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| Capital Police Last Wednesday (NPR) |
There is no question that what happened was nothing short of an insurrection. Those that participated in any way should be imprisoned and forbidden from holding any office in the US. There is also no question that the President and his ‘Sergeant at Arms’ Rudy Giuliani participated. They are both guilty of inciting it - on the very day it happened. It was the crescendo of the President’s constant harangue about the election being stolen from him; convincing many (most?) of his supporters of that. He has been doing this ever since it became obvious he lost. The President has been whipping them into a frenzy ever since. The results of which unfolded last Wednesday.
Thousands of his supporters descended upon Washington DC - all screaming various versions about how they and their candidate were cheated. To be fair, I don’t think most of those supporters had any intention of storming the capital building. But there were hundreds of Trump supporters there that had every intention of doing that. So when they were ‘greenlighted’ by the President himself, they acted.
Most of those who first scaled those walls were the worst of the worst among us: a variety of right wing paramilitary militias, white supremacists, racists, and antisemites. They saw the President as one of their own and came armed and ready. It is also very possible that many other Trump supporters - who are not particularly violent; or racist; or antisemitic got caught up in the frenzy and followed them in.
I believe that any objective observer of what happened that day would more or less agree with all of that.
What also troubles me and many others is why those thugs were able to do that with relative ease. Capital security clearly broke down. There is no excuse for not having enough law enforcement there to turn away an angry mob who believe their candidate was cheated in a rigged election. They should have been prepared for any contingency. They weren’t. It is a total failure on their part. Heads have rolled, rightfully so. That insurrection should have been stopped before it ever started.
Why wasn’t it? I suppose there are a variety of factors that contributed to that. (None of which excuse it.) Among them the following.
The capital police did not expect - what was supposed to be a peaceful rally by a political base - to ever come anywhere near an insurrection. There was no precedent for this in recent history. There was therefore no increase in security personnel.
There is the delayed arrival of the National Guard. They should have been deployed immediately.
There is also the fact that a few of the police guarding the Capital actually supported the protesters. Although I haven’t seen any, there are reports that some of them actually took selfies with these thugs after they broke in!
In the middle of all this, a few prominent people have raised the race card with a ‘What if’ question: ‘What if this crowd had been black?’ ‘If they were this would have never happened’ ‘It would have been met with extreme force by police.’ The ‘proof’ was the way that some of the Black Lives Matter protests were handled. For example the National Guard was called in immediately at the first indication of violence.
OK. There is not a doubt in my mind that there is racial prejudice in the world. A black mob will be seen as a bigger threat than a white mob. But that skin color alone guides law enforcement is patently false. It isn’t about skin color. That argument is refuted by the many black law enforcement officers all over the country. In many cases police departments are headed by black police chiefs. That a black mob will be judged more harshly is based on historical precedent. Precedent in the form violent black protests of the past. While the grievances protested were real (and still are) so too was the violence, looting, and destruction. It is not racist to acknowledge those facts.
Yes, there are legitimate sociological reasons for those facts (which have yet to be sufficiently addressed). But that does not mean the violence resulting form them should be ignored. In other words, it is about a legitimate fear. The kind that civil rights activist Jesse Jackson admitted he felt many years ago when he thought he was being followed down a dark alley by a black man – only to be relieved when he realized that the person following him was white. It may not be fair. But it is a reality.
This is not the case at political rallies. That there were many violent and armed racists there who had always been on the verge of violence did not occur to the police. Or at least not in the vast numbers of them that showed up. Maybe it should have been. But it wasn't. What they saw were people wearing red MAGA caps expressing their frustrations at what they had been led to believe by a sitting President was a rigged election! Which some of them actually agreed with.
Not everything is about race. Certainly not what happened last Wednesday. The waters should not be muddied. Yes, the grievances protested by Black Lives Matter are legitimate. There is racism in this country. That has to be dealt with. But to mix racism into what happened last Wednesday, does a disservice to both issues.