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Increased Security Around The Capitol – What It Means
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi conducted a surreal news conference today. While defending the continued presence of nearly 10,000 Army National Guard troops in the nation’s capitol, she called for more funding to help protect Members of Congress “from the enemy within.”
What?
That brought back McCarthyite statements and tactics from the 1950’s (and a certain 1994 movie). Then again, McCarthyism (Joseph, not the “Kevin” variety) has been on full display by Democrats for several weeks now. But since American history is no longer taught in schools, it seems, few of any know the sordid tale of the late US Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), and his “Army-McCarthy” hearings. It was a dark episode in modern American history, but a turning point.
But those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And now, we seem to have several new Joseph McCarthy’s reaching for the mantle. This time, they’re Democrats.
You think I’m exaggerating. Have you checked out “cancel culture” lately, and compared it to the Hollywood “blacklists” of the 1950s? There is practically no difference, except cancel culture can hit anyone. And has.
Stealing a page from her former colleague Rahm Emmanuel’s playbook, Speaker Pelosi is not letting a crisis – the January 6th Capitol breach – go to waste. It would appear that the gawd-awful, East German Stasi-style fencing and concertina wire are soon to become a permanent feature in an increasingly military-occupied Washington, DC.
I guess my days of giving after-hours Capitol tours are pretty much over until the city is liberated by another “free and fair” election. Yeah, I know.
Pelosi’s news conference brought back bad memories of my first days as Secretary of Senate in June, 1995. It had only been about 2 months since the Murrah Building terrorist attack in my hometown of Oklahoma City. Washington was all agog over how to prevent Hertz rental trucks full of ammonium nitrate from driving down streets adjacent to where Members of Congress might be found.
You might be surprised to know what the Capitol Police had in mind then. They wanted to close off several streets around the Capitol, including Constitution and Independence Avenues (the main avenues that border the Capitol to the north and south, respectively). They were partially successful, but their goal was to create a separate, walled city around the entire Capitol complex (several US Senators were in favor of that, by the way). I was specifically briefed on the closing of Delaware Avenue, which paralleled the Russell Senate Office building. I opposed it, but I had no say – the decision had been made. I strongly opposed separating Capitol complex offices from people (at the time, we had 4.5 million visitors annually to the Capitol – it reached around 6-8 million. Or, did, pre-pandemic).
One of my ‘accomplishments’ was contributing to a study on the need for a new $125 million Capitol Visitors Center to help improve Capitol security and facilitate the visitor experience at this very important working office building. I strongly advocated for it, but the congressional media at the time shrugged their shoulders, and several Members of Congress said we could not afford it. It took two Capitol police officers to be murdered by a deranged killer just two years after I left office to spur action. Some $800+ million later, we have a superb Capitol Visitors Center. Or should I call it a National Guard armory?
Except now, we’re on the verge of making it impossible for Americans to visit the seat of their government. Yes, their government. Let that sink in. Lincoln’s famous words, that we are a government “of the people, for the people, and by the people” are beginning to ring hollow.
These are perilous times. Nancy Pelosi apparently thinks a couple of her colleagues – both women, by the way, including 5’5″ Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who wants to conceal-carry around the Capitol (as she did at her restaurant in Rifle, CO, which I hope to visit in April) and the admittedly kooky Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are enemies of the Republic. Maybe others, but she’s not saying. Why punish all 440+ Members of Congress (voting and non-voting delegates)? We’ve had plenty of kooks serve in Congress and survived the experience. If anything, news reporters may have a bigger history of violence in the Capitol than members of Congress, or even lobbyists.
So, yes, let’s improve Capitol security. Clearly mistakes were made that allowed a bunch of clowns and violent actors to overwhelm Capitol Police on January 6th. But let us not over-react, and remember who we are. There is vastly improved technology (drones, anyone?), and there are at least 6 different law enforcement agencies in an around Washington, DC, not including neighboring local law enforcement. We are America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Where we, the people, govern.
I thought walls weren’t supposed to work?
Do not let your Member of Congress, House or Senate, turn our Capitol into their personal enclave, nor permanently establish martial law in your Capitol city. You are not the problem. They may be.
Published in General
Certainly, some of them were aggressive and violent. There was premeditation (and delusion) among the people who brought helmets and shields. I even read a report weeks ago of an old man who left a bunch of molotovs in his truck nearby.
Michael Yon’s video seems to show the whole of that group climbing walls and shouting. It seemed to comprise fewer than fifty people; perhaps fewer than thirty. They were a mix of nuts with different motives and preparations, from the AF veteran who was shot to the hippie in the buffalo headdress. Everyone who threatened, vandalized, and forced entry into restricted areas should be jailed.
The crowd that followed after, calmly walking into the atrium and outer halls that police opened, few having clear vision or hearing of what was happening ahead of them, are another matter. Most video footage of people in and around shows people calmly walking or standing. They were more civil than many previous intrusions into the Capitol in recent decades. Videos of the crowd walking from Trump’s speech show smiling and relaxed people, not a rampaging mob.
There was a mob, but it was small and comparable to many past intrusions by leftists since the 1960s. It was certainly less threatening than the riots Democrats have indulged again and again this past year, including arson around the District of Columbia and the mob that threatened Senator Rand Paul (among others) on DC streets; including attacks on federal buildings and federal officers in Portland.
Evidently, Democrats do not respond this way to intrusions or mobs except when the narrative empowers them to cast aside law, precedent, and political opposition.
There are precedented and legally established options for them to temporarily beef up Capitol security that do not involve National Guard or militant fortifications. The current Capitol defenses combined with indiscriminate prosecutions and hysterical rhetoric make this look like the very thing Democrats claim they are defending against: a coup. Americans on both sides of the aisle fear for their country amid such wild spectacle.
See something, say something. If they want to get news coverage, they’ll have to say it in outrageous fashion so as to give the Democrat something to respond to with hate speech.
AOC was disseminating disinformation. She will probably get a visit from federal prosecutors for it.
Concern, yes, but not a concern that these guys have the slightest ability or resources to pull off an insurrection, much less a coup.
I’m going to continue to call these people McCarthyites. If they want to defend themselves by defending McCarthy, let them have at it. But I’m going to use phrases that are effective against them and that has not the slightest relation to what is effective in convincing conservatives. On occasion I also accuse them of being like Trump.
“Forced entry into restricted areas” is everybody who entered the Capitol even when told not to enter by the police.
I think that there was probably a smaller group with some sort of plan who hid in the larger crowd.
I think that most of the crowd was foolish or naive rather than intentionally malevolent.
But what did they think they were doing or achieving? They were in the Capitol – for what purpose? Now what?
The same can be said for participants in the Women’s March several years ago, who “swarmed” into the Senate and Congressional office buildings. Hundreds of them – with no violence, very minor damage. I would assume the effort’s purpose was awareness.
I’ve wandered the halls of the Capitol building, in the 1980’s. I had no purpose other than to see it. Now what?
Calling it a coup is stupid, in the extreme – for it to be a coup, you’d have to depose the president, who, at that time, was Trump. And who, exactly, would they “install” as a new president? Buffalo guy?
This is why it’s stupid. The people who were violent were anarchists, under the guise of being Trump supporters, and the rest of the folks wandering down to the Capitol, who attended the rally, were watching the events unfold, and only aware of what was happening in the Capitol building itself based on what they saw on their cell phones.
The same violent anarchists have been violent for at least half of last year, and are continuing to be violent in places like Portland, including destruction of federal property (a courthouse), assault, etc. It’s the same thing, but it was at the Capitol, and our privileged elite actually had to face the reality of their own choices. Congress is charged with Capitol security, and didn’t have them beef it up, which would have stopped anyone from entering. They actually stood by while people streamed inside the Capitol.
If Congress thought these were potential murderers, why wouldn’t they summon the 2,000 Capitol police and stand them in front of the building?
This is the home of the brave?
I don’t think it was “Antifa” or BLM. And the Oath Keepers aren’t anarchists. Also – did the Women’s March trash the Capitol?
I absolutely agree it wasn’t a coup. I’m not even sure it was insurrection. What was it? Something new, yet to be named? The whole thing is bizarre.
Michael Yon said there were Antifa cells there. The crowd was an amalgam of different groups.
How does Michael Yon know?
He has eyes. He was there. He has been reporting on activity like this all over the world for nearly 20 years.
That riot was professionally fomented by provocateurs, the evidence is pretty clear. It was a cynical move by radicals, exploited or engineered by democrat party operatives.
He was in London, AFAIK. But he reviewed video of the riot and identified people he was aware of.
No, he was there but did not go into the Capitol. People with ACAB stickers are generally Antifa. Cells frequently wear the same color of shoes so they can identify each other. He gives more details.
https://www.ntd.com/antifa-tactics-seen-at-jan-6-capitol-protest-interview-with-michael-yon_551491.html
Because he was embedded with Antifa in Portland for weeks. He was also embedded with Hong Kong protestors, where he said some American “protestors” trained.
Buffalo guy is a vaguely rightwing stoner. Two Proud Boys have been charged. At least one Antifa rioter was identified and sought by the FBI. It was a mix of rabble rousers and clueless hippies.
Crowd psychology is not a new theory. It has been known for decades (millenia, really) that individuals can be confused and guided to perform actions they would never deliberately choose when not caught up in an emotional crowd’s impulses. It doesn’t require many skilled rabble rousers to direct a crowd.
People are responsible for their own actions even when manipulated. But the majority of people on Capitol grounds on Jan 6th did not vandalize or threaten anyone. They merely followed a crowd during a chaotic situation.
Whatever and whoever is identified, the propaganda is full tilt. I was watching Rick Steves on PBS, and right after that, an interviewer came on and was interviewing of all people, Tim Kane – Hilary’s sidekick in the election. He said they at the very least, want to “censor” the former president on grounds that he invoked an insurrection which is an attack on The Constitution – he did not. Her questions were even very scripted and biased. They don’t want him to be able to ever hold office – and anyone or anything associated with “Make America Great” will be censored also – including what you see and hear on all platforms.
So they achieved something big here – that was the goal I think.
Maybe they meant “censure?”
Yup, the Venona Project conclusively proved that. It’s a shame that Putin came to power before all the KGB files could be examined because more communists in our government would have probably been discovered.
It’s particularly ironic that McCarthy is usually portrayed as a drunken, blustering buffoon (in the months before his death, he was in pretty bad shape) when John Brennan is just as bad; and probably worse.
Exactly so.
Because it is controlled, in both congressional party caucuses, by careerists, who were terrified by President Trump showing that voters could actually expect a national-level politician to keep campaign promises. The bi-partisan game of grinding the “deplorable, bitter-clinger, stupid, angry” population back under, while conservatives join Democrats in taunting them that they cannot prove they were cheated and will continue to be cheated out of an effective franchise, is not going to go well.
It is about perception. What you see as peaceful MAGA rallies that been seen and promoted by the Democrats as Nazi rallies. What was a protest in the capital that was less than a BLM protest was armed insurrection by white supremacy. The Left has been promoting the Right as white racist Nazi and the Left believes their promotion.
These are techniques and tactics that can be used by anybody. Not just Antifa, who I’m sure didn’t invent them.
But they can’t be used by other than Leftist. If the Lefts opponents utilizes these they will be tracked down and jailed with maximum force. Left protestors are first asked if they want to be arrested and then released.
Ergo….
Yon says he can easily distinguish Trump supporters from Antifa. I agree that even he can’t be 100% certain about every person, but he’s been at lots of protests where there were no Trump supporters nearby (Portland for example). And the Antifa people studied tactics in Hong Kong; I doubt if any Trump supporters did the same.
Based on their shoes?
Tactics like undercover groups wearing similar shoes so they can recognise each other without standing out from a crowd are just tactics, they can be used by any undercover group.
Apart from that weird guy from Utah who keeps getting expelled from BLM groups, are there any clearly identified individuals from the Left who were there? Who are they?
And how can he prove there weren’t any there undercover, fomenting violence to make BLM look bad?
People have actually claimed that, haven’t they? Equally without proof.
Richard – I get when people desparately want something to be true because the alternative is confronting, truly I do, and as human beings we have confirmation bias so we find someone who tells us what we want to believe more believable. I just don’t know that the “Antifa ate my homework” approach on the Capitol riot/siege/whateverwordfits is a good one for normal Trump supporters like yourself to take.
It’s ironic that the tactic used by the Right (BLM=Antifa=Marxist Rioters) is now being used by the Left against the Right (Trump supporters=QAnon=Insurrectionists). Ironic, but still awful for public discourse.
I’ve been following J. Michael Waller on Twitter, lately. He doesn’t claim to know who did what and exactly who was there, but he observed a lot of strangeness about the hardliners and instigators who broke into the capitol building. There is a lot yet to be learned, it seems. As President Obama used to say, “Now is not the time to rush to judgment.”
For example, what about the young woman in a hoodie who was planting pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC offices the evening before January 6? (It’s hard to say for sure from the FBI videos that it was a woman, but some people on Twitter were saying her walk was that of a young woman. I can’t say myself.) The FBI is offering a big reward for info leading to her arrest. I for one am not going to draw a lot of conclusions before learning how that item turns out.
I’ve nowhere claimed that there were no Trump supporters in the Capitol.
I didn’t say you had, Richard. Were any of them responsible for the (minimal) planning or the violence? To me it looks like at least some of them were, but the info I have is as limited as most other people’s.
I agree with @thereticulator – it’s probably not wise to draw firm conclusions at this point. I also find pipe bombs being left at both the DNC and RNC offices really disturbing.
From that Marxist rag the WSJ.