Attempted Coup d’État
As we now know, there were at least two broadly discernible groups of people in the attack on the Capitol. A number of them were clearly there to take hostages (the zip ties) and most likely to kill. They crushed a Capitol policeman between the doors, beat another to death, and battered the doors down to get to the Congress. They were about to create a terrible human tragedy; they traumatized America, in a way reminiscent of 9/11.
They came directly from the Save America rally.
Seth Abramson’s extraordinary line-by-line analysis of the President’s speech, in a series of tweets,(https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1347908845281095680?s=20),
shows the role played by Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric in inciting the crowd.
And of course it may well be worse than that: the late 2020 changes in the personnel of the Department of Defense (DOD Statement on Changes in Personnel, November 10, 2020; NPR Analysis of Changes, November 11, 2020), the orders given to the various forces around the capital, the delay in granting permission to the Maryland National Guard to intervene, as described by Governor Larry Hogan, suggest that something worse may have been at work.
Because the killers seemed to know their way around the Capitol, because they so quickly reached Nancy Pelosi’s office, because they were shouting “Kill Mike Pence,” just as Trump had said he “would not like [Pence] so much” if Pence obeyed the law, this will require a lengthy investigation, perhaps by a national Commission, during the Biden administration. (One thing among many that I will not miss is Trump’s woefully limited vocabulary.)
Of course the support troops were no prizes, either:
Diehard Trumpists: a toxic combination of white supremacists, confederate flags, Nazi occultism (the guy in the center), and antisemitism, topped with Maga hats.
One of the videos circulating throughout the world shows the Trump family preparing for their appearance in a tent behind the gathering crowd, with Trump watching the screens intently (New Zealand Herald, January 7, 2021). This has been widely viewed, and at first was wrongly labeled as the Trump family watching the storming the Capitol. But as we know, having sent his marchers off, Trump fled to the White House.
There cannot be “healing” without justice. And another thing is also clear. We have ten more days, but those will include the planning for the Biden inauguration. Trump must not be in a position to be giving the orders for capital security.
