Brane Space: We Need A "1/6 Commission" So The Reepo Right Can't Whitewash The January 6th Insurrection Or Misrepresent It

Trump's Terrorists Carry Out The January 6th Insurrection

"It wasn't a big deal? A screaming mob invading the Capitol, six dead and over one hundred forty injured? What if they had hung Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi? Would it then have been a big deal?" - Capitol officer Harry Dunn, in MSNBC 'Our House", commenting on the insurrection of January 6th

Having viewed the MSNBC special "Our House" - On Assignment with Richard Engel yesterday, see e.g.

New insights into how Capitol riot carried out (nbcnews.com)

I was glad I had taken my blood pressure med beforehand. The scenes of the rancid mob of human cockroaches swarming the Capitol as they carried "Trump" flags and beat officers with them - while chanting "USA! USA! USA!" - was almost too much. As I told Janice, I wanted to hang every damned one of the vermin. And also for having the audacity to display the symbols of liberty as they carried out their acts of treason and insurrection. To put it bluntly, that 44 minute special - completed with the help of the investigatory group 'Bellingcat' - shows again why none of these swine merits any mercy. As my Revolutionary War ancestors would have declared: "Hang 'em all!"

The special also shows clearly why this cannot be allowed to be whitewashed or relegated to the forgotten mists of history. It needs to be as remembered as much as the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, we need a 1/6 Commission that covers every base the 9/11 commission did. As Chris Hayes asked last night (ALL In): What accounted for the asymmetry of force response - say in the National Guard and D.C. police arrayed against Black Lives Matter protesters, and the pitiful force against the white Trump mob?

How is it so many thousands of the rabid Trump traitor mob could swarm and overcome the barriers of the Capitol police with only one insurrectionist (Ashli Babbit) being shot and killed? When if it had been a mob of black Americans nearly all would have been shot dead? And the preparations, mobilizations, deployments had damned well been made well beforehand, "like they were going to war"- in Hayes' parlance. Pointing out the psychological dimension is to "let people protesting know who is in charge, who is the authority, who will bend the knee to whom?"

Yet no comparable display of force was visible at the Capitol on January 6th to let those rabble -rousing whities know they were supposed to bend the knee! Exaggeration? Hell no! As Hayes asked: "Who is ordering whom around? It is the overwhelmingly white mob telling the cops what to do"." The most pathetic scene is then played where we see a Capitol cop looking at the roaches who've taken Pence's seat in the chamber, asking: "Is there any chance I can get you guys to leave the Capitol?"

Huh? How about firing a volley of rubber bullets at their heads? Like you'd do if they were black. As Hayes asked: "How many black men pulled over by cops get that kind of question as the opening line?"

Noting then in the midst of all the Capitol mayhem, with officers being bashed with flag poles, squeezed in doors, sprayed with bear spay there was "only one weapon discharged". Hayes even played two clips showing the unsettling "inversion" of force response.

In one - the vigil held for Elijah McClain in Aurora, CO, a police battalion stormed the scene with people playing violins - thrashing them with truncheons and firing pepper balls and tear gas. In the other, at the Jan. 6th insurrection, the cops were woefully "subservient" to the barking of orders by the white mob. WHY? We may find out more answers soon when the Inspector General for the D.C. police testifies. Including why those Capitol cops were so pathetically armed, with no stun grenades or rubber bullets or enough long guns - to keep the frothy fake patriots at bay. They only backed off after Babbit was shot in the head. As Hayes put it:

"Imagine if that level of force had been brought to bear on that mob surrounding the Capitol. It would have been a massacre. Of course if you brought that to bear it never would have happened. Because the police would have been all armed and ready for a riot... like they were at the vigil for Elijah McClain."

And the most abominable aspect is the Capitol cops were specifically warned of what was to come but did not prepare. Why not? Well, in Hayes' opinion: "Because of the racialized perceptions embedded in society and law enforcement. Of who has to be managed, who has to be controlled, is so deeply embedded in American society and law enforcement."

All of which reinforces what I wrote in my January 8th post and why we need to get to the bottom of the January 6th security failure . Especially the asymmetry of force used vs BLM protests. This is why I wrote at the time:

"The insane events of Wednesday, January 6th, must be engraved in the brains of every real American forever - and never forgotten - as much as the attacks of 9/11 for those who were alive then. Because what transpired can never be allowed to happen again, given it shattered our central symbol of democracy and affected the other democracies of the world as well. "

This is germane now as the Right's propagandists - especially the noisome imp Tucker Carlson on FOX- seek to revise history about the event. Casting it either as a simple protest by "concerned patriots", or as some kind of false flag operation carried out by Antifa. Or just an over zealous crowd which got out of control. Well, then let them do hard time for getting out of control.

In the wake of the bloody treason barely more than three months ago we still behold polls supporting the Big lie insanity. According to a poll released last week by Reuters and Ipsos, belief in conspiracy theories about the insurrection is widespread among Republican voters, with 55% claiming to "agree" or "somewhat agree" that the rioters were really "Antifa" in disguise.

As Janice commented during some of the most violent scenes in the Engel -MSNBC special - with MAGA cap wearing apes spraying bear spray into officers' eyes: "How stupid do people have to be to believe that shit?" As I reminded her: "Pretty stupid! Recall Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield's take that most Trumpies are on "the lower half of the IQ curve."

Another 51% of Republican respondents agree or "somewhat agree" that the rioters — who look to have killed one police officer, violently assaulted hundreds of others, and were chanting "hang Mike Pence" as they ransacked the Capitol — "were mostly peaceful, law-abiding Americans." And a full 60% agree or somewhat agree with Trump's utterly false claim that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election.

As blogger Amanda Marcotte put it:

"These numbers are, needless to say, terrifying, precisely because they capture a level of delusion that is truly hard to imagine."

Again, that level of delusion makes it impossible to make common cause with these lunatics, trolls and halfwits. Unless they fess up to the fact that THEIR side made an attack on our democracy - to the point of seeking to overturn an election result in the favor of a bombastic loser, all bets are off. There can be no comity, no unity, no American populace evolving in one direction.

Those who know their American history - not including the Trump MAGA terror tribe - recognized it had been more than 220 years since the U.S. Capitol was ransacked. That was in 1814, just 14 years after the building opened. Then British forces in the War of 1812 tried to burn it down. The invaders looted the building first, and then set the southern and northern wings ablaze — incinerating the Library of Congress. A sudden rainstorm prevented its total destruction.

But that event stands in stark contrast to the terrorism carried out by our own people on Wednesday, January 6th. Hundreds violating the citadel of our democracy, invading offices, terrorizing lawmakers, rifling through drawers, smashing furniture, pawing historic artifacts, defecating in the hallways, stealing documents - and oh yeah, leaving chewing tobacco spittle behind -- along with 11 Molotov cocktails, two pipe bombs and other paraphernalia, e.g. assault rifles fully loaded. All the time screaming "Our house!" when they don't belong in a dog house.

Who were these people? Steve Schmidt - former GOP strategist provided his insights on MSNBC 'Last Word' two days after the terror attack:

"These people are like the blackshirts of Italy, and brownshirts of Germany in the 1930s. They are society's losers. They're on society's fringe. This is an army of the aggrieved and the incited."

In other words, mainly society's losers, bottom feeders and wannabe tough guys - like Dominic Pezzola (a Catholic HS grad if you can believe it) and Jessica Watkins. Watkins - as shown in the 'Our House' special, was an OathKeeper who helped coordinate the Capitol attack. Pezzola appeared in videos smoking a cigar and bellowing:

"Victory smoke in the Capitol, boys. ... I knew we could take this (expletive) over if we tried hard enough."

Well, we'll see how you fare with 20 years in the slammer, fool. Maybe then you'll wish you hadn't tried so hard...to be a traitor. Both this deranged mutt and the transgender Watkins showed up at the Capitol seeking to raise hell, hunt down lawmakers and hang them - if they could have found them.

And now one finds the insurrection is being rubber-stamped (based on Trump's Big Lie) to pass over 200 voter suppression laws - by Repuke legislatures across the country. In 40 states and counting thus far, with Georgia already having passed the first set and Texas on the way.

This new GA law is just a knee-jerk effort to placate the false cries of Trump supporters of “rigged elections.” In fact, as legal specialist Sherrilyn Ifill pointed out last night on MSNBC (Maddow) these new suppression laws are really an extension of the January 6th insurrection. While the latter featured actual in your face violence and a rabid assault, the voter suppression laws hide their violence in their actual intent - using verbal window dressing ("expanding voting rights" etc.)

What we can be sure of is that before many more of these loathsome laws go into effect there will be an all out war to pressure companies to exact payback for the states seeking to follow Georgia's path. That is, using voting law changes to endorse and ratify the insurrection.

In the meantime, every effort must be made to combat the cynical impetus on the Right to downplay the insurrection or cast it in vanilla or prosaic terms. All the better to encourage the weak of mind to dismiss or diminish it. As for the Repukes, as blogger Thomas Hartmann has noted (see his post below) they can no longer be regarded as a legitimate political party - having gone all in for the insurrection as well as voter suppression. Now the GOP needs to be purged from the American political landscape - as a fascist pestilence alien to our nation's history and roots.

Until then, we need Dems to reject any efforts to work with the Reep rats. And we need a 1/6 Commission to investigate and officially brand the insurrection as what it was: a brazen effort to overthrow American democracy- at the behest of a sore loser traitor.

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