The Tale of Two Revolts 1
Is it crazier to think Climate Change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, or to believe that it is real and that an incremental approach by government paired with responsible behavior by corporations is enough to combat it?
When the mob of thousands attacked the US Capitol building earlier this month, it was a riot of true believers. They knew their champion in the White House was cheated out of the Presidency and they were there to take it back for him. They thought this was their 1776. They believed that after getting screwed for decades they finally got a man that was going to fight for them, and that The Establishment, the Media, the Deep State, and Hugo Chavez’s ghost all conspired to take him out. After 10 months of lockdowns with barely any support from the Government, when they lost their livelihoods, their ability to practice their faith as they chose, burned through their life savings witnessing the collapse of the economy for the second time in a little over a decade through no fault of their own, the one person they believed was truly fighting for them was getting kicked out of office after what they believed to be a fraudulent election orchestrated by every segment of elite society they despised.
Faced with such a scenario, is it not only reasonable, but also rational, to to march to the Capitol and “take back your Government”?
No.
Nowhere near the required amount of evidence existed to support anything close to what was being alleged. The mouthpieces for these allegations had discredited themselves over and over again, and the media outlets uncritically reporting on these allegations had repeatedly proven themselves as nakedly partisan. At some point the fever has to break, and you have to admit that you’ve been had. The primary characters in this saga were lying, and lying with impunity. Every allegation they made about fraud in the election could be easily disproved. Many of those allegations had a logic so faulty that one would find oneself question their sanity trying to explain why the allegation was false. But that didn’t stop them from lying.
The Capitol riots could have been prevented with a stronger defensive presence by Police, and coming out of this thinking the government should have more power to track and trace individuals mouthing-off online would be a historic mistakes. Every tool the government needed to prevent this, it already had. Starting with the people inside the Capitol, who were trying to placate the rioters by opening up new investigative commissions, instead of just telling them the hard truth that their guy lost the election, some self reflection will from those individuals will be a good starting point. Every law they need to find and prosecute the rioters, and every dollar they need to fund security, they already have. There are elements already jockeying to write new Domestic Terror laws, and those efforts should be fought. It’s another unnecessary blank check that will inevitably be misused.
The more important debate to be had is why thousands of people felt compelled to enter the Capitol en masse, and why millions of others watched it all unfold on TV and said “Good.” It is difficult to figure out why each individual decided to show up that day. They all carried banners that literally explained that they were there to “Stop The Steal!”, but to reach a point of frenzy that leads you to commit serious crimes deserves deeper analysis and not dismissed with contempt. Yes, there are many participants who have an unsympathetic backgrounds, like that one Texas woman who flew in on a private jet and is now trying to crowdfund her legal defense. But for each private jet flying hypocrite or jack-booted Proud Boy or opportunistic white supremacist, there were hundreds that were spending money that didn’t come by easily, to do what they thought they needed to save the American democracy. I’m not defending their actions, especially because their actions led to the deaths of several innocent people. That is loss we can never undo. I’m just asking you to more deeply consider the series of actions that led to Jan 6th.
The pandemic brought upon an unprecedented encroachment into the private lives of people. That in & of itself isn’t an attack on civil liberties, or some form of, sigh, totalitarianism. Infectious diseases don’t stop spreading because it would violate the 4th Amendment. If public messaging from the beginning had explained the seriousness of the disease and implored people, in a more unified way, to follow public health guidelines, countless lives could have been saved. However, when early attempts at mitigation failed, and the blunt tool of mass lockdowns had to be used, the general level of unfairness we all live with during normal times became really hard to stomach. Amazon was already sucking up retail businesses, but then they had to watch it suck up hundreds of billions more in retail as their own stores were forced to remain closed. Politicians for whom a certain amount of soft corruption is considered par for the course, decided to sell stock to protect their assets when they learned of the seriousness of the upcoming pandemic instead of warning the public. Celebrities who always found the time to lecture others on equality and justice revealed themselves to be just as vain and entitled as you would expect from someone so removed from general society. And on top of it all, at the end of such a painful year, all the government could do for assistance was a paltry rescue package after playing cynical political games all year that barely put a bandaid on this gushing wound. What happened at the Capitol is the work of a handful of extremely irresponsible individuals with a giant megaphone in their hand. But to create the circumstances that preceded, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
While all of this was going on, and people were wondering if we’d fooled ourselves into thinking 2021 would be any better than the last year, something incredible was about to happen. A seemingly dead video game retailed had more than tripled in value almost overnight and that historic rally was not half done. But that story isn’t over yet. The squeeze hasn’t sqouze.
💎 🙌*
*My prediction is that a lot of people are going to be very disappointed with what happens, but I’ve only ever lost money picking individual stocks so what do I know?
