Thoughts on the Insurrection

This will be different from my other pieces, I need to get some thoughts down as they arrive. I’ll only edit this piece insofar as I’ll correct errors, but it’ll be an honest stream of consciousness. After the events of January 6, 2021, the air in America changed. We’re all lost in thought, and it would be disingenuous to present a polished, nuanced take on the insurrection — I don’t have one yet. I’ve only scattered thoughts, but I’m sure you do too.

It came as no surprise, the insurrection. Donald Trump — whom I will not call “president” for one second longer — fomented this bitter hatred for years. Is it a surprise that the man who brazenly demanded Barack Obama’s birth certificate would gather a group of racist, deluded misfits just like him? He promised before the election that if he lost, the election was rigged — this was all before anyone even voted, he sewed these seeds.

The mob that took to the capitol was ordered to do so by Donald Trump that same day, saying that they have to fight for their country and take it back. Donald Trump’s farting cartoon lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, demanded a “trial by combat.”

Beyond Trump and Giuliani’s orders, this has been brewing for years. Donald Trump awakened the sleeping racists and radicals who hadn’t voted in years; they saw a man in their own image, and came out in their numbers.

And it was aggrieved white men, of course, of course.

Who else would respond to such a vague call to take back their country? Dangerous, angry white men in store-bought military gear carrying the flags of the lost, the confederates and Nazis.

I won’t pretend I was offended by the desecration of the sacred capitol, I don’t offend easy and I definitely don’t hold that building or any building sacred. But, I do hold it in high regard. What happened was sickening, while not surprising.

But what was the goal? When they did finally breach the doors and windows of the capitol, what was their plan? I’m not sure they had one. They couldn’t have thought their show of force would scare congress and the senate into overturning the election. Once they got into the building, they took to taking selfies and looting things. “That’ll show ’em, steal the podium!” Goddamned fools.

Many of them have gotten themselves all wrapped up in conspiracy theories, finding treasonous outrage in the mundane. The combination of belonging to a group completely removed from reality, and losing and election, drove them batshit. These traitorous maniacs thought they could “take back their country.”

But “take back” what? Their guy was president for four years, what’s there to take back? I know what they want back, their perceived high status as white folks from ages past. They’re not special, there’s no love in their hearts.

The lawmakers who backed Trump’s election claims, they’re traitors. I won’t even name them, but they must live on in shame and infamy for what they’ve done.

And the pro-Trump media networks that saw dollar signs and continued to spread his baseless lies and toxic nonsense for years, they’re traitors too.

Traitors, all of them.

When Vice President Mike Pence was taken to a secure location while the insurrection took place, I have to believe he was thinking, “This motherfucker threw me to lions today.”

But in a way, this event sheds light, it provides dark closure. We know exactly what Trump and his cronies are after, and it’s not peace — it’s supremacy. Trump saw the whole thing as a press opportunity, a brand opportunity. He’s never cared, he was never out to govern. Donald Trump did not call the national guard, he watched it all unfold on television. Vice President Pence had to call in reinforcements, had to go around the president. I think Donald Trump watched on television to see how it would pan out, perhaps clinging to the narrow possibility of his violent mob actually overturning the election.

He learned nothing from the office. I myself even gave Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt that the weight of the job would change him. Nope, no growth, no change, he only got worse and dragged the country down with him. A mentally ill megalomaniac was elected president in 2016, and for some reason we all expected him to change his stripes.

Regardless, we move forward toward the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Huzzah, huzzah!

But we can’t forget the traitors in our midst.