A few months ago, I wrote that President Trump’s avid supporters are not unlike those who carried out and supported the 9/11 attacks, in that they’ll do anything to stop progress, to keep things the way they are or were, to preserve their way of life and values.
For those who doubt this and need further proof, look at what happened Wednesday in Washington, D.C. Thousands of people, spurred by a speech by Trump claiming again that he won the November election and encouraging them to march to the capitol building and “fight” the results, literally – and lethally - stormed and ransacked the building, interrupting congress’ basically pro forma counting of the electoral college ballots and declaring Joe Biden the winner. Not only was the “citadel of democracy” trashed, five people wound up dead.
There is much I can say about what happened Wednesday. I can write about feeling vulnerable and beat up, like the marauding mob was trampling on me. I can write about the terrible, bitter but all-too-familiar, all-too-American irony in the police force on Wednesday being pretty light and hands-off with the nearly all-white crowd while the mostly peaceful, multi-racial Black Lives Matter protesters last summer were met with militaristic, brute force and brutality. I can write about how Trump, a sitting president who openly, criminally incited this raiding and trashing of democracy, should be put away or, at the very least, censured.
But my point here is that, as Biden and many others have said, this was no protest. To say the very least, this was a huge temper tantrum by people not getting their way, not wanting things to change. More than that, this tantrum by those not wanting the coming changes, was an act of vandalism, yes, but really an act of terror. It was nothing like what the third 9/11 pane might have done, but it came from the same impulse.
And get this: the last time the U.S Capitol was attacked was when the British burned it – in 1812.