A friend forwarded this useful summary to me this morning.
From: FOREIGN POLICY LIST SERVE JANUARY 7, 2021
A violent mob of protesters loyal to and egged on by U.S. President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday as lawmakers were attempting to officially certify the victory of President-elect Joe Biden in November’s election.
Rioters overwhelmed local police, invaded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, looted furniture and mementos, and ran freely through the hallways of the Capitol as hundreds of lawmakers went into hiding.
Washington, D.C. authorities say four people died during the violence, one of whom was shot by police. The joint session of Congress reconvened late on Wednesday evening and, after debating through the night, officially certified Biden’s victory early on Thursday morning.
The events seem to have taken local authorities by surprise: Police could be seen jostling with protesters while clad in bike helmets and light protective gear—a far cry from the mass militarization the city saw in the wake of protests over the death of George Floyd during the summer.
The world reacts. International reaction came swiftly. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the scenes as “disgraceful” and called for a peaceful transfer of power. “American democracy tonight appears under siege,” said Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign-policy chief. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, meanwhile, retweeted posts comparing the protesters to those that stormed the Venezuelan National Assembly with Juan Guaidó last year.
It can happen here. If the limp U.S. response in 2020 to the coronavirus pandemic shattered the long-held belief (in official Washington at least) of an exceptional America, unique among nations, Wednesday’s scenes of a people’s legislature under armed assault dusted away any remaining shards.
President-elect Joe Biden, in urging Trump to tell the mob to stand down, employed rhetoric that sometimes seemed from a bygone era. Congress, a den of gridlock for the past decade, was a “citadel of liberty” under attack. The Capitol scenes “do not reflect the true America,” Biden said.
Other politicians had more practical concerns. Rep. Ilhan Omar has begun drafting articles of impeachment against the president. Her Democratic colleague Sen. Tom Carper was more circumspect, cautioning against retribution and urging lawmakers to “turn the page.” Even so, Carper was calling for Trump’s resignation soon after making those comments.
The insurrection lives on. As Wednesday’s attack makes clear, there is a vocal minority with no interest in reconciliation. Brendan O’Connor, the author of a forthcoming book on the extremist groups given new life by President Trump, told Foreign Policy that these organizations are in for the long haul.
“We need to prepare ourselves for this kind of thing in the years to come,” O’Connor said. “I don’t think that political violence and political street violence is going away: This is part of politics in the U.S. now. “It’s also part of U.S. national security concerns. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that of 893 terrorist attacks and plots in the United States since 1994, 57 percent of those were planned or carried out by right-wing extremist groups, (and that share is even higher if only recent years are taken into account).
QAnon and on and on. Among the protesters were tell-tale signs of QAnon support, which Justin Ling describes as a “conspiracy movement-cum-mass delusion.” It’s beliefs have now become so mainstream in Republican circles, Ling writes, that “Trump is, for all intents and purposes, the new Q.”
A coup? Not quite, says Naunihal Singh, a professor at the Naval War College and the author of Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups in an interview with FP Editor-at-Large Jonathan Tepperman. Paul Musgrave, argues that it was undeniably a coup attempt.
America the exceptional? It’s not easy to say how much the storming of the Capitol will contribute to the decline in the reputation of the United States abroad. That’s because that decline has already been so steep: A Gallup poll of 29 countries in 2020 found that 20 already had approval ratings of U.S. leadership that are at new lows or that tie the previous record lows.
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America, the greatest ship of fools.
Kinda reminiscent of that incident two years ago when a dozen self-styled royalists stormed the Office of Hawaiian Affairs headquarters posing as law enforcement officers and assaulted staff there, even breaking one employee’s ribs.
Five people were arrested but was anyone ever actually prosecuted? Seriously. This was state property and state employees. WTF?? How is that in any way acceptable?
You must be a real malihini. People who commit criminal acts in the name of Hawaiian sovereignty/separatism/politics are rarely held accountable in Hawaii, even those who illegally occupy and desecrate Iolani Palace, and that’s a big part of the problem. Well, there was that one young woman who went to jail for a little while after breaking a palace window and tramping around inside, but she was just a common druggie with no political rhetoric to spout or followers to stir up. The “King Who Couldn’t Find the Throne” and his cohorts never went to jail after breaking in, nor did the “Queen” who occupied the palace grounds with her coterie and locked the public out. Drama, drama, drama. With no consequences.
I think one of the bigger side stories out of all this is the contrast of how these inbred rubes were treated by “law enforcement”, overall, versus how it would have played out if it were mobs of BLM/antifa/social justice activists storming the precious “bastion of democracy”.
I guarantee the body count would have been much higher.
That is true. Also, it’s mainstream reporting from an incomplete and power-sided view. There is so much more to the incident, like how did the woman picked from a front group of men get picked off by an internal sharp shooter? Let’s investigate that story.
A) She was probably a LOT more gung ho and conspiracy minded than the goobers around her (who were all filming video content with their phones) based on what her family said about her mindset. She had issues. She acted of her own volition.
B) She was shot by a capitol security official (probably Sergeant At Arms office) who was tasked to protect the members of congress at any cost. Not an “internal sharpshooter”. He would have been neglecting his duty (like so many other capitol police) had he NOT prevented her from entering. He was justified, in my opinion.
Her shooting was documented on a video clip that showed she was with a group of men who were smashing out bulletproof windows in doors leading to one of the chambers. My understanding is that members of congress and their staff were huddled down near this door while capitol police stood guard at the doors. Her group succeeded in clearing out the windows in the door, and the woman tried to be the first one to climb through the window in the rightmost door, and was shot and fell back into the arms of the people who had massed around the door. The crowd was massed around the door, and somebody who was trying to aid the woman was screaming for them to move back so that medics could get to the woman, that the woman was bleeding to death on the floor. Tragic that this woman, who had served in security positions in the military and private business, apparently assumed she would not face deadly force if she tried to enter where capitol police were protecting the lives of members of congress and their staff.
See Washington Post for two videos documenting the death of the woman. Police shooter appeared to be covering the retreat of House Members and staff out of the House chamber to a more secure location which was seen happening on the other side of the door just moments before the woman tried to climb through the window.
I saw the full video of what went down prior to the shot fired killing the woman. It was clear she would have been the first person to make it through and into an area where Reps and Senators were hiding. There is no doubt she would have been followed in by the rest of the mob. Taking her out was necessary. This resulted in the mob being sidetracked and eventually dispersed. The fact that a female rather than a male was taken out should not be of importance. Her demeanor in the moments prior to her death will be reviewed by the Attorney General and I believe it will be found that the shooting was necessary to help regain control of a potentially deadly situation. This was a person bent on breaking into that area and she had to be taken down. The distraction created by her shooting saved the day IMO.