Society Must Be Defended

I read the collection by Michel Foucault for which this essay is titled in the weeks before a certain current presidential candidate had been inaugurated 8 years ago, and I was thinking about that today, as that candidate's campaign rhetoric has begun to overtly rely on messaging and slogans used by actual Nazis in 1930s Germany, and whose speeches have habitually invoked or incited public violence and numerous acts of domestic terrorism.

I do not care what anyone thinks of Biden as a person or as a President; I don't care whether it "hurts your pride" or if voting for him isn't "what you wanted" or is a "hard pill to swallow" or any other, for lack of a more fitting term, bullshit.

The media has not, on the whole, done an appreciable job in communicating the scale of the danger that Agent Orange poses to the free world--which is already teetering on the brink as I type this--and to American citizens directly. Even if you believe that someone else might handle any given issue better than Biden has, Donald Trump is most certainly not that candidate. The choice, as I stressed in 2016, is between to continue playing the game, and flipping the table and setting the game board aflame. Only this time, it won't be just the board game itself on fire, but us, too.

A second Biden campaign may look like a placeholder presidency (wherein Biden holds office but doesn't manage to advance liberal policies), and he might end up being a placeholder, but we can be assured that when his 4 years (8, counting this current term) are up, he will execute the transition peaceably and honorably as it behooves a steward of the Constitutional Order. We will continue playing the game, and have an opportunity to elect someone who may more closely align with our priorities (I want Gretchen Whitmer in 2028!)

A second Trump campaign would not be that. We know that, much like Netanyahu, he is facing 34 serious criminal indictments, his businesses are failing, and we know, based on past experiences that have already faded from public memory, that he enjoys violence. He has major incentives to enrich himself at the expense of the state and the public, and the intellectual core of his movement consists of Christian fanatics and Neo-Nazi extremists. 

The list of things that Trump wants to accomplish is long and devastating to everyone. Trump and his partisans will stop supporting Ukraine and give Putin a red carpet to the rest of Europe. Other despotic and authoritarian regimes will have a green light to infringe upon human rights abroad in places like India, Israel, China, and Hungary. One could argue that in some of these places, Biden's hands are tied, but there is a big difference between not liking it but not being able to do much to stop it and actively encouraging it. 

Domestically, little will stand in the way of gutting reproductive rights, enacting a mass migration policy against anyone suspected of being undocumented (watch food prices soar as no one will want to replace those workers), restricting what books students can read and teachers can use, not just in the South, but eventually everywhere, and, most devastatingly, he will fully control the Supreme Court, particularly if he is able to achieve a third term. 

"A third term!? You must be crazy! There's no way he will get a third term!" Who is going to stop him? What prevents Biden from disbanding the legislature and packing the court in order to amass power for himself is something that does not exist in Trump. 

Trump exists only for Trump. He is not a public servant; the Constitution is an obstacle, not something that has ensured our prosperity for just under 300 years. His ultimate goal is to solidify his own power, to protect himself from the law--to destroy it if necessary; and to enrich himself. A man who shits on a golden toilet is not going to do anything for anyone.

There will be little incentive for anyone in positions of power to stop him. The GOP itself is fully under his control and has already rolled over like an obsequious dog at every opportunity--even while his ascendency was still in question after his first term. Knowing that he will expand the conservatives' power for decades, the Roberts Court has every incentive to give him whatever he wants. If you thought three seats was lucky, he will get even "luckier" (it wasn't luck).

The media writes about him already as though Punxsutawney Phil were a demagogue, cataloguing his every movement to and from his criminal trial in a kind of obsessive fugue state. The executives at the top learned that Trump's first term brought them massive success as people were glued to their screens in the maelstrom of chaos and disorder that was his administration, and things will only get worse as the journalists in the press corps show fealty in exchange for access, and investigation either stops under threat or slows to a trickle as they become more fawning. The Fourth Estate wants a piece of Trump's Estate.

Before Trump became President in 2016, I thought it was a joke. There's a post I wrote about him being President, and I jokingly asked, "What do we have to lose?" A lot, as it turns out. I'm not making that mistake again.

"You're Worse Than Hitler!"

    When Netanyahu first got elected to his current term, after the very short tenure of Yair Lapid, he was fleeing a looming corruption indictment. This fact colors all that follows.

    The minute I received news of the Oct 7^th attack, I knew that Netanyahu would capitalize upon it in the same way that W Bush capitalized on the WTC attack by invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Foresight did not fail me: Eight months later, 34,000+ Palestinians are dead, hundreds of thousands of others are now starving, the IDF is committing war crimes, several hundred hostages are still missing, and Hamas still exists. It is deeply ironic and significant that South Africa, which has gone through what Palestinians in Israel are now going through, is charging Israel with crimes against humanity at the ICC.

    The Israelis have to contend, above all, with the massive intelligence oversight of the occurrence of the attack itself, something that Netanyahu is at least indirectly responsible for. But beyond that lies greater danger: Netanyahu himself, during his first term and, worse, this term, is a demagogue who is now capitalizing on the Oct 7^th attack to preserve his own power at the expense of Israel’s long-term security and the United States’ moral credibility. So long as the hostages exist somewhere out there, (WMDs, anyone?) Netanyahu can wage his campaign of terror and revenge, thus preserving his hold on the government.

    Years ago, I read a book called The Two-State Delusion by Padraig O’Malley, which, among other things, gave a history of the demography of Israel and explained how the hard-right gained prominence. Netanyahu’s party, the Lukids, are functionally equivalent to the Evangelicals in the United States, but even more disastrous; they don’t participate in society, are exempt from conscription (there’s an ongoing court case in Israel right now about this very issue), but they vote in large numbers and drag all of Israel in line with their exclusionary, supremacist ideology. They make up the base of support for Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians. They are responsible for the pogroms and land seizures, and they are responsible for Netanyahu’s calamitous return to power.

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    In recent weeks, massive protests have erupted across college campuses in support of Palestinians. They each demand that their universities end investments that benefit Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Naturally, the forces that support Israel have the resources and the power to browbeat university leadership into using overwhelming violence to crack down on their students.

    Things are so intense that Congress wants to hold a hearing on universities that are not deploying jackboots against teenagers. Speaker Mike Johnson himself visited one campus to give his best Grandpa Simpson impression, despite leading the “least productive Congress ever.”

    Netanyahu, of course, chimed in with his Hitler Finger, smiting these protests with his almighty “You’re worse than Hitler!” attack. The GOP, of course, is going full-bore on these kids, because they can. What’s interesting is why.

    Over the past decade, CPAC has steadily been filling with a greater white supremacist, Neo-Nazi presence, and, according to one eyewitness, 2024’s event was thoroughly permeated with known fascist figures. It is not uncommon, especially now, for an elected Republican official to cavort with a known Neo-Nazi. Consequences for doing so have been getting progressively lighter.

    You don’t have to read The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt to know that Neo-Nazis hate Jews, and they are a much, much greater threat to Jews everywhere than the college kids who don’t support the Israeli government. It is also not surprising to me—and something I’ve known for a while—that many people who love Israel also hate Jews, and vice-versa (see Elon Musk). I have yet to figure out why, but if I had to guess, perhaps Israel is a model ethnostate, as far as they are concerned.

    So what does any of this have to do with the protests? It is easy, and extremely convenient, to be able to smear a bunch of politically illiterate college kids as antisemetic when the GOP is openly catering to fascism. The more they can look like they're doing something about antisemitism, the easier it is for Trump to have people like Nick Fuentes over for dinner.

    Netanyahu doesn’t seem to understand, or care at all, about this distinction, and it seems quite possible that both he and Israel in general may end up paying dearly for it in the future.

The Best Stuff I Saw, Read, and Played This Year

 Books

1) A Child Alone With Strangers by Philip Fracassi

    This book starts with an attempted murder-suicide when a father throws himself and his own son in front of a bus, and just does not let up. It is an incredibly well-written thrill ride from beginning to end, and nobody has read it (except me). This needs to change asap.

2) The Blighted Stars by Megan E O'Keefe

    I found out about this one from Digg, where it was billed as The Last of Us plus The Expanse, and it was an instant purchase. I blazed through the first book, but the second one is kind of on hold because of life/work stuff that I won't go into. There's space opera, there's romance, and there's...fungus? This book is supposed to be a romance, but it takes a backseat to a fascinating plot and great characters.

3) Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

    Admittedly, I read this in the beginning of the year, so I forget a lot of what happens with this one, but I remember it being excellent.

4) American Gun by Cameron McWhirter & Zusha Elinson

    This book is a very detailed and fascinating history of the AR-15 from its invention in the 50s to its messy deployment in Vietnam, well into its role as a weapon of mass murder in the present day. This book is riveting

5) Dreambound by Dan Frey

    Do you hate Harry Potter and think YA fantasy is stupid and annoying? If so, this is the perfect book for you. Frey plays his cards close to his chest as you try to figure out if the main character is a total asshole or not, but the book became exactly what I was hoping for in the last third or quarter of it and I was very satisfied.

6) A Guest in This House by Emily Carroll

    "Emily Carroll has a new book out??? Oh shiiiiiit!" was my reaction when I learned that this book existed. I could love this book for the art alone, but the story is creepy in its own right.

Movies

1) New Religion (Japanese, 2023); When Evil Lurks (Argentinian, 2023) -- TIE

   Don't ask me to choose between these two films. Any movie that makes me yell "Whaaaat the--!!!???" at my TV is a winner, and both of these films achieved that.

    New Religion is a deeply disturbing movie about a sex worker who takes on a sinister new client after the bizarre suicide of her young daughter, and it reminded me very much of Possessor (2021). It's a slow, creepy movie that sneaks up on you and takes you to some unexpected places. I absolutely loved it.

    When Evil Lurks is not your typical Bonk-You-Over-The-Head-With-Jesus possession movie. It imagines demonic possession as a contagious disease, and there's a perfectly executed setup early in the movie that demonstrates its central concept that had me screaming at the TV. I expected something to happen, and I was very happy with what I got.

2) The Unbinding (2023)

    Yet another possession movie, except this one is an actual documentary about a cursed object. Two hikers do something really, really dumb, and require the assistance of two paranormal investigators to help fix what they did. "Don't Touch That, You Don't Know Where It's Been" is a very important life lesson.

3) Becky (2022), Wrath of Becky (2023)

    A group of escaped convicts mess with the wrong middle schooler. At a certain point, you know that the hunters have become the hunted, and one of my favorite "oh how the turns have tabled" moments ever happens in this movie. Becky don't take no shit, and her insatiable appetite for the total annihilation of her enemies makes this a lot of fun to watch. NOTE: I enjoyed Becky more than Wrath of Becky because by that point, we know that Becky is an exterminating angel and the tension of the story is gone. It's worth watching anyway, but just keep in mind that one movie is slightly better imho than the other.

4) Children of Paradise (French; 1945)

    I love French movies in general, and this 3-hour+ movie gave me the same feeling as Seven Samurai: This film is simply a joy to watch. The characters are great, the drama is great, and the film feels like a 19th century novel. It is that good.

5) Sleep (German, 2021)

    I bought this blind on Arrow Video, and the consensus among my friends I showed it to was that I had struck gold. A teenage girl investigates a mysterious hotel that appears in her comatose mother's dreams. This film is a magical realist thriller involving dark pasts that people would rather forget, interspersed with fairy tale elements. Very, very highly recommended.

Games

1) GTFO

    This is the best Aliens experience you can have, and I mean that it is infinitely better than the actual Aliens games. GTFO is extremely punishing and extremely satisfying. I have, I think, almost 250 hours in this game and I am very sad that it has just received its final update.

2) Chained Echoes / Sea of Stars

    If your favorite SNES RPG is Final Fantasy VI, play Chained Echoes first.

    If your favorite SNES RPG is Chrono Trigger, play Sea of Stars first.

    Both of these are excellent (and short!), and which one you like better will be entirely based on which classic RPG you enjoy more.

3) The Tartarus Key

    This game is utterly perfect. It's more of a thriller game than a horror game, as there are no scares and no combat. Your goal is to save as many people as possible by solving Saw-like puzzles, and you only get one chance. The story is good, the puzzles are very hard, and it looks like a long-lost PSX game.

4) Blasphemous II

    Blasphemous was my favorite Dark Souls-style game that was not made by From Software, and Blasphemous II promised to be more of that. I am very happy to say that it delivered.

5) World of Horror / Against the Storm

    Do you like Junji Ito? Do you wish there was a Junji Ito game? Then World of Horror is for you. WOH looks like a 2-bit old Mac-era RPG adventure game with janky combat and weird shit going on. You pick your starting character, your background, and which Eldritch God you wish to face, and you are tasked with solving 4 or 5 (depending on your difficulty) eerie mysteries, and along the way you fight random monsters and face random choices in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style. Your neighbor asks for your opinion on his artwork. Do you take a closer look? *You have attracted the attention of Something Truly Evil* 

    I bought Against the Storm back in January, and it is only in the past few months that I really began to understand how to play it (after taking a long break from it). It's a roguelike fantasy citybuilding game where you have to establish a series of small settlements by building up your economy, and fulfilling orders from the Queen, all while contending with a severe storm that saps your resources and lowers villagers' morale. What I love about the game is that it provides clear objectives and allows the game to end in victory, because I usually have no idea what I'm doing in citybuilding games and I get bored very easily. AtS solves both of those problems, and I love it.

Music

2023 was a great year for new music. Here are some of the best:

1) HEALTH - Rat Wars

    Coming in clutch with a Dec 7th release, HEALTH dropped an industrial metal album that is as perfect for me as a man-shaped hole in Amigara Fault. The opening track is just a slow, heavy melody of quiet intensity of the kind where, as you listen to it, you know that something is going to happen. Bonus: The Youtube video for DEMIGODS is just a collection of footage of Command & Conquer FMVs. 

2) Paramore - This is Why 

    This one hit me early and hard after something bad happened in my life, and through this year, as I've listened to it, I think I enjoy the second half of the album more than the first. "Crave" is by far my favorite track on the album, with "Liar" close behind. 

3) Kesha - Gag Order

    "MiSaNtHrOpE, what the hell are you doing listening to Kesha?????" This album exploded into my life. I bought it on Bandcamp not thirty seconds into the opening track. This album is raw, it matched what was going on in my life at the time of its release perfectly, and I could not help but fall in love with it. 

4) Hayley Williams - Petals For Armor  / Flowers For Vases

    I've had these albums for a while, and all this time I've thought they were kinda boring or not for me. Oh man was I wrong. After repeated listens, I finally understand "Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris", and "Pure Love" is the perfect romance song for me.

5) Sleep Token - Take Me Back to Eden

    As I said above, I like my metal on the slower side, with steadily building intensity. Sleep Token delivers exactly what I want with the title track, and "The Apparition". Sleep Token have earned themselves a permanent spot on my massive playlist.

6) Marsh - Endless

    When you are just looking to chill out, put this on. I would like to direct you here to two tracks: "Blue" and "Sleep"

BONUS: Argy & Goom Gum - Pantheon 

Grooming Hate

 Something has been really bothering me, but I haven't been inspired to put it to paper (or in a text document) until now.

In one corner, we have LGBTQ+ accepting parents and their children.

In the other corner, we have conservative, church-going parents and their children.

And yet only one of these groups is labeled, by the other, "groomers."

One of these groups has been lobbying, over the past several years, to remove certain books from school libraries and classrooms, passed or otherwise advanced legislation criminalizing the other group, going so far as to separate loving parents from their children in the name of family values, and finally, perpetrating violent terrorism against the other group (see: Club Q in Colorado just two days ago, the Pulse Nightclub in Florida in 2016).

What bothers me most about what is happening is that the wrong group is being labeled "groomers." In what universe is the Church (Catholic or evangelical) not an institution of power and indoctrination? In other words, the institution of Christianity itself is an artifice built to disseminate and preserve specific traditions and values belonging to a specific culture; its very purpose is incontrovertibly to "groom" its members and their children in order to preserve its own existence.

Conversely, LGBTQ+ parents do not belong to any similar institution; in fact, I would argue that no such institution exists that can pass on or in any way indoctrinate children into any kind of specific belief system; nearly everyone I have encountered who is LGBTQ+ has embarked on a journey--intellectual, interpersonal, sexual, medical--of self-discovery after figuring out that they do not belong in whatever situation in which they find themselves. The only role of their parents, in this situation, was either to choose to support or choose to disavow them (dealing incalculable psychological damage in favor of something so insignificant as their personal religious or moral convictions in the face of their own children, who only seek their love and approval in who they chose to have relationships with) as they metamorphized into their more authentic selves.

I can think of no greater crime than that of teaching one's children to hate another group of people, but, for many, this has become the role of the Church even as they project that toxic, false word at their very targets. 

Making matters much worse, the beliefs of the Church proliferate amongst weak-minded people, and eventually manifest themselves through violence; and while the violence itself may lack any kind of specific source or association, the reality of stochastic terrorism remains. The fog of plausible deniability and myth of "lone wolf" terrorism obscures Dostoevsky's greatest and most important lesson: Beliefs beget action. It doesn't quite matter who inspired the person who attacked Pulse or Club Q; it doesn't quite matter who compels certain parents to take books away from other people's children; what matters is that the volume of these beliefs is rising, and with it the threshold for these beliefs to manifest in violence.

There is one group I specifically want to address, because I believe that they are the most vulnerable, and the ones whom the Right specifically targeted in order to wedge themselves an opening with which to attack other groups of people. Trans people are the least understood and the most maligned of all groups in the GLBTQ+ spectrum, and they deserve far more attention and support. They are being attacked and murdered at such alarming rate that there is a Trans Day of Remembrance for all of those who have been attacked and killed in hate crimes.

The Right exploited the public's uncertainty about trans people (and, to be frank, the uncertainty of other LGB people) in order to create an opening through which they could attack other letters in the acronym. Attacks on trans people through both legislation and physical and verbal violence have led invariably to attacks on lesbians, gays, queer people, and, also, Jews, who remain the Right's eternal bogeyman. 

The point that I am trying to make, and tragically, it takes me saying it for others to understand it, is that hatred against one group invariably invites hatred toward other--or even all--groups. Once it becomes acceptable to malign a socially vulnerable minority, it is only a matter of time before someone feels emboldened enough to malign yet another socially vulnerable minority. That old Holocaust era poem is as cliched as can be, but it is abundantly clear that we have yet to absorb its lesson.

Unintended Consequences

 There is one thing I believe in in politics, and it's something not a lot of people really pay attention to, but always ends up being very important. I believed, for example, that Russia's invasion of Ukraine would galvanize NATO (which it did), and, I believe, with the impending reversal of Roe v Wade, that there will be unintended consequences of outlawing abortion.

I am extremely pro-abortion, for reasons that go above and beyond that the government must not litigate what happens inside a person's body, and that a woman does not exist merely at the pleasure of the state. Those arguments are good, but there are also severe and widespread consequences for society when abortion is outlawed.

Most people will look to Gilead in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as an example of what is bearing down upon us in the United States right now, and, while that is very accurate, there is yet an example from fairly recent history that can be drawn upon.

In 1966, the Soviet-era dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu (pronounced, according to Wikipedia, "chow-Shesk-oo") wanted to increase the birth rate in his country, so he banned both abortion and birth control (something which Republicans in states they control are considering). Yeah, it worked for a little while....until it didn't. By December, 1989 (when he was violently overthrown), there were tens of thousands, by official count, of women who had died, and 170,000 malnourished children who were found in abandoned orphanages. What had ensued was a massive humanitarian disaster in which women became terrified of sex amidst a horror of abandonment and death from both childbirth and unsafe abortions.

Right now, as we await the SCOTUS decision (and hope it is also different from Alito's screed), Republican-controlled states are legislating abortion restrictions as fast and hard as possible, almost competing with one another to see who can be the most draconian. 

So what might we expect as women are now compelled by law against their will to give birth?

The Washington Post ran an article yesterday about an antiabortion activist who hoped that, with Roe gone, state governments might increase funding for maternity support, childcare, and education. Unfortunately, that's not how this is going to work, as this activist seems to be realizing. Do you remember when, during the pandemic, hospitals were overflowing with COVID patients and nurses were short staffed and the quality of care tanked? This is going to be like that, only with babies. To make matters worse, the states looking to ban abortion, like Mississippi and Alabama, are not among the highest-ranked states for childcare or education, maternity leave policies, or any other kind of social support that these new babies and their mothers might require when mom is denied an abortion (and very possibly prosecuted for trying to get one!). Making matters much worse for the mother, even before she has to worry about financial devastation, is the fact that, in the United States, it is safer to get an abortion than it is to give birth than it is to have an abortion. If you overwhelm hospitals with people who need care, be they women forced by the state to give birth or COVID patients, quality of care is going to decrease as the demand for care increases. Antiabortion states already have significantly poorer healthcare outcomes, and their infrastructure has not recovered from the pandemic.

What is going to happen to all these newborns who overcrowd schools and hospitals? Those lucky enough to end up in orphanages will face neglect and abuse as states cut funding for those programs. Texas, in fact, has child sexual abusers working in its foster care system. All the children who don't end up in orphanages will become street urchins. Oh, and, by the way, what's happening with all the COVID orphans? Has anyone checked on them lately?

What happens to mom? Women will be systematically pushed out of the workforce as they are forced to raise children. Childcare will be impossible to find. Pushing women out of the workforce might be the true goal of these policies, as the Right is motivated to restore male supremacy. On the other hand, the pandemic had already pushed many women out of the workforce simply because childcare was no longer available during that time. Another possible goal might be to destroy sexual liberation for women, which is indeed much closer to a theocratic program and one of the major tenets of Margaret Atwood's novel. It also fits in with the laws and declarations proposed by states such as Louisiana and Missouri, which seek to guarantee full personhood at the "moment of fertilization", giving the state the motive to annihilate the rights of a citizen in favor of her ova. [Aside] As some have rightly pointed out, it is strangely still not possible to list an embryo as a dependent on her taxes. Curious.

Sixty percent of Americans believe that Roe v Wade should remain, and, as we are learning since Alito's disaster of an opinion (a Puritan lawyer who condemned women to death for witchcraft in the 17th century is going to be your authority on women's issues? Are you for real? When was the last time your family invited you over for Thanksgiving dinner? It must be more than a decade ago...), the only other fair and equitable solution possible is 100% legalization. The antiabortion states will not be able to prevent women from crossing state lines (though they are trying), and it would be unconscionable to repeat Ceausescu's calamity. Of course, the antiabortion believers insist their right, but how many dead women and neglected children would it take to convince them otherwise? How high does the mountain of corpses need to rise before they relent (and repent)? If our experience with COVID is any indication, the answer will probably be: A lot.

Breaking the Law

Last week, the January 6th Commission held its first hearings, in which the capitol police officers gave their testimony regarding what they saw and experienced during the assault. Strangely, the Blue Lives Matter crowd was nowhere to be seen. Crickets.

What happened to Blue Lives Matter?

Blue Lives Matter was a pro-police initiative erected in direct opposition to Black Lives Matter. It was blatantly racist and opportunistic; it attempted to deflect attention away from extrajudicial murders committed by police, as well as the flagrant abuses against peaceful protesters, over the course of the summer 2020 protests. And it completely disintegrated on January 6, 2021.

January 6th placed police in direct opposition to their own supporters as they stormed the Capitol Building. In some of the early footage, the terrorists can be heard pleading, “Let us through. We don’t have a problem with you.” But the police had a sworn duty to protect the capitol.

It wasn’t long before violence broke out. Things got so bad that five officers—including Officer Brian Sicknick from my state of NJ—were killed by the marauders. Later, one Capitol Police officer reported seeing their colleague beaten with Blue Lives Matter flags.

The problem was, from the beginning, that conservative support for police was contingent upon being allowed to break the law. In Philadelphia, PA, during the summer of 2020, vigilantes were sanctioned by the police to attack protesters. This same story played out in Kenosha, WI, where Kyle Rittenhouse was hanging out with police before he went and killed two protesters.

Prior to January 6th, armed—I don’t want to call them protesters—Trump supporters gained entry into the Michigan State Capitol to protest the coronavirus lockdown. The police, amazingly, did not make any attempt to remove them from the building. The Michigan state legislature would shut down more than once amid violent threats from Trump supporters. Later, the FBI would foil a plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.

None of these prior events had ever caused the police to look a gift horse in the mouth, until January 6th, when desperate necessity severed their relationship with conservatives. The moment when police weren’t going to just let in a bunch of “tourists” armed with Molotov cocktails, bear spray, and zip ties, was the moment when conservatives could no longer support the police.

I would like to keep this mostly beyond the scope of this essay, but it is worth noting that the GOP is desperately trying to erase January 6th in the public consciousness, doing, among its members, what the Chinese did with Tiananmen Square. How can you support the police if the police know you beat them with Blue Lives Matter flags?

The Assault on the Capitol Building

Republican voters have been coddled like children for far too long; allowed to exist in a surreal unreality in which they won the Civil War, that Obama wasn't born in the United States, and that an election, freer, fairer, and more decisive than anyone expected during the pandemic, was stolen from them.

This happened because the Republican party has spent decades deliberately feeding blatant lies to the people for whose benefit they are supposed to work. Once again, much like the Bunkum speeches made by White Democrats that incited the Civil War, we are relearning the dire consequences of abusing a huge section of the electorate with an overwhelming firehose of baseless lies. 

The Republican party bears 100% of the responsibility for the horror that transpired today. There were many, many signs, after Trump took that elevator ride in June 2015, that telegraphed—in terms so bold and stark that they might as well have been neon—the horrific desecration of the US Capitol Building. The litany of crimes and abuses of the office of the President committed by Donald Trump would fill completely a paper copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, or as many sheets of paper as the US Criminal Code, which no single individual has ever read to completion.

Between December, 2019 and February 2020, following the Russia Investigation, House Democrats voted to impeach Donald Trump, citing his rampant abuse of the office and the threat he might pose in the future. The Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, quickly dismissed the charges brought by the House. They were given an exit ramp, and they did not take it. I cannot be more clear: The Republican party owns this.

I do not think it is fair to say, in this instance, that the only terrorists, or agitators, or goons, or thugs—any word you might want to use, except for protester—were the people who made it inside the building. Much like every other instance where Donald Trump’s true form has emerged these past five years—the moments when he makes fun of disabled people, or when he calls for peaceful Democratic protesters and journalists to be assaulted—the people who followed his command to assemble in Washington DC today were there for a single, violent purpose: To disrupt, through the use of force, the Congressional certification of the Electoral College votes.

I want to draw a stark and necessary distinction between the protests over the summer and the violent assault on our nation’s capital today. The protests that erupted following George Floyd’s senseless and cold-blooded murder by police—and countless other names that give legitimate and just cause to Black grievance—were enjoined by a plurality of citizens of every age, gender, ethnicity, etc, to give voice to the brutal and malicious treatment endured by Black people especially by the police, but at all levels and domains of American society. These protests were massive, and—significantly—incredibly, heroically, peaceful, even as they faced unrelenting, counterproductive police onslaught. Hours and hours of footage shows peaceful protesters being teargassed, pepper sprayed, disappeared, pincered, beaten, and run over by police. The police, in multiple locations throughout the United States, including Philadelphia and Kenosha, expressed candid support for far-right marauders. Given these facts, it is a wonder how, without the long and proud history of Black nonviolent civil disobedience, that these protests could remain as peaceful as they were.

This is what legitimate grievance looks like. In the words of Kimberly Jones, “Far as I’m concerned, they could burn this bitch to the ground, and it still wouldn’t be enough. And they are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.” They want access to the same resources and opportunities that white people enjoy, and their protests serve as a stark reminder of how the promise of our Declaration of Independence falls far short of reality.

The proud Black tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience carries with it a deep reverence for what America should be, and a reverence for the institutions as representations of what that might look like. With people like the late, infinitely honorable Atlanta Representative John Lewis, or his colleague, equally honorable, Representative Elijah Cummings, the goal of any protest on the capitol, from Martin Luther King’s march to the steps, to Black Lives Matter, the objective is not the destruction of the institution, it is not an invasion. It is a statement; it is a reminder that they, too, belong in those halls, that they, too, must be included in the People’s House.  

The assault on the Capitol Building is not that. The Congressional procedure as directed by the Constitution of the United States that cements the peaceful transition of power from one President to the next, a rare and horrifically fragile phenomenon, is the most precious of all our possessions. Without the pageantry and solemnity of this ritual, America would be staring into the abyss. This ritual separates the United States from its enemies, and it is the very backbone upon which the rest of the country is built. It is the most important and most necessary feature of our system of government, and to undermine it is certain death.

The grievance that led Donald Trump’s supporters to assault the Capitol Building is built on nothing but lies invented and propagated by none other than the President himself. It is an ouroboros. Sixty—by Sen. Schumer’s count—election lawsuits have been defeated in the courts. Every single election official in every single state, regardless of party affiliation, has asserted that the election systems were incredibly secure given the circumstances, and that there has been no significant fraud that would affect the outcome of any election. I would here argue, as an aside, that the decentralized structure of our election procedures makes any attempt to actually steal an election in more than one state nigh impossible, and it is something we should be very grateful for. This is a big reason why Trump’s attempt to steal the election has failed.

The egregious imagery of the marauders who attacked the Capitol Building today brings to light demons that have not been exorcised from our society, and give voice to their true, evil intent. The flags used to desecrate the halls of the People’s House are intended to inflame and provoke feelings of ressentiment felt during the Civil War, and are so offensive because they are the flags of traitors, of people who long ago decided to fight a doomed war against our government just because they felt entitled to own human beings as property. In the clearest of terms, the people carrying the flag of our enemy into the heart of our government are a provocation. You betrayed this country and we defeated you. The Confederate flag absolutely does not belong in the Capitol Building, and this is why Senator Cory Booker was so incensed during his speech on the floor. Imagine, if you will, if the British in 1774, or the Nazis, or the Soviet Union, or al Queda, were able to plant their flags in the heart of our government. It is an affront that every American who believes in what this country should represent must recognize as a threat.

No single American citizen should ever defend what happened today, and no single American should be willing to overlook the responsibility of the Republican party for its collaboration with the forces that made it possible. It is an embarrassment and an affront to everything we are supposed to represent to ourselves and to the world, and it should have never happened. 

The manipulated mob deployed by the President and abetted by his party are a continued threat against our country, and constitute a lasting, poisonous legacy that will haunt us for years to come. Doubt built upon lies and impervious to contrary evidence paved the way for fascists in Germany, and these marauders are no different. DC police continue to find weapons, including a cooler filled with Molotov cocktails, around the Capitol Building, which points to the sad and terrifying fact that a Reichstag Fire was in the cards today. 

The future may feel bright with Biden’s victory and Ossoff and Warnock’s victories in Georgia, but thanks to the myriad crises unleashed by the Instigator in Chief, there are also more dark clouds on the horizon.