The Latest Terrorist Attack of the Unfinished Civil War
The riot and assault on the Capitol building on January 6th was not remotely surprising to anyone that pays a fucking bit of attention. Trump and his fascist cracker mob have been planning this sedition and insurrection for weeks, months, years, openly discussing it in video, audio, print, and digital records. We shouldn’t have been at all shocked when they did what they said they were going to do. If anything was surprising, it’s that it wasn’t worse.
I’m surprised that more people didn’t die. I’m surprised that members of law enforcement didn’t go further than allowing the terrorists into the building, and also actually join them. I’m surprised there wasn’t more gunfire. I’m surprised the coup attempt wasn’t more successful.
Law enforcement didn’t fail to stop the riot and the white supremacist insurrection, they
chose not to. These plans were broadcasted long in advance. It’s been demonstrated that local and federal law enforcement can be summoned with full military gear at a moment’s notice to intimidate and assault unarmed and peaceful civilian protesters. Attempts by local political leaders to mobilize the national guard and prevent an attack on the Capitol were thwarted by Trump loyalists in the Pentagon. Trump, of course, did not order the national guard in because the fascist terrorist assault was what he wanted, it was the plan.
As has been mentioned by many others, if this mob had not been blindingly white, they probably wouldn’t have made it out of the Capitol alive. They likely wouldn’t have even made it into the Capitol. If a group of people of color protested in front of the Capitol, they’d be gassed, beaten, and/or shot down.
Apart from the hypocrisy displayed by law enforcement, we’re again faced with the fact that people in these white supremacist groups, the police, and the military have shared membership. There were police officers and military service people in the fascist mob that attacked the Capitol, and there were traitors to the nation and Constitution on duty at the Capitol who aided the terrorists.
Given all this, all the planning, all the inside people, the complicity and direct instigation from the highest levels of power, it is amazing that the coup wasn’t successful.
Perhaps it was the lack of response, the cooperation and coordination from the police and the military that caused it to fizzle. Hard to call it a real revolution when no one’s actually fighting you. It makes the fascists look all the more pathetic, pretending they’re fighting a war against oppression while being aided and cheered on by the actual oppressors. Thanks to white privilege, or white supremacy, these degenerate clowns can’t even stage a dramatic, let alone sympathetic, rebellion. But more than that it probably came down to incompetence and poor planning for the end goal. Much like attempted murder, the real cause for this crime’s failure was the criminals’ inability to follow through.
This was not the beginning or the end. What we witnessed on January 6th was a continuation of the Civil War, which never truly ended, because the white supremacist traitors of the Confederacy were never forced to pay appropriate recompense and attone for their crimes. The evils of white supremacy and fascism have never been eradicated from this country. They’ve been condoned and coddled, treated as dissenting views worthy of being voiced, normalized. They are the true cancers of this nation that will kill us if not excised.
This is not a temporary crisis that started with or will end with Trump. He is guilty of causing this crime and many others of recent years, and should be treated as the traitor, the attempted dictator, the threat to national security, and the enemy of the state that he is, but he is not solely responsible. McConnel, Cruz, Hawley, Graham, Barr, Mulvaney, every person in a position of power who aided and abetted this demented fascist needs to go. Fuck their hollow words and condemnations after the fact. You don’t get to spend years supplying a lunatic with dynamite, fuse wire, and matches, then act shocked and upset when they blow shit up. They’re criminals and traitors and deserve to go down with him.
But even that wouldn’t be the end of it, of course. That wouldn’t stop the Civil War. The hatred and mentally diseased thinking of the anti-democratic and anti-American neo-confederates runs too deep. If you were somehow shocked by what happened this week, start preparing yourself now for what will come next. Because they’re not done, they’re not going away. We can’t pretend that this isn’t what America is, or deny that we’re at war, while allowing the racists and fascists to keep fighting. January 6th was a trial run. There’s more to come.