Storming the Capitol: A Blunder

An old quotation of uncertain origin spoke of a certain political execution as "worse than a crime, a blunder" (which is merely an attempt to be cute; a mistake could never be considered worse than a sin). Multitudes are decrying the riot at the Capitol as a crime. Very few are seeing it clearly. It was, above all, a blunder. Its fallout is beyond calculation.

A lot of video footage was recorded. The rally at which Trump and Giuliani spoke was tame. The crowd was peaceful and sensible. Unquestionably their intentions were honorable as they proceeded to the Capitol. But some bad actors decided to defy the barricades which were manned by the Capitol police and they violently struggled, breached the barrier, and flooded to the Capitol building, drawing others in their train. Then mob psychology took over. Large numbers crowded the steps and porches, stupidly thinking that they were going to intimidate the Congresscritters to "stop the steal."

The police tried to drive them off with tear gas, but the high winds rendered the tactic ineffective. I suppose that this emboldened the protestors even more. Not just the strongest man in the world, but even God himself was apparently on their side.

They got in and behaved very badly (although it could have been much worse). The Capitol police, overwhelmed, were in danger--how much danger, they couldn't know--and they were responsible for protecting the Congresscritters. The mob attacked the door to the Speakers Lobby and were smashing their way through when a cop fired once and killed Ashli Babbitt. They quit smashing after that.

A mob is a well-known phenomenon in human history. There's nothing modern about it, nothing new, and therefore nothing surprising about January 6th, 2021. Another thing that is well-known is the vicious mendacity of the mainstream media. Also well-known is the statistical probability that the crowd would include a few delusional lunatics who came to the event with the intent of staging an armed insurrection, such as the guy with the Molotov cocktails in his truck and perhaps the one photographed with the zip-tie handcuffs.

Trump was oblivious of it all. Instead of carefully warning and instructing his crowd, he proceeded as if nothing could go wrong.

As I write, rats are scurrying for cover. Not the protestors, I say, but professional politicians who are trying to get ahead of the aftershocks. One after another is calling for impeachment of the President, who is leaving office in ten days. Plainly, they are just making mouth noises for effect. A number of staffers are resigning, another virtue-signaling gesture without substance. The news media, never averse to using words in violation of their meanings, are shrieking about "insurrection" and "coup." They do it, of course, because it works.

The dissident movement which saw in Trump a possibility of stopping our national suicide made its first colossal blunder in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Although the protestors, generally, were prepared to be attacked by a Communist mob (as had happened previously in places like Sacramento, California), the movement didn't anticipate that the police would stand by and permit the attack (and even block the protestors' escape route so that they had to pass through the mob) and that the news media would report the event exactly backwards, as though the protestors had attacked the Communists, and that they could make the story stick. But the media did make the story stick, and the lies about that event are now the official party line which no one may contradict. Because the rally organizers never saw it coming and, for whatever reason, were not able to regain control of the narrative, Charlottesville was a blunder of incalculable loss.

But whatever the cost of that blunder, it cannot approach what we have suffered from this one. I hope that we can recover, but God must be with us if that is to happen. These blunders tempt me to doubt. Enoch Powell, in his famous "Rivers of Blood" speech, quoted an ancient Greek proverb: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. How deep and wide our current national madness is remains to be seen, but the prospects are not encouraging.