Some facts about Wednesday

Just so we’re clear:

• On Wednesday, an armed mob broke into the US capitol building.
• Other armed mobs either succeeded or attempted in doing the same in many other states, at the same time.
• In that mob were many self-identified, open nazis
• That mob planned to do this, explicitly, online, for weeks ahead of time
• They marched into the capitol building immediately following a speech by Trump. (This link gives a nice timeline)
• Trump was begged by his aides to tell them to stop. He didn’t. The best he could do was a 1-minute speech saying that they were beautiful, special, correct, but that they should refrain from violence
• Some of these people brought zip-tie handcuffs. Presumably to hold congresspeople hostage.
• Many people were chanting explicit calls to violence, such as “Hang Mike Pence”
• The mob explicitly wanted to stop a constitutional process of government, because they thought an election was being stolen
• They thought an election was being stolen because a large fraction of the formal Republican party (office holders, party chairs, the president) and informal republican party (media, pacs, etc) told them that it was.
• Given the sequence of events, it’s arguable that Trump set the mob to literally kill his own vice president.
• There are real national security concerns that mingled in the mob were spies — people who dressed like qanon shlubs to blend in. Once they entered, they could have planted bugs, grabbed computers, and compromised network security in a variety of different ways.
• Immediately after this, a large majority of the House Republican conference voted that the election was suspect, and that they should break the law in order to cast doubt on / overturn the election.
• Today, many in the republican media ecosystem are pretending that these people (thousands! who organized for weeks! Many of whom are famous Trump fans. Flying trump flags. (And flying nazi and confederate flags)) were actually leftists
• And (opinion) I’m kind of relieved because at least they admit that it was bad. A large remaining part of the republican party is saying “yeah, it was us, and it was good”.

Oh, and also:

Wednesday was much more violent than you think it was.

Consider this: the people live-streaming were idiots. They broadcasted themselves breaking the law. Many other people were not idiots. They were armed militias, equipped to the nines, often with (ex?) military members.

Those people — the competent, scary ones — were the ones planning on actually killing members of Congress. They had guns. And they didn’t livestream.

The stuff you saw was from the clowns. It’s skewing your perception. Think about what wasn’t broadcast.