A rant about the January 6th insurrection in Washington, DC

I am so angry right now. Angry and scared.

I am angry at every single person who elevated the nonsense and lies about the election being in any way invalid. I am angry at the people who did it for self-serving reasons to fleece people of their money, at people who wanted to “present both sides,” at people who “just want to hear them out.” No. You don’t “present both sides” or “hear them out” when THEY ARE LYING. When the WHOLE FUCKING POINT was to say, “hey, there are these rumors of fraud so we have to investigate them” after THEY STARTED THE RUMORS.

I can do that, too. I’ll start a rumor that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is brainwashing people’s pet dogs to encourage them to drink more water. Look! Now it’s a rumor! It must therefore be valid and worth people’s time and attention to debate and investigate! And in the meantime, don’t drink ANY water because you don’t know if it’s part of the conspiracy.

Fuck all of you.

I am angry at people who say what happened in DC yesterday is “tragic” or “sad” or “disappointing.” No! It’s not tragic! It’s terrorism! This was a literal attempt by a fringe political group with backing from their Dear Leader to prevent a legal and procedural action by the joint Houses of Congress. It wasn’t a stunt. It wasn’t just some people playing around. It WAS NOT a protest. This was an actual attempt to overthrow an election. This was an ARMED INSURRECTION.

(And, if some wonderfully clever and brave aide hadn’t grabbed the electoral ballot boxes on the way out while running for their lives from gunfire, it might have worked. Yeah, there are contingencies. But then it’s “Oh, it was irregular! Somehow magically the real ballots got lost, so they don’t count, so REDO THE ELECTION.” Same song different verse from the rumor game above.)

I am angry at people who say “this isn’t who we are.” FUCK. Read your goddamn history, or take a glance at current events. This is EXACTLY who we are, and who we have always been. Is it who YOU are, personally? I hope not. If it is, get the fuck off my website. But part of the reason this behavior continues is because WE don’t accept that WE are part of the problem and the system that upholds it. We own this. Every smug white liberal progressive who marched with BLM and votes with their dollars has to own that this is us, too. We are the racist cops, we are the Nazis in the streets. We are the US descending into violence every day. And just like we have to go and argue with our racist uncles and get them to change their vote and step back from Parler, WE have to own that we have benefited from the privilege of not being black, or not being Jewish, or not being LGBT, and demand better until our last breath. This is EXACTLY who we are.

You want proof?

Why did the House of Representatives go into its recession? They had articles of Impeachment drafted and ready for the floor. They had motions to censor the assholes who objected to the ballots. They had demands to investigate the actions of the Capitol Police who actually LET THE FUCKERS IN and TOOK SELFIES WITH THEM and then GENTLY ESCORTED THEM OUT. Why did they end the session until AFTER THE FUCKING INAUGURATION?

Because the establishment, YES, even the liberal establishment, ESPECIALLY the liberal establishment, is comfortable. Oh, look, the bad guys got a slap on the wrist and they clearly learned their lesson. Order has been restored. Let’s not do the messy business of looking back. Let’s “move forward.”

THIS IS WHO WE ARE. We are a nation with leaders who turned the other cheek or didn’t bother to hold with courage in a time of crisis. We are responsible for them. We let them look away and demure. We did it here, and we’ve done it for literal generations of police violence and racist voting laws and unequal pay and rape culture and domestic violence and harassment online. WHO WE ARE is lazy enough to perpetuate this system and people have suffered for it for decades.

There is a straight fucking line you can draw from slavery and pre/post-Civil War racism (and the whole OVERTHROWING AND MURDERING LEGALLY ELECTED BLACK PEOPLE AND REPLACING THEM WITH MORE WHITE RACISTS in the Wilmington insurrection of 1898) to today. It passes through domestic violence and McCarthyism and anti-immigrant violence and religious xenophobia and scaremongering about trans people in bathrooms and excusing football players who rape girls at parties and every single act of violence against the black community. These aren’t skeletons in our closets. These are actual underpinnings of our culture. And until we own that and understand that our sweet old grandparents and cute neighbors who vote conservative are as culpable as the mob that grew out of their complacence, we’re not going to do a damn thing about it.

I am angry at people who say this “doesn’t have to be a big deal.” I am SO ANGRY.

What, exactly, do you think comes next here, huh? “Oh, they had their fun, now they’ll go home and quit trying to overthrow the government.” NOT HOW IT FUCKING WORKS. Again, READ YOUR HISTORY. Hitler attempted a coup 10 years before he took power. It looked a FUCKING LOT like what we saw in DC yesterday. He was stopped and imprisoned. He came back. Because there were no real consequences to his beliefs or his actions. Nobody made it hard for him to gather followers, nobody prevented his sick message from being amplified.

Right now, those assholes are literally celebrating online. They see yesterday as a victory, and they’re already using it to recruit more people to their side. This isn’t the “culmination” of anything. This is fucking DRESS REHEARSAL. The storming of the Michigan state capitol earlier this year was the first proof that they could waltz into governmental properties, fully armed, verbal about their desire to do damage or even take lives, and PEOPLE WOULD LET THEM. And now they’ve done it to Congress itself.

What do you think they’re going to do on Jan 20th? Or the next time Congress is debating a bill they don’t like? What do you think they’ll do to the Minnesota State Capitol, or Wisconsin, or anywhere else they feel emboldened? There are NO CONSEQUENCES to their actions, so they will push harder. They will do MORE.

(And if the reason you’re trying to downplay this, or use soft words, is for your own self-soothing — grow up. Do that in private if you need to. But if you come online, if you say one word of conciliation publicly, then you are STILL PART OF THE PROBLEM. I know you’re scared. I’m scared. But this isn’t a monster that goes away when you shut your eyes. IT GETS BIGGER.)

I am angry at every single news station — looking at you KSTP — who gave any amount of airtime to the “there were ANTIFA in these protests” bullshit. Now you’re giving them cover. Now you’re letting them rewrite the narrative of “both sides are the same.” NO THEY ARE NOT. FUCKING DO BETTER or get out of journalism.

I am angry at every single person on the liberal side of this who isn’t outraged that four people are dead. Treasonous actors stormed a government building while Congress was in session. Our representatives and senators were crawling on the ground wearing gas masks and some of them had to barricade themselves in their offices for their own safety. And four people are dead.

That those four were with the mob is no excuse. It doesn’t and shouldn’t matter who they are. People are dead. And if we really truly believe that BLM means that police violence has to end, then we cannot, CANNOT just shrug when the violence goes in our favor. Either we allow the system to kill people, or we don’t. If we start deciding that it’s okay for cops/law enforcement/whoever to kill people “in an emergency” then what stops them from deciding any black person on the street is an “emergency.”

I’m really firm on this one, folks. Either you believe the state has the right to execute people without a trial or you don’t. And if we are EVER going to protect black people from police violence, then we must by necessity condemn police violence EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS. If we let it go and call it “justified” then we’ve given them the latitude to justify more murder of black people.

(That’s not the same thing as saying ‘all lives matter.’ That’s racist blue line bullshit. Don’t play that game with me.)

I am angry with social media and it’s epically shitty performance over the last ten years. Facebook is shit. Twitter is shit. They perpetuate this stuff, they allow it, they don’t censor it, and then they act surprised when people plan a coup attempt on their goddamn platforms. It took THIS for Twitter to fucking deactivate Trump’s account for 12 hours. That’s not twiddling your thumbs while Rome burns. That’s distributing pamphlets so people can “decide for themselves” where to find the best places to light the fires.

I am angry with the treasonous mob that attempted a coup. I haven’t mentioned that specifically, but I am. But I’m not going to go into depth about why I’m angry with them because OF COURSE THIS IS WHAT THEY DID. THEY ARE NAZIS. THIS IS WHAT NAZIS DO. If you can’t figure out all the reasons to be angry at them, get off my website.

Also, WE FUCKING OPENED THE DOOR FOR THEM. See everything above. So, yeah. Angry at the insurrection mob. But there is no looking away from or softening the fact that they would NEVER have gotten to this point if we didn’t set them up to succeed at every fucking step along the way.

I am so so angry.

And that anger is fueled by fear. Because we let this happen. We built a world where this was inevitable. And now we’re already backing off and saying that it’s all fine, let’s not point fingers, let’s not make this worse than it is.

THAT MAKES IT WORSE.

I’m angry, because I can tell you right now that next time will be worse. Next time, more people will die. Next time, we might have politicians gunned down in their chambers. Next time those racist Nazi fuckers might get to use the gallows they set up on the fucking lawn.

I’m angry because every fucking misstep we make now means that I’m going to be a lot more scared next time. Means that more lives will be lost in more horrific ways, and the damage to our nation will cut ever deeper. Means that more violence will be normalized, that “both sides are the same” will be stronger than ever, and this is the future we are building ourselves.

Maybe you didn’t, personally, vote in the malignant narcissist who is now in his Discard phase — and if you haven’t, go read up on the experts, the doctors, who have already explained all this at length and what it means and how much worse it will get. Maybe you aren’t, personally, one of the people looking away and saying “that’s a shame.”

But if you’re not angry, and not scared, then you’re fucking lying to yourself. Stop it. Do better.

Our lives, our nation, and the lives of the people we profess to respect or want to protect, are hanging in the balance of how clearly you choose to see this moment and what you do with that information.

Choose very, very carefully.