This is copied from something I posted in another thread. What needs to be investigated is why that rally was allowed in the first place. You invite a couple of hundred thousand people to “Stop The Steal” outside the building where the “steal” is taking place, and you think people won’t try to stop it?
This could have easily escalated into an extremely serious national security and hostage situation – something we’ll probably forget but shouldn’t.
Meanwhile, invasions of capitols and other political dysfunction is becoming a thing at the state level. A bomb threat in Michigan today. Two days ago, PA’s senate refused to seat a Democratic senate-elect who won, citing “fraud”. In the US Senate, the last I checked, Loeffler and Perdue still haven’t conceded.
This is becoming a part of the right wing playbook: claim fraud, regardless of how much you lose by. To rational people, it seems like an absurd strategy and a waste of time, but again, it does have the important effect of wearing otherwise decent, agreeable people out to the point where they think of democracy as a joke.
Let’s also start putting the spotlight on the pigs that funded and organized this shit. Get this: it’s the “rule of law” gang. No shit, this insurrection was led by…right wing attorneys general.
That’s how you’re gonna’ beat 'em, Butch. They keep underestimating you.
– “Pulp Fiction”
My mother was friends with a husband-and-wife couple who were dissident intellectuals from somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa during Bush 43. It was a national pastime, then, to bag on Shrub for what a mental midget he was.
But my mother’s friends constantly remarked that “you should never underestimate a man like this.”
I’m quite sure they’d have said the same thing about the CFSG, too.
Our ceaseless amazement at his perpetual facility with ‘falling up’ has worked to his advantage for decades.
And all the idiots that pushed the fraud narrative in the first place. And everyone that signed any sort of bogus affidavit alleging fraud.
The DOJ’s gonna need a bigger building.
And I want to add pretty much every single Republican candidate for elected office in November to my list.
The let set Trump set the tone for the campaign and party. They did not honestly debate issues. They didn’t even issue a party platform. They ran an entire campaign based on OMG! You have to re-elect us. Otherwise violent mobs will invade your suburbs and burn your houses to the ground. Then they will tax you into grinding poverty and immigrants will steal your jobs and kill your kids then they will laugh at you as you pull the remnants of your desecrated flag out of the ashes of your life.
The final trigger for the violence, the one that upped my book on “fatal breech of the Capitol” from 50% on Tuesday night to 90% on Wednesday morning, was the Democratic wins that gave them the Senate.
After the message they campaigned on, is it really surprising that many people really thought their lives depended on Trump winning the election?
There are a few videos that appear to show Capital Police assisting/being part of the insurection -
1 shows a couple of them moving barriers and waving the crowd in to an area - was filmed from behind so maybe the crowd was already there? (https://twitter.com/i/status/1346924307692318723)
The other appears to show 1 officer welcoming/encouraging the crowd.
Of course - these are very short videos and we don’t have full context - can’t even be completely sure they were actual officers - but do we think part of the ‘poor response’ was, in fact, due to members (not all) of the CP being part of it?
Does anyone have other information on these two videos?
This was so telegraphed in advance that gross incompetence doesn’t explain it. And the Capitol Police have a ton of experience in crowd control that has been honed by BLM protests over the past 6 months.
Someone, somehow, deliberately didn’t want a strong, overwhelming show of force waiting behind crowd proof barriers. Maybe the optics, maybe an invitation, maybe a set up. Who knows? and who knows how high up it went. But anyone with half a brain knew this was a real risk.
All that said, I think that storming the capital is a torpedo into the gut of the Republican party. The unholy coalition that Trump held together between the QAnon, moral majority, po white trash, traditional Republicans, ad nausea is splintering.
Good ol Betsy Devoss and Ms Mitch both resigning rather than having to take a stand on the 25th Amendment.
The whole world is trending towards right-wing extremism. Six out of 10 Canadian provinces have premiers who have right-wing majority governments, and countries around the world are electing right-wing leaders. The important question to me, that I am not having any luck at figuring out, is why so many humans think this is the best way to run things.
You forgot, “The Biden Crime Syndicate Family is being paid by the Chinese Communists to carry out its agenda in the USA. And once Sleepy Joe outlives his usefulness to them by selling out to China, they will arrange for Harris to take over; and she will institute socialism and communism, complete with re-education camps for you, the patriotic American.”
I wish I could say, “you can’t make this stuff up,” but somebody did, and it’s out there. It’s not hard to find, really.
The officer who removed the barricade is absolutely culpable; I’m a little more cautious with officers who might appear to have mingled with the mob once inside. I’ll leave some room for the possibility that they thought it was their best option considering how outnumbered they were.
No, dude. This was no “miscalculation”. The fact that people were going to commit violence has been openly planned and discussed since early November.
As I said, I think the Capitol Police planned on some violence, but that it would be largely confined to clashes between Proud Boys/QAnon and counter-protesters outside the building. And yes, I think that Cap Police and other agencies were perfectly fine with letting right wing protesters beat the shit out of a counter-protesters that they would have outnumbered - I think that was very much their idea.
And as I’ve also said, I’m in absolute agreement that they exercised a double-standard and were much more willing to show a police presence against left wing groups than they were against the right wing groups that appeared two days ago.
All of that said, I still don’t think that the Capitol Police really, truly envisioned a takeover of the House and Senate. For one thing, they’d have to know that doing so put their own lives in danger. I don’t think they viewed the right wing protesters as threats to their own safety; in fact they probably privately viewed them as political allies, but not enough to allow them to put their own lives in danger. So mobbing anti-cop counter-protesters on the steps of the Capitol where they can sit back and enjoy the action with a smile or two, yeah, I see that as a real possibility. But not knowingly allowing an insurrection.
After 8 weeks of Trumpers non-stop openly talking about bringing weapons to DC in order to stop the cert, why did you, our most vociferous anti-Trumper, think there would be no violence? Why do you think the Capitol Police, having even more information than we do, “miscalculated”? What do you see that lends credence to the idea that this was unknowable or unclear?
They weren’t wrong. It’s just that they were those violent mobs.
I’m sorry; I’m posting on my phone so quotes are difficult. Why did you think what you thought?
Yeah, it’s one thing if that happens due to poor planning of an entertainment venue.
It’s another if it happens during attempts at insurrection. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, if you are injured or killed while trying to assault the Capitol, then that’s the price you pay.
In @asahi’s defense here, I can see how the police may have thought that this mob was on their side, and how, since these are all “Good Guys”, that they would respect the lawfully given orders of the officers.
In other words, it seems @asahi’s explanation is that the Capitol Police are fucking stupider than gravel, and every one of them should be fired for incompetence, rather than for aiding and abetting a coup attempt.
I don’t know if I agree with that argument, but either way comes to the same conclusion, every one of them that had anything to do with the decisions leading up to the 6th should be fired and/or prosecuted.
ETA: spelled @asahi’s name wrong, think I got it right now.
I’m seeing so many crybaby postings on social media about how law enforcement were in a, “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. “You guys tore us apart about having a disproportionate response to BLM and at the St. John’s plaza protest, what are we supposed to do?” We just want you to have a proportionate response!
You’re afraid of the optics of a line of jackbooted thugs facing off with a crowd of peaceful protestors? Fine! Make your first line a simple yellow tape fifty yards out from the Capitol manned by Officer Dooley tipping his hat to the crowd and saying, “Fine day to exercise your first amendment rights, ain’t it? Just make sure to stay back from that tape now.”
The crowd breaks through that – then your helmet-and-shield riot police whom you’ve prepositioned in outbuildings move into place behind the double line of steel barricades you’ve previously erected.
They get through that? Tear gas and rubber bullets on the steps of the Capitol. Would it look awful? Undoubtedly, but at that point its a violent incursion and the “optics” are secondary and also beyond your control.
When I first heard about the insurrectionists storming the Capitol, I didn’t think much of it. I mean, it’s a big, heavy, stone building, with thick, sturdy doors, and I assume strong locks. How are they going to get in?
I can maybe buy that the police didn’t realize just how bad it was going to be, and that once it happened, nobody was sure what to do. Blatant incompetence on that level is possible. But do you mean to tell me that it never occurred to them to close and lock the doors?