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Trump's Little Shop of Parlers (I)

01/13/2021

Okay let's cut into my annoyingly nuanced position on the events of the past 72 hours. You really need to know where I stand. I'll start here with this post and bang out a few others, just to make it all digestible.

The Capitol Siege

The issue is the breach, period. We need not wonder whether the specific terminology in Trump's speeches actually caused the "siege", and we can only choose, but not necessitate, to engage in an examination of every individual who participated for purposes of prosecution.

But let's be honest: Nothing Trump said that day directed a small group of buffoons in particular to storm the Capitol and begin taking selfies. Yes, he did lay the foundation of unwarranted mantra against the United States with his election fraud campaign that was easy to pick up and run with, if some people were so inclined, which of course some buffoons were.

Not to let him off the hook. We know Trump is guilty of something in all of this. We know he is at the center. Trump legitimized juvenile anger and the result was of course an explosion of it under the stress test of an election and Senate control loss.

Through his years-long vitriol and celebration of "mean" he and his followers who equated his bullying with being strong and relatable, lost an opportunity to sell genuinely great merits of conservative principles to moderates and independents to a level needed to win continued control.

Trump created a culture similar to the common prison yard where high level politics and gestures of reason are conducted by a hundred men stuck with a 5th grade intellectual ruleset. You can tell them that an entire week's of debate and contemplation over the insult of a shove or the wearing of certain colors that ultimately results in a shanking, is ridiculous and small-minded, but they wouldn't get it. They think everyone thinks the way they do.

What Actually Happened

What in fact happened at the Capitol was that, as is atypical of any mass gathering protest a small number of people got aggressive and somehow (cough) breached the line of security which then allowed a swell of people to pour into a place that they should not have been, and probably never expected to be.

In a BLM protest "a place" has often been something like a big box store -- whatever is easily accessible. In this politically-geographed protest, it was the Capitol, its notable symbolism as a logical focal point, over a random shoe store, recognized.

I will be honest, I am absolutely positive had I spotted a stream inlet into a building like the Capitol, with no-one apparently stopping me or anyone else, I would have gone in too. Obviously not because I am pro-Trump -- I'd be livestreaming or taking a bunch of selfies.

Which brings me back to my opening point. The issue was the breach. How did that happen?

The Right Wing Did It

The right-wing-did-it "conspiracy" is that the small number of people who were too aggressive and managed to get in were actually part of a radical group that had planned it. After all, one guy was photographed with zip ties, and another guy was found with explosives in the car he brought. Seems like a real possibility. To know for sure, these people are going to have to be confronted, as they are, and their activities and communications scrutinized.

If they were in fact tightly associated with each other, and in fact were planning on something more serious than an elaborate tresspass, Trump still had nothing to do with it if only out of his sheer ignorance of his own power of words and status. That someone could be that dumb is a reason we hope an intelligent voting body can spot someone like that and not let it happen in the first place. But here we are.

But, let's not get crazy without getting crazier.

The Left Wing Did It

The breach might have been a convenient happenstance of the left. I can knit this conspiracy too. We can assume that everyone knew how charged pro-Trumpers were, as the threats and dangerous insinuations by enough of them circulated in plain sight for months and years (Twitter, Parler, wherever -- plain sight).

So, if you know wagons of dynamite are headed to a protest, it might be all too easy to thin out the security and "allow" a breach so that the predictable bad actors get in. The value would simply be to garner the CNN loop coverage (to use them as the usual example; understand that I mean the MSM in general) to cement Trump in the brilliant storification of a man at the helm, out of control.

Or, let's get even crazier.

The Corporate Government of the United States Did It

What if it was the left and right working together, agreeing to pass the ball back and forth in post-calamity wrangling, but out of the public eye, tapping glasses with each other over a job well done?

Trump usurped everyone negatively, but "negatively" isn't the active ingredient. Trump usurped. And politically that's what gets you killed, figuratively or otherwise.

Personally, I would love to know the absolute anatomy of the breach at all levels, and will be looking forward to learn. Those details are the key to understanding everything.

By Dave for Personal Blog.