It Can Happen Here. It Just Happened Here.
As Trumpist goons stormed the Capitol, I felt a now-familiar mixture of sadness and rage.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl22560009
_By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 6, 2021
Dear Sinclair Lewis: Too late. It has happened here.
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
An announcement was played inside the Capitol as lawmakers were meeting and expected to vote to affirm Joe Biden’s victory. Due to an “external security threat,” no one could enter or exit the Capitol complex, the recording said. Both chambers abruptly went into recess.
On March 4, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the galleries of the House of Representatives, wounding five congressmen. A former House page later told the historian of the House about what he remembered.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. A lot of the Congressmen didn’t realize they were real guns. A lot of the Congressmen just heard pop-pop-pop-pop going on, and they thought it was firecrackers. Everybody had different ideas. And I saw the gun. I knew they were shooting. They weren’t firecrackers. Bill was hollering at the photographer not to take photos, but you can’t, it’s like trying to stop a charging elephant. You can’t do that. We were coming down the Capitol steps, and of course it’s freedom.
The most glaring difference between that incident and the almost unbelievable events in the Capitol on Wednesday is that Dwight Eisenhower didn't get up in front of a crowd of Puerto Rican nationalists earlier that day and tell them to march on the Capitol. On Wednesday, the president* got up in front of a crowd of supporters and said:
After this, we're all going to walk down, and I'll be with you, we're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave congress men and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering much for some of them...because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
And for 24 hours, there was the same kind of rhetoric, and worse, from the forces that gathered in Washington this week in order to break the democratic order. The president*'s incitement to riot was just the last of it.
Between his worthless spalpeens, Michael Flynn, crackpot preachers, and Rudy Giuliani, there was more evidence Wednesday morning to charge the lot of them with conspiracy to riot than there ever was against Abbie Hoffman and that crew in Chicago in 1968.
(And it wasn't just Washington, either. The state capitol buildings in Michigan, Georgia, Utah, Oregon and Kansas were occupied, and a crowd surrounded the capitols in California and Texas. One wonders.)
Of course, in Chicago, the police didn't exactly get rolled over the way the Capitol Police did on Wednesday. They lost the Capitol building. Rioters wandered Statuary Hall with stolen podiums, smiling for news cameras. One guy literally went up the wall of the Senate chamber while another posed and shouted from the Senate president*'s chair.
Some idiot parked himself in Nancy Pelosi's office. As far as I know, none of these people were arrested, even though you wouldn't have to be either Sherlock Holmes or Lenny Briscoe to make these busts. Lucky for them that they didn't do this outside an apartment complex in Kenosha...and that they were white.
The rage is overcoming the sadness.
SAUL LOEB / Getty Images
I can't balance rage and sadness any more. They're mixing in a terrible combination in me, and I'm not sure I can resolve it. I still get a huge charge about working in the Capitol but, at the same time, for the past four years, there's been an undercurrent of anger and cynicism and unreality about that work. Since I began in this racket covering the 1980 presidential campaign, I have watched American conservatism, and the Republican Party that is its primary political vehicle, sliding inevitably toward Wednesday's events.
More and more, I'm starting to look back at the Terri Schiavo episode as being vastly more significant than it even seemed at the time. The seeds of a lot of our present misery are now clearly seen: the basic irrationality of the issue, the threats of violence against civilians, threats of violence against federal judges and members of Congress, and all of this in stubborn service to a cause that even their political opponents told them was politically suicidal.
I just saw Jeh Johnson draw a parallel between Wednesday's assault on the Capitol and the British invasion of Washington during the War of 1812. That's a good one, too. And the visual of a guy outside the Senate chamber with a Confederate flag standing under a glowering portrait of John C. Calhoun was pretty much on brand, too.
And Senator Josh Hawley is going to regret that picture from Wednesday morning in which he is shown outside the Capitol throwing the power-fist up for the protestors.
Ted Cruz needs to be shunned by decent people, and most domestic animals, for the rest of his sorry-ass life.
And, god almighty, here is the President* of the United States in reaction to the riots he incited:
I know your pain. I know you're hurt. We had an election stolen from us. It was a landslide election. And everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace.
Sadness will have to wait. Rage wins for today.
As Trumpist goons stormed the Capitol, I felt a now-familiar mixture of sadness and rage.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl22560009
_By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 6, 2021
Dear Sinclair Lewis: Too late. It has happened here.
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
An announcement was played inside the Capitol as lawmakers were meeting and expected to vote to affirm Joe Biden’s victory. Due to an “external security threat,” no one could enter or exit the Capitol complex, the recording said. Both chambers abruptly went into recess.
On March 4, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the galleries of the House of Representatives, wounding five congressmen. A former House page later told the historian of the House about what he remembered.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. A lot of the Congressmen didn’t realize they were real guns. A lot of the Congressmen just heard pop-pop-pop-pop going on, and they thought it was firecrackers. Everybody had different ideas. And I saw the gun. I knew they were shooting. They weren’t firecrackers. Bill was hollering at the photographer not to take photos, but you can’t, it’s like trying to stop a charging elephant. You can’t do that. We were coming down the Capitol steps, and of course it’s freedom.
The most glaring difference between that incident and the almost unbelievable events in the Capitol on Wednesday is that Dwight Eisenhower didn't get up in front of a crowd of Puerto Rican nationalists earlier that day and tell them to march on the Capitol. On Wednesday, the president* got up in front of a crowd of supporters and said:
After this, we're all going to walk down, and I'll be with you, we're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave congress men and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering much for some of them...because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
And for 24 hours, there was the same kind of rhetoric, and worse, from the forces that gathered in Washington this week in order to break the democratic order. The president*'s incitement to riot was just the last of it.
Between his worthless spalpeens, Michael Flynn, crackpot preachers, and Rudy Giuliani, there was more evidence Wednesday morning to charge the lot of them with conspiracy to riot than there ever was against Abbie Hoffman and that crew in Chicago in 1968.
(And it wasn't just Washington, either. The state capitol buildings in Michigan, Georgia, Utah, Oregon and Kansas were occupied, and a crowd surrounded the capitols in California and Texas. One wonders.)
Of course, in Chicago, the police didn't exactly get rolled over the way the Capitol Police did on Wednesday. They lost the Capitol building. Rioters wandered Statuary Hall with stolen podiums, smiling for news cameras. One guy literally went up the wall of the Senate chamber while another posed and shouted from the Senate president*'s chair.
Some idiot parked himself in Nancy Pelosi's office. As far as I know, none of these people were arrested, even though you wouldn't have to be either Sherlock Holmes or Lenny Briscoe to make these busts. Lucky for them that they didn't do this outside an apartment complex in Kenosha...and that they were white.
The rage is overcoming the sadness.
SAUL LOEB / Getty Images
I can't balance rage and sadness any more. They're mixing in a terrible combination in me, and I'm not sure I can resolve it. I still get a huge charge about working in the Capitol but, at the same time, for the past four years, there's been an undercurrent of anger and cynicism and unreality about that work. Since I began in this racket covering the 1980 presidential campaign, I have watched American conservatism, and the Republican Party that is its primary political vehicle, sliding inevitably toward Wednesday's events.
More and more, I'm starting to look back at the Terri Schiavo episode as being vastly more significant than it even seemed at the time. The seeds of a lot of our present misery are now clearly seen: the basic irrationality of the issue, the threats of violence against civilians, threats of violence against federal judges and members of Congress, and all of this in stubborn service to a cause that even their political opponents told them was politically suicidal.
I just saw Jeh Johnson draw a parallel between Wednesday's assault on the Capitol and the British invasion of Washington during the War of 1812. That's a good one, too. And the visual of a guy outside the Senate chamber with a Confederate flag standing under a glowering portrait of John C. Calhoun was pretty much on brand, too.
And Senator Josh Hawley is going to regret that picture from Wednesday morning in which he is shown outside the Capitol throwing the power-fist up for the protestors.
Ted Cruz needs to be shunned by decent people, and most domestic animals, for the rest of his sorry-ass life.
And, god almighty, here is the President* of the United States in reaction to the riots he incited:
I know your pain. I know you're hurt. We had an election stolen from us. It was a landslide election. And everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace.
Sadness will have to wait. Rage wins for today.
