I’ve never seen an accurate count of the number of people who were in attendance at the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021. I estimated that my estimate, based on an eyeball count, was somewhere between tens and thousands. The crowd was visible from the Capitol steps all the way across the National Mall to the Washington Monument. On the Capitol steps, there were hundreds of people, perhaps a few thousand.
Right-wingers have become accustomed to downplaying the events of 6 January, largely as a response to the leftists’ hysterical interpretation of them and their key role in weaponizing the Department of Justice to attack the American people. In the past, I’ve downplayed the severity of the crimes committed by the rioters. All right. We should mock our enemies when they hyperventilate about the Temple of Democracy. When they claim that the 2021 skirmish was the greatest threat to our republic ever, we must respond with force and a counternarrative based on history and facts.
The sheer size of the protests and the riots that followed them should not be overlooked. A crowd of unprecedented size, and certainly in the politics a nation so notoriously disengaged as ours, gathered in front of the government building to express their deep sense of injustice. This fact is the root of the actual disorder. (Nostalgia lies at the core of the conservative disposition. Who can forget fondly the time when the scandal of the era was the dust-up about the attendance numbers for Obama’s and Trump’s respective inductions?)
But to say it was a massive event does not mean that it was ora fringe event. As the Capitol affair fades into history, it is easy to forget how bizarre the whole thing really was. The Capitol riot was largely a QAnon affair, at least in the militant areas. The signs read: SAVE THE CHILDREN FROM Hollywood pedophilia, and crimes against humanity. The chants included: Biden is a lover of minors. The megaphones were used to make the accusation, which was sung in an eerie manner against Mike Pence.
The whole QAnon story can be dismissed as leftist panic or worse. It was said sincerely at the Capitol on that day by people who didn’t seem to be cut out for working undercover.
In general, I think that QAnon and both Genesis creation stories are real. It’s more about symbol, sense, and revelation than history. In some ways it is truer than truth: a more complete explanation than mundane facts alone can provide. QAnon could be anything else (cognitive intrusion, anyone?). It is a poetic distillation that captures the American divide. The growing gap between the people and the elite, whose moral framework we cannot understand. Their moral framework seems hardly human. Does Hillary Clinton drink the blood of infants in a New York Penthouse signed by Jeffrey Epstein, or is it a metaphor? Most likely not. It is a good image of our political reality.
The Capitol riot may have been a result of the rift between the people and their leaders, but its aftermath only served to exacerbate the division. Liberals from both sides of the aisle in Congress are now ten times more pious than on January 5, 2005. It has turned their praetorian body into a quasi-religious group, particularly those who have leaned towards the politicization. It has also made an example out of over 1,200 Americans who were arrested for a wide range of crimes, most of which were nonviolent. According to the Washington Examiner, the total number of years of imprisonment for those convicted has reached 847.
Washington, D.C., has been an American-free zone for a long time. Racially, Washington, D.C. is similar to most big blue cities. Its poverty rate is well above the national average, as is its per capita income. The percentage of residents with college degrees in D.C. is almost double that of America at large. Even Boston, our usual symbol of the educated elite in America, is more than 10 points behind D.C. This is a city full of extremes. It’s filled with the very rich and the very poor, all of whom are Democrats. More than three-quarters of them are Democrats.
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It is therefore impossible for an average American in Washington to be tried by a jury made up of their peers. Pat Buchanan (founder of this magazine and close advisor to Nixon) drew criticism from those who were offended by his remarks about the Watergate defendants. Can we pretend, even if the FBI set up the case and the previous question was whether the election had been stolen, that these men and women who were convicted of anti-Democratic actions by this jury are anything more than political prisoners, despite the fact that they have not been convicted of any crime?
Perhaps they are lucky, relative speaking. Ashli Babbitt, like so many other details from January 6, has faded in the past three years. The Air Force veteran is the most apt symbol of that day, and the larger problem. Babbitt, who was unarmed and non-threatening, was caught up in the chaos. Michael Byrd was the officer who shot her to death. He had made headlines before for having left his loaded service gun in a Capitol restroom, which was found by a tourist.
We can perhaps say that Ashli was murdered by the Regime. Not everything has to be literal. From a baby’s snot to the halls or state, it doesn’t matter. If we’re going to be literal about it, Ashli was murdered by Michael Byrd. His actions showed that he lacked the mental capacity to handle a service gun, and he was promoted for his troubles. Bloodshed is a sign of a corrupt regime, as is the elevation of heroes. Let the trail end here: Babbitt and Byrd is our vision of America in 2021, 2020, and for eternity.