#Capitol

Why Was The MAGA Attack On The Capitol Allowed To Happen?

/ went2thebridge / Leave a comment

Source: ACLU blog “The Patriot Act 10 Years Later“

In the 90’s I was a public school teacher in central Maine who was told that, to keep my job, I needed to give up my fingerprints to the FBI’s database to prove that I wasn’t a child molester. No one had accused me of being a child molester, and I knew that most suspected child molesters are encouraged to resign and move far away to spare superintendents the pain of an ugly public relations fiasco. Thus their fingerprints were not in any database of convicted child molesters.

I had been a busy working mom with little time for political action. Then my 9 year old was fingerprinted at school even after I expressly forbid the school to do that. These experiences radicalized me and I began working against the educator fingerprinting law in Maine. Twice we managed to have the law overturned, and twice the governor vetoed it. I resigned over the issue and moved to California to earn more money while I had two kids in college at the same time.


After hearing news from his chief of staff that the second tower of the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane, the president seemed pensive but went on reading to students in a Florida classroom. Screenshot via YouTube

Then 9/11 was allowed to happen.

Then Joe Biden’s Patriot Act passed with breathtaking speed, curtailing our civil liberties and giving sweeping surveillance powers to the federal government because “terror” had frightened us. Then the never ending “war on terror” began for control of energy resources and shipping lanes, and we still go without universal health care to pay for it.

Then I moved back to Maine and got fingerprinted because I needed the health care for my family.

Now comes the January 6 MAGA attack on the Capitol. Why was it allowed to happen do you suppose?

It wasn’t a surprise attack at all but was well-publicized in advance.

Whether Capitol and DC municipal police opened the fencing to allow the MAGA mob in to the Capitol grounds, or simply failed to defend the line when the mob pushed into them, seems like a moot point. (Remember when the National Guard teargassed peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in Lafayette Park so the occupant of the White House could walk to a nearby church and pose with a Bible? Remember how the Guard were directing traffic Jan. 6 while legislators were under attack?) Via AP

Cue the new even more repressive laws the public has been led to believe are needed because “domestic terror” has frightened us. 

My prediction: we will continue to go without universal health care to pay for more policing and spying on ourselves.

Australian Caitlin Johnstone as usual is seeing things with a clearer eye from Oz:

The narrative managers’ ability to move liberals and progressives from “Defund the police” to “MOAR POLICING” in just a few months was even more impressive than their ability to move them from “Believe Women” and #MeToo to “Tara Reid is a lying grifter”.

My family member points out the danger to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color:

We have a long history of institutional racism. So when you talk about expanding anti domestic terrorism powers it’s a pretty safe prediction that it’s going to carried out in a racist way and in service of capital.

Also, say a Biden admin handles it as well as possible, what does the next republican administration do with those expanded powers? It’s Pandora’s box. You don’t open it and then see what happens, once you’re there it’s too late. 

Also, I’m guessing another purpose of allowing violent intruders with handcuffs at the ready to break into the Capitol was to discourage Medicare for All candidates like me from running for Congress. 

And about that man dressed all in black with the bouquet of plastic zip-ties whose photograph is being circulated widely? Perfect set up for right wing propagandists to make the false claim that Antifa was behind the MAGA crowd.

It looks like another event is being planned for January 17.

Impeaching the current occupant of Camp David will not solve our problems, and many argue it’s a waste of time at this point, but it should be done anyway to keep the grifter off the public dole and unable to issue any more pardons. 

https://twitter.com/BenCostiloe/status/1347657291819061250

People who think the Biden administration is going to save us from any of this are not paying attention. Or, possibly, they are too young to remember what Senator Obama did directly after receiving the nomination of the Democratic Party.

He voted to grant immunity to the big telecom corporations for spying on all of us after 9/11.

It’s Not The Burning Of The Reichstag — That Happened 20 Years Ago #9/11NeverForget

/ went2thebridge / Leave a comment

Oka y, a few more than 13 have been arrested since I made this meme on Thursday.But the number is still < 100. It is generally agreed that if the U.S. Capitol mob had been Black, the police would have arrested thousands.

The aftermath of an armed mob breaching the “security” of the U.S. Capitol building will be long and likely not very good for civil liberties, pandemic containment, or racial justice.

But I do wish people would stop comparing the event to the Reichstag (i.e. German capitol) arson that the Nazis used to kick up their takeover of Germany. The framing of a developmentally disabled worker with a Communist Party card in his pocket was the pretext for heightened surveillance and press censorship just before a key election. Military aggression and concentration camps for “others” followed.

Our Reichstag parallel event already occured — on Sep. 11, 2001 — with the bombing of the twin towers in New York City. The “Patriot” Act shredding our constitutional rights was pushed through immediately. Press censorship grew via control of online search engines and consolidation of independent outlets by corporate behemoths.


Office of Inspector General/Department of Homeland Security via Getty Images

Military aggression and concentration camps for “others” followed.

Some of the lies and misinformation swirling around the storming of the U.S. Capitol include right wing media claiming that antifa were masquerading as Trump supporters. This will help them spin the fact that a police officer is one of the five who died as the result of the mob violence. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was injured and died later that day.

Three other people died of heart attacks and the like, but it is military veteran and Kew Anon believer Ashli Babbit who died first, bleeding out quickly after being shot by police when she tried to crawl through a window the mob had broken. 

Babbit had traveled all the way from San Diego, California to gather with hundreds of other unmasked white supremacists during a pandemic. Ironic, eh? As will be the wave of covid-19 infections from this super spreader event. 

Ironic, because their dear leader is generally understood to have lost the election due to his gross negligence and mismanagement of our public health crisis.

Here’s the (white) spouse of sexual assault perpetrator Clarence Thomas fanning the flames:

Democrats posing as the heroes of the current crisis are throwing around impeachment because it doesn’t look like the Vice President will invoke the 25th Amendment to have Trump declared unfit. It would take cabinet members participating to do that, and nearly all of them have resigned this week. (Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is the latest, and I can hear teachers all over the country rejoicing.)

Left commentators are cynically noting that Congress went into recess after working through the night to finish election certification interrupted by the mob. Dem members of Congress are tweeting about impeachment with less than two weeks remaining of the current administration, but have yet to take up the matter of universal health care which the vast majority of people in the U.S. need desperately. Priorities, priorities. In a crisis like this, who can think about something as mundane as health care? Not elected officials who already have it, that’s who.

Dems are also cheering the banning of the commander in chief from Twitter and Facebook for spreading lies about the election outcome that led directly to lethal violence. Thoughtful commentators expect this to form the pretext for more silencing of dissent. 

via Getty

To sum up: the president who was elected due to millions in free media coverage from liberal publications who selected him as the best candidate for Hillary Clinton to beat incited a crowd who destroyed press equipment and defaced the interior of the capitol building with the message:

Remember: in the case of really sophisticated propaganda, even the reverse isn’t true.