Quick confession: I didn't even really know what sedition was until yesterday. I had heard it before, and if I had had some multiple-choice options, like on a standardized test, I probably could have picked the correct one, but I'm not sure I could have given you a definition cold. But I think it's the perfect word to describe what happened at the Capitol yesterday.
Sedition: incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.
That what's we saw. Many people have used other terms -- act of terrorism, coup attempt, riot -- and those are all fine, but I like sedition best.
I have a ton of thoughts going through my head right now, so let's just plow through them in bullet-point form, because I don't think I can craft a nice through line for them right now.
-Trump, his enablers, and the extremist right-wing media are largely responsible for this. Of course, people have individual agency, and have to be held accountable for their own actions, but the disinformation machine is very real and still going strong. (See Ezra Klein tweet thread for more on this.)
-As an example of the above point, consider the latest lie that the rioters were actually Antifa is disguise. Pure delusion, pure denial.
-As another example, consider that senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, were still objecting to the certification of electoral votes from certain states, because they wanted a congressional commission on voter fraud or some bullshit like that. What they really wanted was to show their fealty to Trump's base. The voter fraud commission makes no sense, because that's all already been adjudicated, many, many times, and the only reason a substantial portion of the population doesn't believe it is because of Trump's lies and the refusal of people who know better, like Cruz and Hawley, to repudiate them.
-Speaking of which, Twitter and Facebook completely (and unsurprisingly) dropped the ball on this. They waited until actual violence occurred before they (temporarily) blocked Trump's account. What they should have done is -- well, what they should've done is shut him down for various reasons a long time ago -- but absent that they should have warned him the first time he said the election was stolen, and then suspended his account the next time he tweeted it. The little red exclamation point wasn't sufficient at all. "You can't spread lies about an election to millions of followers" is a clear, easy-to-follow, easy-to-enforce rule.
-Of course I give absolutely zero credence to Trump's teleprompter-measured speech today, but I'm glad he gave it. We just need to hang on for 13 more days, and the fact he felt compelled to say something like that, for whatever reason, makes it slightly less likely he'll do something else totally insane in the meantime. Also, it means he probably won't pardon his people who sieged the Capitol. He called on them to do it (he even said he would be right there with them), and then totally threw them under the bus once they did and the consequences came to bear. He does everybody like that. And there is no greater schadenfreude than watching his minions reap what they sow.
-The epitome of the point above is Mike Pence. I cosign this Jonathan Chait article 100%. Trump almost got Pence killed, literally. The mob was looking for him. If they actually found him, what would they have done to him? Maybe nothing. But people don't bring bombs and guns and zip-tie handcuffs to do nothing.
-The Capitol Police utterly, amazingly, epically failed. How do you let the Capitol Building be breached like that? At this point, we can only speculate. Which I shall do. The first thing is that they obviously weren't prepared. They should have been. Everybody knew this could get violent and something like this could happen. They were so outmanned, and I couldn't believe how little fencing they had erected around the Capitol. I understand the optics of not wanting to appear like a opposition force to the peaceful protesters (of which there were many, misguided as they might be), but my goodness... the area around the White House has been totally barricaded multiple times over since summer. Why they didn't do this for the Capitol Building in preparation for these protests, I have no idea.
-One contributing factor: There seems to have been a higher level of complacency on the part of the police than the situation warranted. This is likely because a) many police officers are aligned with the rioters politically, b) white people don't scare police the way black people do. The contrast of how the police responded to a siege of the Capitol -- a siege of the mutherfuckin' United States Capitol -- and violating curfew at a BLM march is blatant obvious to everybody. (And backed up by data.) Armed, violent, predominantly white protesters are often treated better by the police than unarmed, peaceful, predominantly black protesters. And a big reason for this, I believe, is because police better identify with the white people. A lot of the pro-Trump protestors were flying Thin Blue Line flags, and some police officers were downright chummy with the rioters.
-With that said, I'm not going to universally condemn the police on duty. They were in an impossible situation. Many were behaving appropriately and bravely. They were trying to stop the onrush at first, but they were way overmatched, and once they realized that they didn't escalate things. De-escalation. That's what I want from police all the time. As somebody on Twitter said (I can't find it, paraphrasing): "We don't want you to shoot them like you do us; we want you to not shoot us like you do them." If police started trying to make arrests while outnumber 20-to-1 or worse started shooting people, that number would have been worse, way worse. One police officer and one rioter were killed, and as terrible as that is, it would have been much, much higher if officers didn't stand down. Get everybody to a secure position; wait it out. That was the smart thing to do.
-Oh, and the second part of that plan: Find every last fucker who had any part in this, arrest them, and prosecute them as harshly as legally possible. I'm talking prison sentences measured in years, not months. The rioters shouldn't be difficult to track down -- many have already been credibly identified on Twitter. The beauty of these people is that they specifically don't cover their faces, and they post everything they do online.
-Funniest tweet I've seen in a long time.
Until next time...
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