Green Zone on the Potomac

In Baghdad, the US embassy complex is a massive fortified area hard on the Tigris called The Green Zone. It is to protect representatives of America’s government–and its governing class–from the barbarians beyond. In advance of Wednesday’s inauguration, Washington DC is being turned into the Green Zone on the Potomac. (H/T to @libertylynx for suggesting the analogy!)

So just who are the barbarians whom the governing class is attempting to exclude from the nation’s capital?

This could be a particularly grandiose exercise in security theater, meant to convey that the country is under threat from shadowy right-wing insurrectionists, and thereby provide a justification for sweeping “domestic terrorism” legislation, followed by early-21st equivalents to early-20th century “Palmer Raids” (Garland Raids?)–these directed at American “fascists” and “white supremacists,” rather than communists and anarchists as in 1919-1920. This would bode very ill for our freedom. It could be the death knell, in fact.

This could also reveal the governing class’s panicked realization that they are heartily hated by a large portion of the populace–and that they know that they are hated for good reason, due to their abject incompetence, irredeemable corruption, and sneering disdain for vast swathes of Americans. We have the worst governing class in the country’s history–and that includes the 1850s, during which the previous holder of this dubious distinction led the country to civil war.

These explanations are not mutually exclusive, of course. A hated “elite,” all too conscious of its failings and unpopularity (Congress ranks somewhere below tertiary syphilis in esteem, with the federal bureaucracy and the media hot on its heels), will out of self-preservation engineer crises that justify the employment of the government’s vast coercive apparatus to crush those who wish them gone.

It is extremely illuminating that actually burning things down, which occurred not just in DC but around the country in May and June, did not elicit such a hysterical response. Only when the precious denizens of DC feel personally threatened by the people they ostensibly govern do they go to Defcon 1.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t let a stupid, but wildly exaggerated, rampage in the Capitol (that never would have happened had the most basic measures been taken–which should make you wonder why they weren’t) provide the pretext for purges and “domestic terrorism” legislation that deprives you of your rights, puts your liberty at risk, and threatens to bring the country to the brink of another break. Don’t fall for the security theater and the FBI’s alarums. These are a pretext to deprive you of your freedoms, most notably your freedom to heap scorn on a failed ruling class, and to hold them to account for their myriad failings.