One of the things I've been trying to piece together is how all the various security forces we have in place at the Capitol failed on 6 January. It's quite embarrassing, really: the Capitol Police alone have 2,000 men, the DC National Guard another thousand-plus battalion, and then there's the FBI, the Park Police, the Metro Police Department, the National Guard units from VA and MD that could be called with short notice, even the 3rd Infantry Regiment in Arlington (and the Marines not too far down the road in Quantico).
We had plenty of guys who could have been there, and plenty of advance notice of a demonstration likely to spin out of control. Yet somehow, dudes with bison hats were wandering the halls of Congress.
Here's another part of the puzzle.
I couldn't get past "crowds of Trump supporters, many of them white supremacists...."
ReplyDeleteThey were caught off guard because conservative protests haven't previously been violent.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't pick up - none of us did - the the Proud Boys really are a different item. Plenty of people have gotten angry and contemplated doing something they shouldn't over the years, but they kept it under control. The Proud Boys were organised, and egged each other on.
I don't know how much overlap they have with QAnon, but i don't think the latter was organised, just showing up and angry, which usually fizzles out.
I'd toss in a few Black Bloc types as well. Based on the arrests that I've heard about, more than one of the "let's trash things just to trash things" types got in with the crowd.
ReplyDeleteThe footage I've seen of the Capitol Police removing the barricades and leading people into the building . . . Riot? I've fled riots, and that did not look anything like a riot. Or an armed assault on the building (to quote one breathless after-the-fact news reader's line.)
LittleRed1
The Proud Boys really are very aggressive. I have a friend in DC who bemoans when they come to town because they just beat the heck out of people. Not necessarily anyone who deserves it, just anyone available.
ReplyDelete“Western Chauvinism,” their self-declared cause, is at least somewhat plausible. They’re not as good an advertisement for it as, say, Plato or orchestral music.
What struck me was the utter lack of actual drill and practice.
ReplyDeleteAll our radar squadrons in Germany had additional duty security teams whose task it was to resist Spetsnaz and other intruders. They could deal with a number of intruder scenarios and had no hope of dealing with Spetsnaz--they still drilled the hell out of the scenarios.
Not preparing for anything other than plain vanilla softcakes is pretty inexcusable.
Eric Hines
Let's imagine a counter-factual.
ReplyDeleteTrump, either on Election Day or later, flips those 100K votes he needs in PA, AZ, and GA and wins the EC 279-259 while losing the popular vote.
Other than the headgear, what would have been different about a protest on the day the Electoral College votes were certified?
Other than the headgear, what would have been different about a protest on the day the Electoral College votes were certified?
ReplyDeleteWe saw the answer to that on 20 Jan 2016.
Eric Hines
I suspect that both of you are correct, and that 2020 would have been even worse than 2016. Yet it cannot be admitted as evidence, as we don't know - well, we do, but not with provable certainty. I am always on the lookout for things that might persuade the independent, while also keeping an eye out for the possibility that powerful converts are sometimes drawn from the committed advocates from the other side as well.
ReplyDeletehttps://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2021/01/11/apparently-people-desire-a-q-anon-briefing/
ReplyDeleteThe super majority of what people know about the DC and the label QAnon, is via disinformation/fake news.