Insurrection Videos

The January 6th Insurrection - when did it start? Without a doubt it started months before election day as Trump repeatedly alleged that the election would be rigged against him. He insisted that the only way he could lose would be if the election was stolen. He made false claims about the security of mail-in ballots among other things, and spent months priming his followers to be outraged if he lost. 

There's some doubt in my mind about whether Trump really believed what he was saying. Was he dazzled by the usually huge crowds that his rallies attracted, comparing them to Biden's campaigning from his home or appearing at sparsely attended events? Did he believe his own press releases? Was he truly surprised on election night as his early lead slipped away? Of course the phenomenon of early results skewing Republican while the later counted mail-in votes favored Democrats was predictable and was in fact predicted. Many states did not allow for mail-in and absentee ballots to be counted until election day votes had been tallied. Whether or not Trump believed what he was saying is irrelevant. Aside from the fact that what Trump believed about anything didn't always bear any resemblance to reality, there is a process to how we conduct our elections - refusing wholesale to accept the results of a national election is not part of that process.

(It is true that there have been challenges to electoral votes in the past, including by Democrats. The alternate slate of Hawaiian electors in 1960 for example. All of those challenges were pro forma and did not include the sustained attacks on the electoral system that we saw in 2020 and 2021. It is also true that Secretary Clinton, after her 2016 loss, complained about election interference, but did not engage in a sustained effort to reverse the results)

In order to understand how Trump's whining about his "landslide win" being stolen translated into an attack on the U.S. Capitol, you have to understand how Trumpism is indistinguishable from a religious cult. Like the typical follower of a religious cult leader, a Trumpist believes without question anything their leader says, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They excuse every and all wrongdoing by their leader. They ascribe to him qualities that he clearly does not have. He is viewed as a messianic figure. After Trump Myung Moon railed against "The Steal" for two months following the election, culminating in a speech railing against "The Steal" on the day that Congress would be certifying the electoral votes, the literal last chance to overturn the results of the election, with thousands of loyal Trumpists foaming at the mouth, what did he think would happen?

Trump is famous for implying things, suggesting them, rather than coming out and giving orders. It is well known that he avoids putting things in writing. Nowhere in his January 6th speech does he explicitly command (or even ask) his cultists to storm the Capitol or engage in violence in order to get Congress to not certify electoral votes that went to Biden. But Henry II didn't command any of his minions to kill the Archbishop of Canterbury when he said "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?", yet his knights understood what he wanted and killed Beckett anyway. The Trumpists in Washington on January 6, 2021 sure believed that he wanted them to "Stop The Steal" by any means possible and believed that they were doing his will when they forced their way into the Capitol. His isolated phrase encouraging them to go to the Capitol "patriotically and peacefully" was clearly at odds with the mood of his followers. It's clear that he wanted to intimidate Congress into decertifying enough Biden votes to ensure his re-election. 

Twice recently raw footage from security cameras and police bodycams on January 6th has been released. A limited amount of footage to Tucker Carlson and recently more complete footage released by Speaker of The House Johnson. Trump apologists are focusing on scenes showing Trumpists milling around the Capitol, peacefully interacting with police, and even shots of police holding the door for them as they entered. Trumpist media insists that this "proves" that January 6th was nothing more than a peaceful protest and that those who were inside the Capitol that day were guilty of nothing worse than trespassing. They claim that all those who were convicted and imprisoned are political prisoners. Those scenes of nonviolence are real. They aren't AI creations. They are accurate representations of some of what happened that day. Of course, not all. 

Before looking at actions, let's look at intent.

Everyone who was at Trump's speech that day, even those who did not march to the Capitol or go inside, was there because they believed that the democratically decided election should be overturned. It's clear that at least some in the crowd planed to use violence to achieve their aim, and some intended to track down Vice President Pence or Speaker Pelosi - fortunately Capitol Police were able to evacuate members of Congress to safety. Despite Trump's one line about being "peaceful and patriotic", most of his followers clearly didn't believe he was serious about that part, but that he was serious about "taking back our country" - and fighting to do it. They intended whether by violence or simple persuasion, to convince Congress to overturn an election. 

Once they arrived at the Capitol grounds the violence began. The overran the barricades, attacking the  police officers manning them. They broke windows and doors to get into the Capitol itself, attacking more police officers who tried to keep them out. While there has been no evidence that any of them had firearms, many used flagpoles, truncheons and weapons taken from the police to batter their way in. There is video footage of all of this. Enough that hundreds of participants have been arrested, charged and convicted of various crimes. How to explain the apparent difference between the battle outside and the quiet inside? The apologists' stories have changed multiple times. It wasn't really Trump supporters, it was Antifa. Or it was the FBI. Or the ones inside were a different group than the ones outside. Or there were FBI or Antifa agents provocateurs riling people up. Or the whole thing was an FBI false flag "to take Trump down". 

Is it really that complicated? 

Without a doubt the Trumpist mob was ready to do something, but they had no direction. Their cult leader, Trump, went back to The White House despite promising to march with them. Trump's legal strategy was disjointed and directionless, and his goals for January 6th were no less so. Some of his allies in Congress would challenge electoral votes in "blue" states, but that was about it. Trump got them excited about "taking back their country", but was vague about what that would entail, so they used their imaginations and envisioned themselves as uber-patriots. They knew that they had to get to the Capitol, so they crashed their way through the outer barricades. Some of them fought their way into the Capitol itself. The National Guard, which had been on hand during Black Lives Matter protests, was nowhere to be seen, so the police were outnumbered and overwhelmed. Once the mob got in, what did they do? Some of them engaged in petty theft and vandalism. Some of them went searching for members of Congress, but they and Vice President Pence had been successful evacuated. So what did they do? They meandered aimlessly through the halls of Congress, taking selfies. Why? Because they had no Plan B and their leader was nowhere to be found. 

The newly released video changes nothing. A mob invaded the Capitol while Congress was doing duty to certify the electoral votes, itself a largely symbolic, procedural, action. The election was over and their guy lost, but they couldn't accept it, because their cult leader wouldn't accept it. They had a vague goal that was not tied to an actual plan, and they were thwarted because what plan they did have was unrealistic; based on a fantasy of how things really were done. They foolishly listed to their false messiah and got crucified. 

An Absence of Thought

There's various theories about when politics got as bad as it is now, but there's no question that now, it's a mess. 

I've said it before, but the main reason is that the majority of voters do not want to weigh the issues, do not want to consider policy  alternatives,  do not want to think. A large percentage just want to be entertained. Cast your mind back to Donald Trump's first presidential campaign. How often did you hear him talk about how acting presidential was boring? How he avoided any substantive discussion of policy or any specific plans? No, his whole schtick consisted of rolling out empty applause lines and mocking his opponents. Rather than dismissing him as a clown, 46% of the electorate voted for him. 

Even after watching him stumble through four years of incompetence and ignorance, more people voted for him in 2020 than did in 2016. He was lucky, during his first three years, that there were no major new wars and the economy was still on the upward trend started in Obama's second term. His one big challenge, the Covid pandemic, he mismanaged so badly, providing no leadership and undermining his own team at every turn, that hundreds of thousands likely died who might have lived.  His legacy in that crisis was to give cover to conspiracy theorists and fringe anti-vaxxers who turned public health measures into political footballs. His main accomplishment, pushing the pharmaceutical companies to get a vaccine out in record time, was overshadowed by his encouragement of the nutjob caucus. 

Now, we're a few months before the first candidate selection contests for the 2024 election, and Trump is looking like the favorite to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, despite there being saner and arguably more effective candidates available. Of the declared Republican candidates, all would champion a typical conservative agenda, with the added bonus of not seeking revenge against every perceived "enemy" and turning the presidency into his personal fiefdom. 

All because voters don't want to think.

They are acting strictly emotionally. 

They feel like their guy is getting attacked and that it reflects on them. They don't want to admit that they were horribly wrong, so they believe every implausible word that comes out of his mouth. Because to believe otherwise reflects terribly on them. 

There's still no plan. Other than exacting retribution upon his foes. And one mistake he won't make if he's re-elected: that's appointing anyone who isn't 100% personally loyal to him. 

"I Stand With..." - Competing Narratives

The trouble with "standing with" either Israel or Palestine, i.e. the free-from-discomfort version of "standing with" entails on social media, is that you come face to face with the competing narratives that make up the story of what caused the causes of all the bloodshed. If you "Stand With Israel", do you stand with the government that has systematically oppressed Palestinian's? If you "Stand With Palestine", do you support the horrible actions of Hamas on October 7th? Maybe you just "stand with" the families of the killed and abducted that day, but your "stand" is sure to be misinterpreted as support for an increasingly fascistic, apartheid, regime. If you merely "stand with" the oppressed Palestinian people, who have virtually no rights, whether or not they participate or support terrorism, you'll be viewed as a cheerleader for terrorism. It's not simple, no matter what partisans for either side say. No matter what atrocity either side commits, they can always find an earlier atrocity by the other side to justify their actions. 

In addition to justifying bloodshed, each side trots out maps and other "evidence" to back up their side's claim to the land. Here's a map that tries to show that Israel has been systematically stealing Palestinian land since 1947:

The problem with the first map on the left is that it implies that all of that green land was occupied by Arabs. It does do a pretty good job of showing, in white, areas of Jewish majority settlement though. The downward pointing triangle in the south is the Negev desert, a sparsely populated (by Jews or Arabs) literal desert. Giving it to the nascent Jewish state was no prize. Some similar maps discard entirely the white areas, suggesting that there was no significant Jewish presence in Palestine. The truth is, no matter whether the population was Jewish or Arab, neither group owned Palestine, it had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. After World War I, the British took over administration of the area, which originally included what is now Jordan. The second map indicates the borders of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. Note that, other than the Negev, the border roughly follow the areas in the first map designated a "Jewish" land. (Reminds me of those post-election county maps in the United States). The borders were intended to award majority Jewish areas to the Jewish state and majority Arab areas to the Arab state. But the Arabs would not accept the plan, and with the support of neighboring Arab nations, attacked the newly formed State of Israel. The third map is accurate in that Israel now controlled more land than the U.N. plan called for, but those green areas do not represent a Palestinian State, the West Bank and Gaza were occupied, not by Israel, but by Jordan and Egypt respectively. Another war, in 1967 resulted in Israel taking those lands from Egypt and Jordan. The fourth map is broadly accurate in that it represents the encroachments by Jewish so-called settlers who have been little by little building Jewish "settlements" in the West Bank, supposedly Palestinian Arab territory. 

On the other side, those who believe that the Palestinians have no claim to the land sometimes base it on the fact that there never was a nation called Palestine. There's a social media post making the rounds:

A crash course on history of the so-called 'PALESTINIAN STATE'
1. Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a 'Palestinian state.'
2. Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
3. Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, not a 'Palestinian state.'
4. Before the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, there was the Ayubid Arab-Kurdish Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
5. Before the Ayubid Empire, there was the Frankish and Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a 'Palestinian state.'
6. Before the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, there was the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, not a 'Palestinian state.'
7. Before the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, there was the Byzantine empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
8. Before the Byzantine Empire, there were the Sassanids, not a 'Palestinian state.'
9. Before the Sassanid Empire, there was the Byzantine Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
10. Before the Byzantine Empire, there was the Roman Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
11. Before the Roman Empire, there was the Hasmonean (Jewish) state, not a 'Palestinian state.'
12. Before the Hasmonean state, there was the Seleucid Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
13. Before the Seleucid Empire, there was the Empire of Alexander the Great, not a 'Palestinian state.'
14. Before the empire of Alexander the Great, there was the Persian empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
15. Before the Persian Empire, there was the Babylonian Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
16. Before the Babylonian Empire, there were the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, not a 'Palestinian state.'
17. Before the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, there was the Kingdom of Israel, not a 'Palestinian state.'
18. Before the Kingdom of Israel, there was the theocracy of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, not a 'Palestinian state.'
19. Before the theocracy of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, there was an agglomeration of independent Canaanite city-kingdoms, not a 'Palestinian state.'
20. Actually, in this piece of land there has been everything, EXCEPT A 'PALESTINIAN STATE.'
A little more history for those wanting to 'restore Palestine'.
In 132 AD the Emperor Hadrian resolved to stamp the Jews and their religion out of existence. He sold all Jewish prisoners into slavery after the revolt of Bar Kokhba, forbade the teaching of the Torah, renamed the province Syria Palaestina, and changed Jerusalem’s name to Aelia Capitolina. He renamed Israel to wipe out the national identity of Israel and the Jews.
So if you are looking to 'restore Palestine to the Palestinians', you should consider giving it back to the Jews. After all, the Jews are called "Jews" because they are the indigenous people from Judea.

The first time I saw this I was taken aback at how utterly stupid it is. (The very first line of this idiocy should make you stop and think - the name of the British Mandate was Palestine) Not that it's historically inaccurate, the chain of rulers of the area are, as far as I can tell, correct, it's just irrelevant to now.  No one is claiming that there existed a Palestinian State that Israel somehow caused to cease to exist. No one is claiming that they are trying to restore a Palestinian state. The Arab inhabitants of the area, as well as the neighboring Arab nations, saw the creation of a Jewish state in the midst of a mostly Arab land as akin to invasion, an imposition of something foreign. Of course Jews had lived in what is now Israel and Palestine for millennia, but pre-World War I they accounted for around 3% of the total population. Due to decades of immigration, at the time of Israel's independence, it was still only around 35%. It's very easy to see how indigenous Arabs would be dismayed that another culture would be supplanting theirs. They're not demanding a return to an earlier political status, but to self-determination in a land that most of them have lived in for generations, if not centuries. 

The part of the narrative that appeals to the Bible doesn't help. If you believe that the creator of the heavens and the Earth gave you a plot of land (which according to Israeli hardliners includes the West Bank) it's hard to be convinced otherwise. It doesn't matter that you didn't have physical possession of that land for close to 2000 years, God still gave it to you, so everyone else is wrong! The unequivocal support for Israel by most American politicians is also based on the Bible - the "End Times" can't start until the nation of Israel has been re-established. Americans who have no use for Jews in particular are big supporters of a Jewish nation because it jibes with their apocalyptic worldview. But it's not like the Palestinians aren't hardheaded either. Despite their opposition to a Jewish state in their midst, Israel as a sovereign nation is a fact. Palestinian leaders had multiple opportunities for their own sovereign nation, but turned down the opportunity each time. They're as irrational in their demands as the Ultra-Orthodox settlers are in claiming that the West Bank is theirs because it's really "Judea and Samaria". 

These competing narratives have had the effect of legitimizing anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred. Hate speech and violent actions by those who conflate Jews with the Israeli government and pro-Palestinians with Hamas, has intensified. Bigots look for any excuse to exercise their bigotry. 

I feel sorrow for the Israelis as well as the foreign nationals who were brutally murdered on October 7th. I'm saddened at the continued oppression by the Israeli government of ordinary Palestinians and the unbelievable death toll due to the retaliation against Hamas that affects all of Gazans. But I certainly don't "stand" with either the Israeli government or Hamas. And I don't support us once again getting involved in the never-ending mess in that small patch of real estate.