The media covered the 2016 US presidential election as if it were little more than a challenge on Donald Trump’s reality TV show, The Apprentice. This, because they realized from the moment Trump descended the escalators in his gilded tower to announce his campaign that, when it comes to their bottom line, covering politics as entertainment trumps covering it as a public service.
And so the fix was in. More to the point, nobody in the media seemed to give a damn about the dystopian consequences that portended, which were all too foreseeable.
Yet, despite all Trump’s presidency has, and continues to, wrought, the media seem hell-bent on fueling the dystopian disruptions of his disaffected MAGA progeny, most notably the J6 insurrectionists. Only that explains the whole world watching as this spectacle unfolded on Saturday:
Police and media vastly outnumbered protesters around the US Capitol on Saturday at a sparsely attended rally by supporters of the people who breached the building on January 6th, trying to overturn former president Donald Trump’s election defeat.
About 100 to 200 protesters showed up, some carrying the flags of the right-wing group Three Percenters over their shoulders. It was far fewer than the 700 people organizers had expected and the thousands who brought mayhem to the Capitol on January 6th.
(The Irish Times, September 18, 2021)
Clearly that spectacle was as humiliating as it is unsustainable … for the government. Because, even if such protesters number hundreds of thousands, they could never pose a threat so grave that the government has to treat them like an invading army.
But the Islamic terrorists of 9/11 won when they spooked America into turning itself into a de-facto police state. I fear, in that same ‘foul spirit’, these MAGA insurrectionists of Jan. 6 have won now that they have so spooked the mighty US government that, with little more than a few posts on Facebook, they now know they can shut it down and turn Washington DC into Fort Knox on the Potomac.
This is the most powerful nation in the world. Yet it boarded up its capital like a tiny island preparing for a CAT 5 hurricane. And all this just because some right-wing nincompoops announced plans for a rally there that might get out of hand.
America’s evacuation from Kabul was humiliating enough; but this smacked of a fatal, self-immolating blow to what’s left of its national pride. Whereas all the government had to do was require J6 organizers to issue periodic PSAs informing attendees that any unauthorized person approaching any government building, especially in groups of more than 3, will be deemed to have avenging-insurrectionist intent; in which case, they will be met with deadly force.
Trust me, all it would take is SWAT snipers firing warning shots for any J6 coward who ignores that PSA to hightail it and run.
All else is folly.
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Jan 6 insurrectionists… Fate of democracy…