THINGS HAVING FALLEN APART: In the wake of officers being beaten...

TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2021

Roxane Gay had a better idea: We were struck this morning by a news report in the Washington Post.

In print editions, the report appears atop the front page of the newspaper's Metro section. It concerns one aspect of last Wednesday's mob attack at the Capitol. 

The report appears beneath the headlines shown below. With lightning speed, we thought of Roxane Gay's recent piece in the New York Times:

Injured officers face long recovery
Dozens beaten, trampled, hit with bear spray during riot at Capitol

The report describes the injuries suffered by police officers during the crazed insurrection. Hermann and Zauzmer prepared the report. In part, they reported this:

HERMANN AND ZAUZMER (1/12/21): The number of injuries suffered by police as they attempted to fend off supporters of President Trump who seized the U.S. Capitol last week runs long.

[...]

More than 58 D.C. police officers and an unknown number of U.S. Capitol Police officers were injured in the hours-long riot and assault on Wednesday as lawmakers were formalizing the election victory for Joe Biden as president. It was a battle in which police were outnumbered. One Capitol Police officer died in circumstances that remain unclear.

“I’ve talked to officers who have done two tours in Iraq, who said this was scarier to them than their time in combat,” acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III said Monday...

Videos circulating on the Internet show horrific scenes, including one of an officer, identified by the police union as from the D.C. force, being dragged down stairs outside the Capitol and beaten by people with clubs, a crutch and a pole with an American flag attached. The officer was rescued by other officers swinging batons.

[...]

In a statement the day after the riot, then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned Friday, said officers were attacked with metal pipes, chemical irritants and other types of weapons. Several Capitol Police officers were hospitalized with serious injuries.

The report goes on and on, even describing injuries caused by that bear spray and also by lazers. It focuses on  D.C. Police more than on Capitol Police, perhaps because the latter agency has issued few public statements in the wake of Chief Sund's resignation.

Yesterday afternoon, we watched as Nicolle Wallace described the beating administered to the officer who was "being dragged down stairs outside the Capitol." Wallace is a devotee to script, as she was in her earlier life, when her scripts targeted same-sex marriage and promoted the war in Iraq.

(Back then, she worked for George W. Bush. Today, she's one of the gods most widely loved over here in the streets of Our Town.)

What actually happened last Wednesday? In fact, many things happened that horrible day. To the extent that such a thing is possible, a full account of what actually happened will only emerge over time. 

Information will always develop slowly—but Storyline can emerge, and has emerged, with remarkable speed. That's why we thought of Roxane Gay's instant essay for the Times, in which, in an act of instant self-pity, she instantly offered this:

GAY (1/7/21): On Wednesday, Jan. 6, Congress was set to conduct a largely ceremonial count of the electoral votes. There were rumblings that a few ambitious, craven politicians planned to object to the votes in several states. The president openly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to thwart the vote ratification—something not in Mr. Pence’s power to do.

But I don’t think any of us expected to see radical, nearly all white protesters storming the Capitol as if it were the Bastille. I don’t think we expected to see Capitol Police basically ushering these terrorists into the building and letting them have the run of the place for a ridiculous amount of time while the world watched in shock and disgust...

Eventually, the Times gave this essay its highest platform, publishing it in last weekend's Sunday Review. But in the very flash of an eye, Gay had been willing to appear on line, telling citizens of Our Town that "Capitol Police" (no qualifiers appended) had been guilty of "basically ushering these terrorists into the building and letting them have the run of the place for a ridiculous amount of time."

Let's repeat! According to Gay, she (and we) had seen "Capitol Police" (no qualifiers) basically ushering these terrorists into the building and letting them have the run of the place.

Plainly, that was terrible conduct. But how many "Capitol Police" had done that? Gay didn't bother to say.

Indeed, had any member of the force done that? Even now, six days later, we aren't sure we've seen any footage which could fairly be described in that manner.

As she continued, Gay treated herself to the power we described, decades ago, as "the power of pluralization." She did so by saying this:

"I don’t think we expected to see some of those police officers taking selfies with the intruders." So Gay wrote, in an instant burst of narrative construction. 

Question! Did Gay really see "some of the officers" (plural) taking selfies with the intruders? 

Even today, only one such instance is described in this Washington Post front-page report. Even there, the Post says it isn't clear whether the officer in question posed for the photograph, or merely allowed it to be taken.

This morning, the Post is still describing only one instance—and the probe of that incident is still underway. 

Did Gay know of multiple incidents? No links supporting this apparent claim were provided in her essay when it instantly appeared, and no such links appear in her essay even today. 

Gay's overall essay, rich with self-pity, was suffused with the joys of what might be called unsupported apparent overstatement. On the brighter side, Our Town's intellectual leaders were quickly assembling the Storylines we burghers would most like to hear.

In recent mornings, on MSNBC, those Storylines have been bellowed by a certain red-faced shouter. Yesterday, in an especially loco two hours, the red-faced shouter was accompanied, supported, enabled and echoed by a mob of acolytes. 

Yesterday, the shouter explicitly repeated what he had shouted last week. Once again, he explicitly said that, if the insurrectionists had been black last Wednesday, Capitol Police "would have shot every one of them in the face."

The shouter may not have realized that he was slandering Capitol Police when he shouted this red-faced remark. In somewhat contradictory fashion, his gaggle was also reciting hero claims about officers' heroic actions against the other mob.

This morning, the red-faced shouter was suddenly calm. Just a guess—management had decided that it was time to scale back the lunatic tone of the program. They even began running ads again! The show's waters were suddenly calm.

That said, these manifestations are all part of an anthropology lesson—a lesson about the way we in our species tend to behave when things start falling apart.

Fellow sapiens, can we talk? As a general matter, things had already fallen apart by the time this invasion started.

We began to build this site in 1997 because we thought things had largely fallen apart even then! We're talking about the upper-end journalistic squalor which has played so large a role in this story up to this point—in the story of how a person as disordered as Donald J. Trump ever reached the White House.

(Four years later, disordered supporters of the disordered president finally reached the Capitol building.)

Within our species, what tends to happen when things have fallen apart? You're asking for an anthropology lesson—an anthropology lesson involving the all-too-human mental wiring shared by those in our species.

The psychological breakdown is most striking and most apparent in the case of President Trump. The craziest of his insurrectionist supporters are almost surely nuts too.

That said, the anthropology lesson spreads out from there, even to the streets of Our Town. Behaviors here in the streets of Our Town have helped to drive this fall right from the beginning. 

Not unlike ancient history's Gaul, the anthropology lesson here has (at least) three parts. Tomorrow, we'll start with the aforementioned commander-in-chief—with the apparent "psychopathologies" the widely-praised leaders in Our Town steadfastly refused to discuss.

Tomorrow: There's pretty clearly something about what Mary L. Trump said


25 comments:

  1. "Indeed, had any member of the force done that? Even now, six days later, we aren't sure we've seen any footage which could fairly be described in that manner."

    Somerby is not the best arbiter of what is a "fair" interpretation of any video. He leans over backwards to NOT SEE whatever some liberal is claiming happened, just as conservatives have done.

    Meanwhile, here is better evidence. Two capitol police officers have been suspended and 10 more are being investigated for their roles in the attack:

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/capitol-police-officers-suspended-tim-ryan/index.html

    This news is as accessible to Somerby as it was to me this morning. But he still went out of his way to write this essay this morning, pretending that Gay is making things up to fit storyline. That makes Somerby an unreliable source of information because he is dishonest.

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  2. "Question! Did Gay really see "some of the officers" (plural) taking selfies with the intruders? "

    I saw this myself in photos posted to the internet. Somerby has no doubt seen them too. But still he questions Gay's accuracy!! This is called gaslighting. Why is a supposed liberal, as Somerby claims to be, engaged in gaslighting his readers about what occurred during the insurrection last Wednesday?

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  3. "Did Gay know of multiple incidents? "

    Isn't one bad enough?

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  4. "Even there, the Post says it isn't clear whether the officer in question posed for the photograph, or merely allowed it to be taken."

    There are photos of officers being crushed by a door, dragged down steps, chased down hallways...did they pose or did they "allow" these photos to be taken. Does anyone here see the difference between such photos and the one being labeled a "selfie"?

    Then there was the officer who put on a MAGA hat and was seen giving directions (not instructions) to the rioters.

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  5. Cowardly Somerby refers to a red-faced shouter today as he libels Joe Scarborough without having the courage to use his name.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "That said, these manifestations are all part of an anthropology lesson—a lesson about the way we in our species tend to behave when things start falling apart."

    None of this is an "anthropology lesson." It is a tragedy for our nation, an assault on democracy, an act of violence that was shocking in its intent and brutal in its execution, and 6 people are now dead, 58 officers injured, 13 hospitalized. That is not an anthropology lesson, it is a horrific event that will live in history among the atrocities of our nation.

    Somerby trivializes this aborted coup by examining the words of Gay and Scarborough, as if they had no cause to be upset, no reason to call out the actions of co-conspirators and demand punishment of this Republican insurrection.

    In doing so, Somerby gives aid and comfort to the insurrectionists and encourages the greater violence now predicted by the FBI and other sources tracking white supremacist terrorism.

    If I were booking comedians for college campus appearances, I would never hire Somerby because he doesn't understand the mood of the country, much less the response on the left to these vile actions. He would trample the feelings of his audience and have nothing worth saying to an audience, just as he has nothing to say to anyone here.

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  7. It's not a real report about the Capitol Building incident, because it doesn't use the word "snowflakes" to describe those protesting that black peoples votes were counted in an election.

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  8. "Within our species, what tends to happen when things have fallen apart?"

    Somerby's reference to things falling apart is wishful thinking. Nothing fell apart on Wednesday.

    1. The senators and representatives were taken to a safe location.
    2. Reinforcements for the understaffed and unprepared capitol police (deliberately undermined by their leadership and the president) arrived and brought the riot under control.
    3. Participants in the insurrection have been identified and are being arrested and charged with serious crimes.
    4. Congress is taking action against the plotter-in-chief, Donald Trump, in the form of impeachment.
    5. Police who colluded with the insurrection have been suspended nationwide and in the capitol police force and many more are being investigated to determine how the attack was permitted to happen despite warnings.
    6. Trump has lost 10% of his approval rating and will lose more of his electoral and other support.
    7. Trump has lost his bank connections.
    8. Trump lost the PGA Championship golf tournament at his country club.
    9. Several Republicans have spoken out against Trump and some have left the party.
    10. Several Trump cabinet members have resigned, as have staff in important positions.


    If anything, things have fallen apart for Trump and those who participated in the insurrections. But that is not a generalized "things have fallen apart" for anyone else. Biden is still president-elect and our nation's processes have been protected. The government was not harmed by the fools who brought violence to the capitol.

    What HAS fallen apart? The plot to keep Trump in power. The desired civil war. The hopes of white supremacists. Trump's plans for a second term.

    Cue the liberal chorus: yay, yay, yay, Yay, Yay, YAY, YAY, YAY!!!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Somerby doesn't seem to understand that law enforcement was part of the plot. From Politico:

    Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a trusted Pelosi ally who chairs the committee in charge of Capitol security logistics, said Sund misled her about the security preparations for the Jan. 6. session.

    Lofgren told reporters Thursday that the Capitol Police chief assured her that all contingencies were in place and "there was no doubt they were completely able to keep us secure in the Capitol." The National Guard was at the ready, Lofgren said Sund told her.

    "We were told it was all in place, it was all a go," she said. "It was just not true. They had not been called."

    While Pelosi, McConnell, Schumer and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy were huddled together in a secure location during the riot, they made a frantic push to get more police on the scene. All of the “big four” congressional leaders hopped on the phone with the secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Army Secretary, and “many other officials,” according to Schumer.

    “In the early moments, there were not enough forces there,” Schumer said at a press conference in New York. “And the question is, why weren’t they there in advance? And then why didn’t they get there ASAP? All of that needs a looking into.”

    The top capitol security officials have all been fired or resigned. Their collusion is being investigated.

    Somerby wants to tell us that reporters are making this stuff up. The real-life situation is worse than people are being told, not better (as Somerby pretends). Each new report is more shocking, not less, and that is not because of hype but because of the facts being reported.

    ReplyDelete
  10. "Just a guess—management had decided that it was time to scale back the lunatic tone of the program."

    That's normal, dear Bob. It takes time for the Central Zombie Committee to come up with new zombie talking points and form the precise narrative.

    We already know that the protesters were terrorists, but is it still noble and pwogwessive to attack and beat up cops? Just recently it was. Right now? We don't know; it might now be horrible. Or not.

    Give them a few days; they'll get their clear zombie talking points and clear zombie outrage dramas, and everything will be back to normal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mao,
      Try to keep up. Right-wingers plan to protest the murder of Antifa agent Ashlii Babbitt.

      Could be a false flag protest, since no Right-winger could possibly be considered anti-fascist.

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    2. Иди снова трахни свою сестру, Мао.

      Delete
  11. Heard on No More Mister Nice Blog:

    "Maybe it's the Republicans who are the dangerous extremists."

    ReplyDelete
  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  13. ‘As she continued, Gay treated herself to the power we described, decades ago, as "the power of pluralization."’

    Surely the irony here is not lost on TDH readers.

    ReplyDelete

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