lol I’m not talking about sports today. Armed right-wing insurrectionists seized the US Capitol Building yesterday. You know what that means:
TIME TO POWER RANK WHO’S TO BLAME FOR THIS
11. The Democrats, I guess?
Look, this newsletter doesn’t have a high readership, but if there are any leftists out there who would get mad at me for not listing the Democrats on here, like because they didn’t pass a good enough healthcare bill 11 years ago to de-radicalize the far right or something, they’re on the list! Now you can’t get mad at me. That’s how this works.
10. The Capitol Police
They did open the doors for the rioters to rush in, yes. And some of them took selfies with the mob in the Capitol Building. Cori Bush went on MSNBC and said that they weren’t helpful to Congresspeople as the situation deteriorated. They did not distinguish themselves in any positive way yesterday.
They also couldn’t have stopped the mob. There were way more people at the gates than people defending the gates, and reinforcements were nowhere to be found. So no, the Capitol Police didn’t do what they should have. But what they should have done wouldn’t have helped anyone anyway, so their failure only made things marginally worse.
I mean, unless we want to start talking about structural problems within the Capitol Police, but that's a little beyond the scope of this exercise.
9. Ronald Reagan
Reagan famously said that the nine scariest words in the English language were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” I think nine scarier words are “Domestic terrorists have occupied the United States Capitol Building,” but I’m not folksy, so no one gives a shit.
The mainstreaming of anti-government started with Reagan. The idea of putting a celebrity in the White House started with Reagan. The modern Republican party goes back to Reagan. He is the seed from which all of today’s events grew.
8. Fox News
Speaking of seeds, Fox News has been feeding disinformation and propaganda into American homes for decades. The low-grade panic that someone is taking the country away comes from them, and their martyr complex whenever anyone calls out the lies they put on air — fact checking is just a liberal attempt to control your Freedom Brain — give people cover to believe only what fits their worldview. Fox News has been a cultural force since Roger Ailes became CEO in 1996, and that is not a good thing,
7. Republicans calling for violence
This was yesterday morning:
On the 2nd of January — last Saturday! — Rep. Louie Gohmert said that after all else had failed, violence in the streets was a good solution to get Trump in power. These are well-known, theoretically respectable Republicans advocating violence. Should we really be surprised that the people who listen to them went out and did some violence?
6. Mitch McConnell
Of all the people on this list Mitch McConnell is the one who least wanted this to happen. He's also the one who has most used his power to foment partisanship and differences in this country. He has refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of President Obama's judicial nominations, and his obstructionist tactics have made it impossible for Congress to improve the lives of Americans, which has only further emboldened those who would bring down a legitimately elected government by attempting a coup.
Did he want this? No. But did he help bring it about? Absolutely.
5. The “protesters”
Call the protesters if you want to sugarcoat who they are and what they stand for. Or call them rioters, or a mob, or terrorists. Whatever floats your boat. But the point is this: even with all the ways their media consumption has affected them, they made their own goddamn choices yesterday. They chose violence. They chose terrorism. Semi-brainwashed or not, they made their choice. And it’s a hard one to forgivel
4. Cliven Bundy
When the Bundy clan seized that BLM building in Oregon, angry that Cliven wasn’t allowed to take grazing rights for free on land that was owned by the American people in Nevada, they thought they were starting a revolution. When law enforcement ended the standoff, America thought that he and his followers were going to have to pay for their crimes.
Instead, neither happened. Bundy has not yet been found guilty of anything in court — the government was said to have overcharged him and his group, and as a non-legal expert I don’t have an opinion — and there’s no revolution either. What there is, though, is wide knowledge that there won’t necessarily be any consequences for, say, trespassing on federal land, staking a claim to federal property, and doing whatever the hell you want with a government building.
When I phrase it that way, well, it seems a little on the nose, doesn’t it?
3. Rush Limbaugh/Alex Jones
Fox News had its part in this, as I mentioned earlier. Glenn Beck in particular, who I didn’t mention earlier, was very influential in spreading conspiracy theories. But he had nothing on the true kings of right-wing propaganda, the oracles of identity politics, Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones.
The lies that these men have been spewing for decades to massive audiences have warped the brains of their listeners. Back in the ‘90s, Limbaugh fans called themselves dittoheads, paying tribute to their own lack of critical thinking skills because they could just say “Ditto” to everything that came out of Rush’s mouth. Alex Jones, meanwhile, is as responsible for QAnon as anyone could be, because without his own advocacy of things like Pizzagate and Sandy Hook trutherism, the somehow even more outlandish conspiracy theories of the far far right would be relegated to irrelevance.
Limbaugh and Jones didn’t just set the table for yesterday’s actions. They also cooked dinner, served it up, and asked their guests what they wanted to drink. If they were physically healthy enough to lead an insurrection, maybe they would have. It’s the smallest of blessings that they couldn’t.
2. Josh Hawley/Ted Cruz
This is where the gossamer-thin veneer of legitimacy came from for yesterday’s events. Hawley had spent days declaring his intention to object to the certification of multiple states’ electoral votes, citing vague or debunked conspiracy theories about voting machines, and legally vacuous technicalities about the mechanics of voting during a pandemic.
It’s a tough thing to be the first to declare an iconoclastic position, but as soon as you get a second, people take you seriously. Enter Ted Cruz, a sniveling, worthless, universally despised shell of a man, who declared that he too would oppose the certification. Others followed Cruz, giving aid and comfort to those who would turn to violence. The feeling that the insurrectionists had that they were on the right side of history? That came from Hawley and Cruz, and those that followed them.
It’s worth noting the reason both Hawley and Cruz objected: as an attempt to court the Trump base for the 2024 primaries. Both knew that nothing would come of the objection, but they saw a powerful voting bloc they could try to seize, and if it happened to destabilize American democracy, well, whatever. They are despicable human beings who exist only to further their own ambitions, and answer to no higher power than the acquisition of the next office. American politics would benefit if they were both expelled forever, and absolutely nothing of value would be lost.
1. Donald Trump
What is there left to say about Donald Trump? We already knew he was a coward.
We already knew he made the Republican Party, already an irredeemable disaster of an organization, even worse:
We already knew he was wholly inadequate to serve as President:
We already knew that everything he does is to soothe his pathetic, fragile ego:
We already knew he didn’t give one single shit about even the people who voted for him and worship him:
So what’s left to say? What is there? Donald Trump is a nothing of a person. The only thing he cares about is whether people think he’s strong, and he surrounds himself with sycophants whose only job is to tell him that people think he’s strong. He is a creature of pure corruption, utterly incapable of understanding anything but personal loyalty to him, Donald Trump, as a virtue.
He is a walking indictment of anyone who ever believed he could be better than he is. Donald Trump has spent his entire life showing people who he is: a businessman who keeps losing money, talking banks into lending him more, and then losing that too. He made his money on marketing without being good at it; he was just shameless in a way that others weren’t yet, putting his name on steaks and vodka and any other shit product that sent him a check.
Trump is a scared little boy playing dress-up, a child mentally incapable of understanding the job of President, and a spoiled rich kid who has no desire to try. He has skated through his entire life and thinks he can just keep doing it. We have had other awful Presidents in our history, and we’ve probably had worse Presidents (not many, but still). We haven’t had a President so perfectly incapable of doing the job, so bereft of any positive qualities, so willfully oblivious to the existence of the parts of the country that don’t like him.
Donald Trump is a failure of a President, which is why he wanted his followers to turn to violence. He is a failure of a person, which is why he has to loudly bluster and threaten and get mad at Mike Pence for not betraying the country. And he is a failure of our democratic system, that he could get elected and not removed despite his obvious crimes and shortcomings. He is our failure, an American failure. He is an indictment of America, walking and breathing.
More than anything, he is an everlasting shame. And in a perfectly appropriate ending to the story, he’ll never feel that shame, but the rest of the country will, every day.