Despite parts of the fencing being removed this weekend, the nation’s capital is still protected by armed troops and razor wire because government officials claim to fear invasion by Trump-supporting QAnon followers.
The concern is they will drive to D.C., get hotel rooms, grab their free breakfast, then strike at dawn with fire extinguishers or anything that counts under the present hysteria as an armament; i.e., shoes, purses or bear spray.
The attack was expected on March 4 but never materialized. Federal law enforcement recalibrated, shifting the anticipated coup de main to March 20. That never happened either.
Notably, the federal government failed to similarly protect the capital in 1814, when the Brits burned down the White House, and in 1861, when the Army of Northern Virginia encamped at what is now a shopping mall in Manassas, Virginia.
C’mon, man!
Immediately after the events of January 6, The National Pulse called out The Insurrection Lie, specifically questioning the political narrative then being fabricated around Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick’s unfortunate death.
Our reporting would eventually push the New York Times to back down from its fake news claim that Office Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by Trump supporters using a fire extinguisher.
It is now obvious that the continued military occupation of Washington D.C. under a phony, Q-pretext is a purposeful overreaction to silence objections over the use of mass mail-in ballots to swing the 2020 election.
In support of our election skepticism, we cite Time Magazine’s comprehensive report, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.
If everything in that account is taken as true, then Trump supporters were correct to discern a “conspiracy” (Time’s word) to assure a Biden-win, and were well within their constitutional rights on January 6 to protest.
Of the relative few who breached the Capitol, some were not Trump supporters; some were waved in; and none who initiated the incursion were present at the president’s speech taking place 45-minutes away, where he called for a patriotic and peaceful march.
A few in the Capitol may have been associated with the internet conspiracy known as “QAnon”. What is the appropriate response to that?
Polling shows that infinitesimally small numbers of Republicans embrace Q and few know any of its details. Even that polling is flawed, though.
When pollsters describe Q as an internet theory proposing that the deep state tried to thwart Trump’s presidency, some will say, sure, count me in. Because such a broad assertion is undeniably true.
QAnon is a peculiar form of internet apocrypha, though. It proposes pedophiles exist in the upper echelons of the global elite, which may be true. Pedophiles sadly exist in all walks of life. Where Q differs is in the belief that Trump was sent from on high as part of a secret plan to arrest them, in coordination with Robert Mueller and the U.S. Military, among others.
Nobody who is anybody in the Trump movement believes that.
The Q overreaction is especially alarming because equally outlandish conspiracy theories have been trumpeted by political leaders, the FBI, the CIA, foreign intelligence services, and the legacy media, causing incalculable damage.
If you have not already done so, please read The Russia Lie. It shows, conclusively with irrefutable evidence, how powerful people in Washington created a phony scandal around Trump and Russia.
Based on that Putin-did-it canard, leaders in the Democratic Party declared Trump’s election to be illegitimate and used the levers of power to obstruct his policy initiatives.
Trump’s inauguration was accompanied by violent rioting and, a few weeks later, armed insurrection (under the current definition) as a Putin-truther shot up a Congressional softball practice.
Where was the FBI when we really needed it to stop actual political violence based on a wild conspiracy theory?
The Q-defying truth is that 75-million (and counting) Americans have concluded that Washington’s elite are inept.
Rather than admit their failure, Washington’s preening and powerful try to preserve their excessive self-regard by casting any political opposition as a white-supremacist Q plot.
How ridiculous is the Q lie? The armed insurrectionists somehow left their only guns in the trunk of a car in metered parking, calling into question the entire “threat-level-red” narrative.
The most visible representative of the group is a person known ominously as Q Shaman. His connection to Trump appears to be that he craves the center of attention wherever he can find it.
Q Shaman in full face paint and Viking regalia had last been seen at an Arizona climate-change rally, near a sign that declared “the ice caps are melting.”
He claims he was waved into the Capitol and guided through its hallways by security officials. There is video evidence to support his claim. Several Capitol police officers have been suspended.
Perhaps the FBI should be investigating whether Ashli Babbitt was waved in, and if there should be some additional training in federal law enforcement about when it’s okay to kill an unarmed invitee on federal property.
Because, let’s face it, had Amy Schumer and Emily Ratajkowski been gunned down when they breached the Dirksen Hart Senate Office Buildings based on a ridiculous conspiracy theory about Brett Kavanaugh, someone would at least be in trouble.
In truth, when viewed outside its Twitter-enforced orthodoxy, the real scandal of January 6 rises to irony: the federal government failed to protect the Capitol from an unruly crowd that had assembled partly to protest the government’s failure to perform its basic functions capably.
Politics makes strange bedfellows, none stranger, maybe, than the alignment of Trumpists with the left’s last remaining honest intellectuals.
This is what Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Glenn Greenwald wrote recently about the lies being told about insurrection:
“That is the core formula of authoritarianism — to place the population in a state of such acute fear that it acquiesces to any assertion of power which security state agencies and politicians demand and which they insist are necessary to keep everyone safe.”
The Q Lie is an excuse for politicians to grab power from the people. It is, to borrow an expression, a form of insurrection.
