If the Jan. 6 demonstrators defaced the Capitol in the name of one thing a year ago, Pelosi and all the other clowns rendering “commemorative” performances last week defaced it in the name of something else.
Lin-Manuel Miranda in the title role of his musical “Hamilton,” April 20, 2016. (Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
The over-the-top theater staged on Capitol Hill last Thursday, the one-year mark for the Jan. 6 protests against the official 2020 elections results, can be read in various ways. We are advised, here and there by prominent voices, that we ought to laugh (Glenn Greenwald) or dismiss the spectacle out of hand as “melodramatic anniversary-related nonsense” (Michael Tracey), “endless hyperventilating” (Matt Taibbi), and an “orgy of psychodrama” (Greenwald again).
O.K., but let us not spend too much time laughing or dismissing. As these and other serious journalists and analysts are the first to understand, last week’s variety show, kitschy as it was, bears close scrutiny and interpretation. If the Jan. 6 protesters defaced the Capitol in the name of one thing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and all the other clowns rendering “commemorative” performances defaced it in the name of something else.
Let us sort this out. Who, we need to consider, acted in the name of participatory democracy and who stands against it? What, we need to decide, is the place of protest in the land of the Boston Tea Party and the antiwar movement of just a few decades back? From whence does violence spring in our violent republic?
One is half-tempted to speculate that the elite of the Democratic Party hired a Hollywood producer to block and direct the scenes on Capitol Hill last Thursday. A cameo appearance by Dick Cheney, Democrats lining up to greet him as one of American democracy’s protectors? Kamala Harris’s comparison of Jan. 6 to Sept. 11, 2001? We can always count on our vice–president (and may she climb no higher up the greasy pole) to add a note of the preposterous.
Inviting the cast of Hamilton, the Broadway musical, to sin g democracy’s virtues? This was an insult to our intelligence on the face of it — and the more ridiculous given that Alexander Hamilton stood for an elite democracy as against Tom Jefferson’s popular variety.
Ask yourself: Is turning the Capitol into a set on which to stage a propaganda farce a responsible use of the “sacred” building wherein our laws are supposed to be made?
We're apparently celebrating this very somber anniversary with song? pic.twitter.com/Vwkcjz2cCB
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 6, 2022
As to the media, the major dailies and the networks performed just as they have for the past year, serving up indigestible mounds of exaggeration, bathos and sentimental rubbish — always in defense against the “threat to democracy” posed by “insurrectionists” intent on a “coup” supposedly abroad among us. I leave it to readers to find what portion of this gutless drivel in the service of power they may want to see. It’s everywhere, unfortunately.
What happened last week and what our media told us happened: The moment arrives to look beyond the awfulness of both to find some home truths about politics, propaganda and its power, and what has become of our memories and minds.
Imagery
One of the features of contemporary American politics, and it is hard to say when this took root, is the use those in power make of imagery. Laws are made of language. So are the debates that should produce them. Language is the means by which those making the laws and policies of our land should communicate with those who (if only in theory at this point) elected them to office. Language is the medium of thought. Language allows us to accommodate subtlety, complexity and the capacity to make decisions.
It is remarkable how little language has come to figure in American politics. When political figures speak it tends to be in the language of tabloid headlines. Their resort to imagery is incessant. Our president’s minders allow him to speak hardly at all and it is no matter, for Joe Biden is at bottom a mere image. Put a speech by any of our “leading” politicians next to one by JFK, FDR, Henry Wallace, Gene McCarthy, or any other serious figure from yesteryear. You now have the story of the deterioration of public life in America in two chapters.
This privileging of imagery was essential to last week’s events — hence “stage set,” “spectacle,” “variety show.” The last thing the pols and the press want people to do is think about Jan. 6 in a coherent way. And we are now on notice that this is beginning to get very dangerous. It was the Fascist movement in Italy, back in the 1920s, that discovered the power of imagery in maneuvering a population in the direction of mindlessness, and we know how the Italian story ended. Forget about “it can’t happen here.” It is already starting to happen, and I choose my verb tense in the name of caution.
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We have the related question of memory. Nobody still capable of thought missed the gross offense of Cheney’s presence in the House and the fawning reception Democrats gave him. Taibbi got this down best in his day-after “Tale of Two Authoritarians.” It has long been evident that mainstream political figures in America depend on the short memories of the majority of the public. Receiving Cheney as a defender of democracy is so contradictory it amounts to a dare, as in Remembering will get you in trouble, or a commandment, Thou shalt not remember.
Milan Kundera’s famous observation in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting has been quoted too many times to count. Apologies, but too many times is not often enough, given the truth of it. “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” the Czech great wrote. We ought not miss that this is the front-line struggle of every American who wants to make sense of this nearly senseless country.
Political Violence
Claiming that there is "almost 10 dead" from the 1/6 riot is deceitful in the extreme.
Four people died on 1/6: all Trump supporters.
It's possible to connect a couple of the later police suicides to 1/6 if one stretches enough but this need to exaggerate 1/6 speaks for itself: https://t.co/TsRFGG0tWC
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 25, 2021
Deadly deadly deadly, violent violent violent. [Ed.: The only person killed that day directly by violence was a protestor shot by the Capitol police.] If you have been reading steadily of the Jan. 6 events, you have read these words again and again and again. Here we do well to pause and think very carefully.
The (over)emphasis on the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, protests is intended to prompt us all to condemn them. It is an article of faith in America today that violence, especially political violence, is a terrible, never-to-be-condoned thing. But wait just a minute, please.
Every American living in poverty is the victim of violence — political violence, indeed. Every child who doesn’t get enough to eat has been violated. Every one of us who can’t find decent work, who cannot afford a doctor or a medication, who suffers from psychological dysfunction, who is deprived of his or her dignity, who can’t hold a family together, and so on and on and on — these are all victims of political violence.
My grandma is not doing well. Finally convinced her to go to the hospital this morning
She has neglected her health for so long
When me and my brother talked to her she mentioned medical bills as a reason why
Our inhumane system killed my grandpa and now killing her
— Joe Biden is a Dick Cheney Democrat ? (@SocialistMMA) January 10, 2022
Generalizations are of limited worth and can prove incautious. But to venture one, those protesting at the Capitol a year ago, who I read numbered in the high hundreds, were by and large among the dispossessed of this country. For better or worse, they seem to have settled on Donald Trump as the emblem of their aspirations. How many of them sustained one or another form of violence as I have just defined it? How many were in effect responding to this violence? Where, then, did the violence begin, and who is responsible for it?
This leads us to another matter so far neglected. The Democrats making such a fuss about a protest that simply went further than the protesters appear to have planned or expected have had not a word to say about what brought them to the steps of the Capitol. And to mark them down simply as “Trump supporters” is to obscure who they truly were (and are). The press has been similarly silent about the identity of these people. Nobody this past year has been invited to think very much about inequality, deprivation, or dispossession altogether.
“Every American living in poverty is the victim of violence — political violence, indeed. Every child who doesn’t get enough to eat has been violated.”
What has been done in this connection is pretty simple. The Democrats and the press have pulled off a variant of the trick they played when the party’s mail was leaked in mid–2016 and subsequently published by WikiLeaks. They said as little as possible then about what was in all the stolen mail while obsessing on the theft. Same thing, different context: Don’t mention what fundamentally drove those protesters to the Capitol, apart from their objections to the vote count. We don’t want to hear from the American underclass or those who struggle against joining it. Instead, go long and only on what they did that afternoon.
Protest
Trump supporters on Jan. 6 crowding the steps of the Capitol after displacing the police shield wall preventing access. (TapTheForwardAssist, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
I come now to the question of protest. Here we are faced with the bitterest of truths we must face now that those who are supposed to lead us have made such opportunist use of what should be understood as a protest whose deepest motivations are deserving of thought and remedy.
Greenwald published a pithy piece concerning these matters on Jan. 6, Greenwald being impressively quick out of the gate in response to public events. Here is a portion of it:
“Putting the events of January 6 into their proper perspective is not to dismiss the fact that it was a lamentable event…. The day after the 1/6 riot, I wrote in this space that ‘the introduction of physical force into political protest is always lamentable, usually dangerous, and, except in the rarest of circumstances that are plainly inapplicable here, unjustifiable.’ I still believe that to be the case. There was nothing virtuous about the 1/6 riot…. “
I must vigorously disagree with these thoughts. We have, first, the problem of “the introduction of physical force.” The neoliberal order in the U.S. is is enforced by physical force — by violence or the threat of it, as I have already suggested. The foreign policy of this country begins and ends with same. We are possessed of a violent tradition. Greenwald, surely, has read Richard Slotkin’s Regeneration Through Violence. We are urged incessantly to abhor violence by people who make profligate use of it.
We cannot pretend on this point any longer. What violence there was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and let us not join those exaggerating this point, was preceded by incessant violence, and incessant violence has continued since. I am not an apostle of violence. But we need to come to terms with its origins and prevalence in America and then decide what we want to do about it.
“The neoliberal order in the U.S. is enforced by physical force — by violence or the threat of it. … The foreign policy of this country begins and ends with same.”
We come to the validity of protest qua protest. “There was nothing virtuous about the 1/6 riot”: I must disagree again. I am not a man of Trump and do not know what was in the minds of the Capitol Hill protesters other than to question the election results. But are we making believe here that the general idea of a stolen election is so preposterous as that? I can’t sign on.
Setting aside what the protesters were for or against, I see considerable virtue in the act of protest itself. Is street protest in the name of whatever stripe — street protest that genuinely confront power — now off the table in America? All politics is now institutional politics and everyone must simply vote and stay home? Is the antiwar movement of the 1960s and ’70s among the things we have all forgotten? The great protests marking the true history of this country, not least those that changed it in the 1930s, are lost to us? These were authentic challenges to power.
Very, very few of us care to face the reality of our circumstances as they have come to us over the past couple of decades or so. In our time, our political process is broken, thoroughly broken. Those in office to represent us are corrupted absolutely and do not do so. Is there somehow some question of where our responsibilities — to ourselves and each other — lie?
This is not convenient. Nobody wants to live in a time that requires them to resort to the street, the village green, bridges in Alabama, the Washington Mall, the steps of the Capitol — all of which are public spaces, the spaces of citizens. But sooner or later we will have to face the fact that we live in such a time, and that if we want to make things better in America it is in protest that our voices will be heard. In this the Jan. 6 protesters are a step ahead of most of us.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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I’ve long been a fan of Lawrence, and so I say this with respect- I find this piece an error in judgement.
I have very little sympathy for grandstanding Democrats who have made careers of ignoring or exacerbating preventable suffering, but PL’s contrarianism is misplaced here. I happily accede his point regarding the often forgotten or whitewashed need for raucous- even scary protests that will put the fear of the polity into otherwise complacent politicians.
But WHO and WHY aren’t minor points in discussing tactics. When allies fought nazis, both sides used bullets- but one side’s munitions deserved to find their targets. I have some epistemological sympathy for blue collar folks taken in by the highly effective right wing propaganda machine, but that sympathy comes with an understanding that these people have been weaponized for a cause as bad as the neoliberal consensus. One has to separate the legitimate grievances of those in afailing system from the chauvinism that often takes the place of sane critique and Lawrence missed the opportunity to do so here.
Adding to this error is the fact that there WERE wide scale protest not long ago against our racial hierarchy that were met with sadistic repression, indifference, and glib opportunism. Why not pick up the mantel of these just fighters rather than the tools of reaction who showed up for J6?
Thoughtful people can ask questions about the rioters’ legitimate concerns rooted in material reality, or the lack of response be law enforcement, or the potential of fbi stoking (as has so often proven true), or the Dems’ policy failures and histrionics in meeting these realities- but Lawrence took an uncharacteristically glib and IMO thoughtless approach to the subject here. I respect your work, PL- I hope you’ll consider these good faith critiques.
I happen to agree with you, Patrick. That said, I have a couple of observations. One, watching the likes of Nancy Pelosi (far from the only guilty party) gushing over the violence we incited in Ukraine, Hong Kong and elsewhere but when it comes here, OMG!!!! it’s an attack on the very foundations of democracy!!! When, in fact, there was no real difference other than in DC it was homegrown and not fomented by the likes of the CIA, NED, USAID, or one of the other “N”GOs that we use to foment unrest in countries we have targeted for regime change. That’s probably why the level of violence was so much lower than it was in Ukraine, HK, and, most recently, Kazakhstan. And two, the US obviously has not cottoned on to the reality that the rest of the world is wise to our chicanery. I sat LMAO when Blinken was asking “Why did they call Russia and not the US?” Please, they wanted it taken care of, not made worse.
It has been my opinion for a long time that the US needed a major shake up of its political order. I would only wish that it was being done for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones.
Well done. You managed to get “all liars in one room” in one paragraph. Great, great stuff Jeff.
I know I harp on this point but I feel the adverse affects of this event have played havoc with the U.S. consciousness , to say nothing of the systemic deleterious affects on the entire U.S. Government ever since the event.
Most assuredly it has adversely affected American politics. The price of the feeding the existence of a festering lie. It allowed the start of a nasty trend in D.C. that developed into the status quo. CIA got DOJ and CONGRESS over a barrel and there they hang to this day.
DOJ has been compromised ever since being used by unaccountable officials as a tool to protect crimes of a secret arm of our government at any cost and it affects everyone one of us everyday.
The cause and the problem are not so difficult to see , the quest for solution verboten by the responsible authorities. This is how our government is failing us. The crooked mind cannot think straight.
The hording and concealment of information needed to oversee government in the pursuit of gaining undue influence in the decision making process , which has become endemic in D.C. must be outlawed and thoroughly policed with abuses prosecuted.
Violators lose their position and serve time, for real time. Do this and the lies will stop
The CIA got off to very bad start in my humble opinion designed by Dulles & Co to be a rouge agency from the onset. When Kennedy died a large part of government as we had known it died with him. Lies and secrecy became the norm. Our government has been on a downhill slide ever since around the year of my birth. That major shake up you mentioned has been needed ever since congress failed to do right then.
I believe many of those “wrong reasons” you mentioned can be traced straight back to this event.
The two parties do essentially nothing but get rich and taunt the public with their laughable theater. This must changed or our nation is done for.
Nancy Pelosi, Dick Cheney, songs and music. I have absolutely no idea of what the hell they think other than about themselves but I don’t think it’s much. In fact I don’t think they know what to do.
Nuff said.
Patrick Lawrence is a wiseass, showing how uber-smart he is in getting everything into one package of the nightmare that is America. Right. Lump it all in this diatribe as if you’re the smartie who sees deeper where no one else looks at motivation and then we can think radically differently about what occurred and give a pass to all deprived folks whatever they do. Huh?
Suzanne why be so angry at the reveal of the truth.
In my humble opinion I feel the wiseass blessed with intelligence is so much better off than the dumbass blessed with being severely over educated . Which I assume by your tact here is your preference.
Even you recognize the legitimacy of the “nightmare that is America today.” You do, don’t you?
Getting everything into one package is just what is needed to facilitate comparing facts.
The motivation of protestors is clear for all to see. The idea that we can think radically differently about what happened seems unfounded, the motivation for the crowd was clear to see for all who care to ask that question. Ever hear of a guy named Trump.
Every person alive today needs quick decisive action to address the worlds burgeoning problems and here you are kicking down at the have – nots. For someone who professes to be a visionary this not a good look.
Ever hear of Beau of the Fifth Column on the YouTube? You might look him up he could give you some pointers on what is realistic and what isn’t..
The longer the ruling class Dopes screw around playing dirty lying politics in D.C. to closer we all come to that Fight or Fight moment.
I have a vision and that vision tells me that if those addicted to the “that’s the way things go in D.C. mentality” sit on their asses and count their money much longer we soon get to the point of open anti-government violence in our streets. Hell even some of those in D.C. are starting to believe it is possible.
My dog talking about someone full of their self! Patrick what have you done to this women?
So my message to everyone is, things are bad, with no significant changes bad things are coming quickly and ignoring underlying facts is fast becoming a deadly business. You will not have to go to the Ukraine to “enjoy” the benefits just keep hanging around.
No matter , at least I feel better, time for a nap!
Thanks to all and to all a good night.
Thank you for this.
Have long been troubled by the media and so-called progressive types lambasting them what protested.
Am not good at expressing thoughts but felt that if the protesters had been politically the polar opposite, many of us would have cheered them along if not actually joined. The right to protest to address grievances applies to all, does it not? Does that right come with rules regarding where and how one may protest.
As for disputing election results, liberals seem to have a very short and selective memory regarding that. Could never understand them that cheered when the cops killed that woman, murderous cops are murderous cops, and they should never be allowed to get away with killing unarmed humans.
If the Democrats are telling us something is bad and should be spurned, then we should look at that really really close to see what they’re trying to distract us from.
Dick Chaney, back? Not surprising given the Profits and Ratings mentality of MSM you get what they wish not the news or the truth. Nothing at all new.
More “high theater” provided by congress and the MSM in a very underwhelming display intended to communicate to the masses the someone is in firm control of the undulating mass that currently is the U.S. Congress! Absolutely pathetic!
Best remember that the only thing that speaks sufficiently to this total embarrassment of the U.S. government on the world stage is one question. Who was in charge?
Was it the same man who hand fed the Village Idiot from Crawford Texas, advise on the War on Terror, the Tin Man (D Chaney). No. VP M Pence,? No. Mitch McConnell, hell no, who knows what Mitch was doing. Could it have been Karl Rove, who conspicuously is missing in action. No! So who was it?
Apparently, Trump was. “Unaware Man”, they guy whose mind is never present turned his back on his supporters which deflated their so called “patriotic love “( give me liberty or give me death) for the country to the extent they took their toys and went home.
While I’m at it how about this from Mr. Lawrence,
“The neoliberal order in the U.S. is enforced by physical force – by violence or the treat of of it. . . . The foreign policy of this country begins and ends with the same. ”
So true!
FYI as long as the fanatical religious kooks and the Neocons, Neoliberal, Zionist consortium exists in both parties , supporting the Deep State agenda go unchallenged by the voting public for their ruinous beliefs , nothing will change. The past 70 years of U.S. foreign policy of war for oil and profit are the proof.
Seriously, “Dead Eye Dick” Chaney.
Yeah, sure – as a Green, I have no sympathy with Democratic Party propaganda. However, I’m inclined to be complacent – or maybe that’s cynical – about it.
” Is turning the Capitol into a set on which to stage a propaganda farce a responsible use of the “sacred” building wherein our laws are supposed to be made?”
I think that’s what Congress, and the Capitol, usually are: a set and a performance. Bringing in Lin-Manuel Miranda makes that more than ordinarily obvious, and bringing in Darth Vader, excuse me, Cheney, makes some other realities more than usually obvious, too. But I thought that all along. You didn’t?
What do the people of the United States know about democracy when they have been living under corporate feudalism for nearly 250 years??
What tells you everything you need to know about the charades we perpetuate to sustain our megalomania is the fact that we call ourselves “Americans” when in fact the US is but one nation in that vast hemisphere.
Strategy of Tension
How to create a totalitarian state:
Step 1: Wait for a target organization to make a peaceful demonstration
Step 2. Infiltrate the target organization and redirect its demonstration towards violence
Step 3 Perpetuate violence or instigate it.
Step 4. Get video or create it and use it to point blame on the target organization
Step 5 Get mainstream media to build up the narrative blaming the target organization for the violence
Step 6. Pass laws against sedition, limit free speech, and create new police powers.
Step 7. Repeat.
To see how this works in practice, watch video “strategy of tension,” by metanoia films, hXXps://vimeo.com/66019647
I always enjoy Patrick Lawrence’s commentary. While today’s column was generally insightful, I would call attention to his insinuation that the motivations of the demonstrators has not been examined and that the demonstrators were generally drawn from the dispossessed. (“The press has been similarly silent about the identity of these people. Nobody this past year has been invited to think very much about inequality, deprivation, or dispossession altogether.”) Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has led a group that has conducted an in depth study of nearly 700 arrestees. They have found that, unlike most right wing demonstrations, the January 6th demonstrators were generally mainstream. More than half were business owners or professionals. Only 7% were unemployed. In almost every aspect the January 6th participants look more like ordinary Americans than typical right wing extremists. While Pape’s study has not been widely covered by the MSM, The Atlantic and Slate Magazine have written about it.
I applaud your courage.
I agree with those commenters who questioned the nature of “DEMOCRACY”. It is great rhetoric but lousy history and we all
hear it over and over. The best analysis of the lack of “democracy” is in my view in Francis Jennings book “The Creation of
America”. Shouting “democracy” is mere propaganda as Jenning points out so eloquently. To cite an example, were upper
class South Carolinian for “democracy”? Of course not. They were against it. After all, the vast majority of humans in their
colony were Black or Native American.In other colonies there was discrimination and violence against those with
different beliefs (Quakers, for example in New England), of different religions, of different ancestries.
There are many other analyses (Gabriel Kolko anyone).
There will be elections as there always will be and being for “democracy: from Joe Manchin to AOC has a great sound.
Thank you Patrick, you look through the haze of words and drama and grasp the thread at the heart of the issue. I will only note here that with all the theater over Ukraine abroad and 6-Jan at home, the Biden admin has managed a huge deflection to avoid doing anything meaningful about the existential crisis of climate catastrophic that is now barreling down the mountain straight for us; 8-10 years to reach tipping points that are forever, like melting permafrost releasing three times the current amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, and then all the “fusion reactors” and other assorted tech fantasies in the world, EVEN IF TRUE, are useless. Too late, just too late to make any difference. The Biden admin and the Democratic Party in power have dropped the the biggest ball in the history of civilization for the entire world and are now just running out the clock. That is just who they are.
And of course, after Biden declared the pandemic over in summer as omicron was just getting started, he has consistently, and true to his nature, protected the financial profit of the pharm industry at the expense of the public both home and abroad. Again, that is just who he is. What a terrible fate that at the very last juncture for a chance for peace and cooperation in order to deal with global extinction-level (for our species) issues, (note that the covid pandemic is, like burning forests, also a part of climate change with even worse to come), the only thing the Biden admin can think of to do is to make any such essential cooperation impossible thus dooming the world to the absolute worst outcome possible. Now that is “American leadership” on display. On the other hand, the fossil fuel industries will be able to continue to extract and sell oil right until the bitter end, so I guess they are pleased… It is almost as if they had purchased Joe Biden for that express purpose.
This commentary clearly shows that Greenwald doesn’t support violent protests because they rarely if ever advance the cause of protesting but I think, “There was nothing virtuous about the 1/6 riot…. ” is his opinion about the violence used, not an objection to the ideas behind the protest. Conflating his opinion against rioting with an objection to protesting sounds a lot like the drivel that we criticize main stream theater for. And, how can anyone not mention the deep state’s involvement in ginning up the violence that took place? They know perfectly well that protests can be made to seem terrible and wrong-headed if they insert a couple of goons to lead the way and they’re my first suspect whenever protests get nasty. The little bit of violence perpetrated by the rioters on 1/6 is exactly what made them public enemies number 1-999 and gave the producers, directors and actors of the performance last week a script that could be used against the right wing just as it has been used against every left wing protest they’ve covered for the last 50 years, at least. When you have control of all the media and “Homeland” security, then and only then will violence work for you, as it does for every branch of government. I can’t remember a time when Greenwald was criticized fairly and I’ve read a lot of it. His critics usually aren’t a group any respectable journalist or commentator should aspire to join. But it’s no doubt a great thing to have on your resume when you want to get paid. He’s rubber, you’re glue. Whatever you criticize him for will probably make you look stupid.
On 1/6, I couldn’t stomach the ubiquitous chant of how the protesters invaded the “sacred” halls of congress. At such times I quickly think of the wise words of Wendell Berry. “There are no sacred and un-sacred places. There are only sacred and desecrated places.” Of this it must be said, the so called sacred halls of congress were desecrated by the people elected to serve and was done so long ago, we, with openness to see, can’t recall it being any other way. Thank you, Mr. Lawrence, for another wise and soul searching dig into our blindness and complicity.
Hopefully sooner rather than later, a huge contingent of angry workers will descend on the Capitol and unleash such a righteous fury as to make 1/6 look like a garden picnic.
If I were an American, you’d find me among them.
That’s when you’ll see the true might of the militaristic police come to bear.
Most of the commentary from the Left about the Jan 6 riot, and I specifically include the Trotskyist site WSWS which I generally support, has emphasised the supposed threats to American democracy and that the rioters were fascists whose intentions or motivations are not to be interrogated. That has been a great disappointment to me; I expected better. So far as I can see from here in Britain, the USA has never been anything close to a democracy, so what was being threatened apart from the power of the elite ruling class? In particular, AOC’s bleatings about how unsafe she felt came over as pathetic, given the ultra-violent military and police forces she usually supports in her votes.
WSWS also have rotten positions on trade unions, on the black question, and have no understanding of COVID. I think they still classify Cuba as ‘capitalist’. So they might like to call themselves ‘Trotskyist’, but they ain’t by a long shot.
Like nearly all the other founding fathers, Hamilton was an anti-democrat. He wasn’t for an “elite democracy” juxtaposed against a “popular democracy”, he was opposed to the concept of democracy in its entirely. Whereas other anti-democrats like Jefferson wanted a Roman style republican oligarchy (not democracy), Hamilton simply went a step further and advocated for new American state having its own monarch.
Excellent article. Articulates yet more examples of our thoroughly corrupted nation regardless of ones views on Trump. Cheyney is adulated for his participation in this spectacle while Assange (with no thanks to Trump) and those like him remain in shackles. God Bless America? I think not.
The elites have learned over the decades that it’s the optics that matter. Context is a waste of time. Very few consumers of “news” spend much time actually reading print. Everything is theater. The theater of the absurd to be exact.
I’m frequently reminded of the portrayal of the capital in the movie version of “The Hunger Games.” Freakish ghouls cheering a lethal game between the youth of the peasantry to survive. It’s turned into great spectacle. Pretty accurate portrayal of where we’re headed if we’re not already there.
Tnx CN, Patrick.
Stunned @ Cheney invite (W/ or W/O shotgun)?
Then point out use of imagery (Mad Ave 4 SELL! SELL !SELL!)
Might add… Legislatese… deciferable only 2 those W/ advanced English language skills, a 2ND technique 2 obfuscate the Public, IMO.
&… Uhhh… Dem specific: 4 yrs. Russia, Russia,Russia… So…4 more yrs.: DC,DC,DC?
BIG FINISH (no pub): Sethgate 3 x?
(& PROPS 4 WW1 VETS Smedley mention)