The Rot at the Heart of the Siege
On the afternoon of January 6, 2021, just north of 130 hours after the nation collectively told 2020 to kick rocks, a siege of the United States Capitol took place. Thousands of men and women took up arms against their own government — emboldened to do by that very same government. It was carnage and chaos not seen on those steps since the original British invasion, a spectacle of violence demonstrated by the very same men and women who proselityze ad nauseam about their love of country and their visceral commitment to protect their view of it. Armed “patriots” mounted an invasion of the United States government flying the flags of America’s enemies past, suddenly forgetting that blue lives matter and engaging in the same kind of behavior for which they, just half a year ago, criticized nationwide protests for a legitimate cause.
On January 6, 2021, the nation — actually, the world — saw plainly the chasm currently eroding the foundation of our democracy. With crystal clarity, the institutional, desperately-protected dichotomy between what constitutes a protest was more evident than it’s ever been. That day proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, that protesting the state-sponsored violence that has left, and continues to leave, a perpetually-growing graveyard of black and brown bodies results only in the exacerbation of the problem itself, whereas white people storming the halls of Congress like they were Fallujah, waving the colors of the Confederacy and the Third Reich, results in selfies with police officers and the red carpet being rolled out.
The level of contradiction is enough to make any rational person’s blood boil.
Despite the rhetoric, America burns not because her politics are rife with corruption. For the last four years, a zealot has been leader of the free world and, ultimately, achieved almost nothing during that time.
America burns because significant chunks of her citizenry are fools and bastards, quick to anger and quicker to forsake even the most simple, rational thoughts. The most convoluted, unverifiable, scariest answer must be correct one for too many of us, because the world only seems to make more sense when it involves secret cabals of puppet masters led by George Soros who want to force evey child into public indoctrination factories where they are given mandatory autism-causing vaccines that will make them gay atheists who will take over the flat Earth and build child slave colonies on Mars so Democrats can buy and sell them in the back rooms of pizza restaurants.
For many, that is more believable than the fact they are being led through a living 8chan message board by nefarious actors who get off on their ignorance, who willfully and maliciously twist their spirit around cancerous fingers with Jones-, Koresh-, and Moon-like charisma, creating a subservient soldier for an End Times believed to be all around them, but that will actually never come.
It’s easier to believe a choleric relic of 1980s excess had his chance for a second term as President stolen from him by “that other tribe” than to accept the reality that he was woefully unqualified for the job to begin with, and for four years, it showed.
It’s also easier to believe the best way to make that point is to desecrate the hallowed halls of the United States government at the behest of a delusional prophet, creating an environment where perhaps a third U.S. Senator could be killed while in office, than it is to accept what has happened, be grumpy about it, and ultimately move on.
The decay eating at the United States is one borne of men and women who fail to grasp what is right in front of them, who fail to comprehend or act in a way conducive to the version of the country too many of her population believe to be an accurate one. Their failure to objectively view the world around them is the main reason why we’ll never “Make America Great Again,” especially if that idea involves taking up arms, flying the flags of history’s greatest villains, and quoting Internet conspiracy theories while violating the foundations upon which the country was built.
All that succeeded on January 6, 2021 was a demonstration of what is truly wrong here and that, despite last November, it is not just going quietly into the night.
