This Is How America Works
BLM protesters get assaulted. A Trump mob gets to take the Capitol hostage. What more do you need to know?
Where do I even begin to explain the pure insanity of this day? This morning, President Trump addressed thousands of supporters who traveled to Washington D.C. to contest the certification of Joe Biden as president, telling them, "We will not let them silence your voices" and saying that when they marched to the Capitol building before Congress' vote, he would go with them. A leader of the people!
Of course, Trump did no such thing, and simply returned to the White House, as his MAGA army stormed the Capitol. One by one, buildings around the Capitol were evacuated. All the while tens of Congress members applauded Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar for objecting to the certification.
Livestreams from the building showed Trump supporters lining up with their flags and fighting with police who, for all the lethal bullshit cops everywhere pulled this summer during Black Lives Matter protests, did little more than use tear gas and spray, push against people with their batons, and struggle with protesters to keep their metal barriers in place. Then the mob got inside the building.
Protesters were filmed pepper-spraying police and hitting at them with sticks, and nary an arrest in sight. I even watched one of the cops swing up their baton like they were going to hit someone, and then stop. Like LOL, can you even IMAGINE if these protesters weren't white? My god, if there was any clear indication that the violence protesters suffered over this summer during peaceful demonstrations against police brutality was purely rooted in racism, it is watching deranged, angry white people attempting to wrestle metal barricades from police and the police not immediately charging at them.
The mob then broke into the Senate and House chambers themselves—an astonishing sight to see. What more do you need to know about the way America works than the fact that Black Lives Matter protesters were assaulted merely for breathing air outside, but cops allowed Trump supporters to stroll right into a literal chamber of the U.S. Congress unscathed?
And now protesters are just like, in the U.S. Capitol, fucking up shit because the very people who are now cowering at their violence had enabled, fed into, and riled up their violence with this conspiracy that the presidential election was illegitimate. All these MAGA idiots are having a grand old time in the Senate chamber because the Republican Party was so desperate to cling to their power that they created this situation, and because the police are on their side. You reap what you sow, bitch! You did this!!!!
I love a good death rattle, the last strained breath of all of the things that made the Trump administration and the people who staunchly supported them such a threat to the safety of everyone else. But this isn't a death rattle. It is a result of all of the things that the people in power have done to try and cling to their power: enabling the active racism in policing by local and federal police; feeding into conspiracies that the election was stolen from Trump for months on end; and doing everything to show support for the people who don't have the actual power to do anything about it. What we're seeing at the Capitol is but a virus festered, just the beginning of what might come from the right during the coming years of a Biden administration.