believe it could happen.

Many Americans once considered this blindness to cataclysm latent in every democratic government, including ours, to be a peculiarly American form of strength. Our naivete was a talisman against disorder. The power of precedence, the comforting illusion of a stable history, the fantasy that our institutions were so just and well ordered that nothing could shake them, might well have seemed a bulwark against today’s attempted coup.

Surely Americans, who are by our own fatuous self-definition fundamentally decent, would never attempt the unthinkable, no matter how angry. And so people who get paid to dither on television suddenly began talking at it, repeating again and again their disbelief, as if the arrival of this ugliness was as unexpected as an errant asteroid or alien invasion in a bad science-fiction flick.

But over the past four years, as Txxxx attacked again and again, dividing the country, inflaming anger, exacerbating every conflict and pouring salt into every wound, the unwillingness to see today’s events became more than a weakness. It became culpable.

We could muster the National Guard to defend bricks and mortar against the possibility that perhaps some angry protesters against police brutality might spill a little paint or hurl water bottles. But we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, defend the Constitution and the republic against open rebellion, a rebellion foretold by every act of a lawless president who has never been coy about his real intent.

One moment in today’s appalling mayhem was telling. As they filed through Statuary Hall, some of Txxxx’s thugs snapped selfies of themselves, as if they were merely tourists.

Meanwhile, windows were being broken, room trashed, historic spaces defiled. You might think it odd that the hardcore Make America Great Again crowd would damage a beloved symbol of the country they profess to support. But not if you understand the deeper dynamic. This was never about who wins elections and the right to govern. It has always been about ownership. Txxxx’s cult believes that they are the sole, legitimate owners of the country, and if that’s true, then there can be no sin in damaging what is rightfully yours, right?

Which explains why the nation’s capital went into a defensive crouch last summer and enlisted the military to put down peaceful demonstrations, when multiracial crowds gathered to demand that the country live up to the promise of its founding documents. These were outsiders, aliens, invaders. But when the Congress met to formalize the peaceful transference of power, suddenly one of the most fortified buildings on the planet was defenseless against amateur insurrectionists.

In the doctrine of white supremacy, articulated in the deeds, acts, executive orders and repellent speeches of the president himself, some people legitimately own America, while others are merely suffered to live here by the consent of men like Txxxx and his supporters. Police will mostly defer to the former with circumspection and polite restraint; they will beat down and gas the latter even before the hour of curfew has arrived.

In this most recent escalation of a four-year putsch — abetted by some of the same representatives and senators whose chambers were attacked by the mob — we see the last few threads of Trumpism that were never explicit now made manifest. Trumpism was never about governance or stewardship of the country. It was about a right to possess so deep that it includes the right to destroy.

That is what is so sickening today, what will sicken us for decades to come and what has shamed us before the world in perpetuity. There is only one way out of this, only one redemption. We must see what has happened today for what it is, with no mincing of words and no obfuscations. A minority of Americans, encouraged by a reckless, cornered and irresponsible lame-duck president, sought to take full possession of what they feel they, and they alone, legitimately possess, which is the right to run the country without a Constitution, without laws, without equal rights for all people.

We knew this was coming, we had the evidence, none of it was a mystery.

Those who claim otherwise, who pretend that this wasn’t the inevitable last act of a presidency grounded on white supremacy, now bear the shame of America. They aren’t blind or foolish, they are guilty. Let them retire from public life and reflect with penitence on what we have seen today. And then let us a remake a capital city that will never again leave itself open to this kind of tawdry insurrection.

Unquote.

Chris Hayes of MSNBC points out that Wednesday was worse than it looked:

There was a kind of selection bias to the live coverage: we had live shots of the least violent places (for good reason) but it’s now become so much clearer it was an extremely dangerous and volatile situation.

It is entirely possible that there were people in that crowd, looking to apprehend, possibly harm, and possibly murder the leaders of the political class that the President [and others] have told them have betrayed them.

Part 1: Trumpism as a Chronic Condition

Posted on by

What follows is a meditation on Trumpism written by Philip Kennicott, an art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, a few days after the election. Later I’ll post what he wrote after the attack on the Capitol:

No matter what happens to Dxxxx Txxxx or who assumes the presidency in January, we can say this: He brought the truth of America to the surface. I’ll leave his policies and his politics — to the extent that he ever had policies or coherent politics — to the pundits. As a critic, I can say that he embodied, embraced or inflamed almost everything ugly in American culture, past, present and perhaps future. He made it palpable and tangible even to people inclined to see the bright side of everything. That this week’s election wasn’t a repudiation of Trumpism, that some 6 million more Americans believe in it now compared with four years ago, is horrifying. But it’s also reality, and it’s always best to face reality.

He also gave our unique brand of ugliness — rooted in racism, exceptionalism, recklessness, arrogance and a tendency to bully our way to power — a name. Trumpism is now rooted in the lexicon, and although white supremacy may be the better, more clinical term for what ails America, Trumpism is a useful, colloquial alternative. It encompasses an even wider category of people that includes not just avowed racists who have publicly supported the president but also those who downplay the problem, or align with it for personal gain, or are simply unwilling to acknowledge its history and persistence. Naming a thing is an essential first step to understanding it . . .

In moments of despair, it’s easy to think that the past four years were a failure of civic discourse, that slightly more than half of America simply failed to convincingly argue against Trumpism. America, in the aggregate, seems just as stupid as it was four years ago, when it became clear that we would have to learn some painful lessons, and learn them the hard way, through the collapse of competent governance, the destruction of civility and, now, the ravages of a grossly mismanaged pandemic.

But if we are stupid in the aggregate, many individual Americans are more clear-eyed and conscious than four years ago. The 2016 election proved that the argument against Trumpism had largely failed, but although losing an argument is maddening, it also makes your argument stronger, clarifies your reasoning and orders your logic. Half of America may be right where it was four years ago, still mired in Trumpism, but some part of the other half of America isn’t just opposed to Txxxx but also smarter and more cognizant of how Trumpism has rooted itself in the society. That’s not a negligible accomplishment.

Grappling with white supremacy, or Trumpism if you prefer, was never going to be easy, because it exists not just in a handful of ugly epithets, the caricatures we see in old movies and statues scattered across the landscape. It is existential, precognitive and pervasive, as fully present in how we conceive of beauty as it is in the assumptions we make about that driver who just cut us off while swerving between lanes.

Changing how we think would be difficult even if we all agreed on the necessity for change. It is even more difficult given that 48 percent of the country resists the project entirely. But for all the damage Txxxx has done, much of which may never be undone, he has inadvertently, accidentally and unintentionally left us with a model for what needs to be done.

Trumpism is embedded in America and can be fought only through rigorous self-discipline, through constant surveillance of the thoughts we think, the words we use and the assumptions we make. There was White supremacy before we started thinking of it as Trumpism, but before Txxxx, there also was a tendency to think of it as “out there” rather than “in here.” Now we know it not as a perverse blemish on American culture but as foundational to American culture. That’s progress.

On a summer morning in 1861, holiday makers, the picnic crowd, the Washington swells went out to the battlefield at Manassas to watch a quick and decisive battle bring an end to the Civil War. Head east past the battlefield on Interstate 66 and you’re roughly retracing the holiday crowd’s steps when they fled back to Washington in panic and disorder after Confederate troops routed Union forces. Some of them, safe again in the nation’s capital, were perhaps slightly less ignorant about the magnitude of the war that awaited them.

Disillusionment isn’t an event — it’s a process. It doesn’t arrive and do its work all at once, like an epiphany. It is a way of living, a perpetual vigilance, a habit of mind. We may wish that Trumpism could be defeated, like an external enemy. But reality requires that we think of it as a chronic condition of American public life — not a virus that can be quarantined and perhaps cured, but a lifestyle disease rooted in sedentary thinking.