Storming the Capitol

We've all seen countless videos and images of the thousands of people who stormed and ransacked the Capitol last week.  I wrote about the insurrection when it happened here.   This has obviously been the biggest story in a sea of big stories and has resulted in a vote to impeach President Trump and lock down the Capitol for the inauguration like we've never seen.  I think most people are just anxious for it to be over and move on.

As we dissect and evaluate what happened, there is still one thing I just can't wrap my mind around.  So say you're an ardent Trump supporter and you heed his call to come to Washington DC on Jan 6.  It doesn't matter where you're from but you make your way to the Mall for the big demonstration.  There are thousands of supporters there and they are being whipped up by various speakers culminating in the President of the United States who tells everyone to march to the Capitol and fight like hell.  Of course, you being a relatively intelligent person realize that much of the rhetoric is political posturing and made for TV, but still it's exciting.  And maybe you even have half a brain in your head and know that the certification of the election by Congress is largely ceremonial and there is no way that objecting to it by sympathetic Congressmen is going to make a difference.  And not in a million, billion years is Vice President Pence going to somehow singlehandedly overturn the election.  It's never going to happen.  It's over.  But like I said, it's an exciting and heady environment.  So off you go with the crowd.  And you probably think you're gonna wind up at the Capitol and there maybe will be more speeches and a lot of milling around but that you will have been part of history and exercised your freedom of speech.  

But when you arrive you realize it's way more serious than you expected.  The rhetoric is turning fowl.  The people in the crowd look like people who could take a lot more serious action than you expected.  And as you're in the crowd it starts to surge forward.  Then you realize that the police are giving way because they aren't authorized to use deadly force.  And you get swept along with the crowd and all of a sudden you're on the steps climbing toward the door.  

So here's my question.  How in the world do you go through that door?  It's the door to the U.S. Capitol and you've realized that if you stay with that crowd nothing good will come from it.  In what world do you think taking over the U.S Capitol is a legitimate activity?  I get that there are a lot of violent, stupid people who occupy the far right and the far left in this country and it's not surprising that some of those knuckleheads would lower themselves to such despicable actions, but how does the normal political activist or political junky who simply attended a rally for the President advance to the point that they think violently entering the U.S. Capitol is okay.  I just can't wrap my mind around that.  

But I will say this, I hope they find you and I hope they hold you accountable.  And I'm not talking about a slap on the wrist or a fine.  I'm talking about making little rocks out of big rocks.  Because you are a traitor and an idiot.