Worse Than A Crime–A Blunder, Revisited

My initial take on January 6 2021 was to echo Fouché’s verdict on the judicial murder of the Duc d’Enghien by Napoleon “it was worse than a crime: it was a blunder.” Today’s nauseating anniversary remembrance demonstrates exactly why it was such a blunder.

The Democratic Party and the left generally grotesquely exaggerate the events at the Capitol in order to delegitimize any and all opponents on their right. Anyone who opposes the Democratic Party is a threat not to the Democratic Party–but to democracy. Anyone who even suggests that there was something hinky about the 2020 election is an extremist, an insurrectionist. Anybody who opposes the Democratic Party’s agenda is similarly an extremist, an insurrectionist, and a revolutionary.

Cut to video of the Capitol on January 6 2021.

Further, since the right is such a threat to political order, our governing institutions, the rule of law, etc., etc., etc., preemptive actions are justified to fight it. Indeed, it is justified to fight the non-left/non-Democratic by any means necessary (to reprise a phrase made famous–or infamous–by Malcom X):

What the American left needs now is allegiance, not allyship. It must abandon any imagined fantasies about the sanctity of governmental institutions that long ago gave up any claim to legitimacy. Stack the supreme court, end the filibuster, make Washington DC a state, and let the dogs howl, and now, before it is too late. The moment the right takes control of institutions, they will use them to overthrow democracy in its most basic forms; they are already rushing to dissolve whatever norms stand in the way of their full empowerment.

In other words, it is imperative that the left burn the village in order to save it. Put differently, leftist shrieks about the right’s threat to the Constitutional order is projection to the Nth degree.

As an aside, the author of that piece–which has received a lot of attention, as has his book on the same subject–Stephen Marche, is a Canadian with a PhD in early modern English drama from the University of Toronto, who taught Renaissance drama at CUNY (that’s with a “Y”) for a few years. Methinks he should have stuck to the Wars of the Roses, or Justin Trudeau’s socks.

Marche is also particularly alarmed about right (and white) extremism in the military. His main concern is that it will not fight on the right side (I mean, the left side) in a civil war. So it must be purged. Note that such a purge is ongoing. And January 6 is a pretext for that.

The Democrats, and Biden in particular, are especially incentivized to wave the bloody shirt of January 6 (even though the only blood spilled was among the demonstrators) because, well, what else do they have? Everything else, from inflation, to Afghanistan, to COVID, to risking crime, etc., etc., etc., is a disaster. They cannot prevail in elections based on their record of governance, so they have to assert that letting the opposition win would represent the end of self-government in America.

So it’s all January 6 all the time, baby.

Alas, with a few exceptions, the Republican officials have proved to be the pussies that they’ve proved to be time and time before. Even Ted Cruz regurgitated the “violent terrorism” narrative yesterday. With friends like these . . . . They are, in fact, good for nothing cowards who are totally invested in the existing political culture, and are more afraid of bad press than they are willing to speak the truth. And they are too stupid to realize that this craven posture only reduces their chances of electoral victory. It is not called the Stupid Party for nothing.

And the truth is that January 6 was indeed a blot on America’s escutcheon. But the truth is also what January 6 was not. It was not an insurrection. It was a largely spontaneous overreaction of frustrated people in a febrile political and social environment. It was hardly organized or directed–except for colorable claims that any organization or direction came from the FBI and other federal organs. (If the feds were not in the crowd, and did not anticipate what could happen, then they were outrageously incompetent, and completely acting against type–which involves infiltrating every potentially anti-government movement.) It was not a coup, as the term is normally understood. What happened after Trump’s election was far closer to a coup than anything that happened after Biden’s. (Russiagate, impeachments, etc., were all attempts to deny the legitimacy of Trump’s election and to overturn the results thereof, so spare me Democrats’ current laments about how the 2020-21 challenges to the legitimacy of Biden’s election are beyond the pale.)

January 6–and Trump’s reaction to his loss generally–was a tantrum. An understandable tantrum, but a tantrum nonetheless. And like most tantrums, it has proved completely counterproductive and has boomeranged on those who threw it–and on the rest of the non-leftists who were nowhere near the Capitol, and who remained calm. A blunder, as it were. It is being used to discredit any opposition to the left’s extreme agenda by tarring all opponents as rampaging extremists.

It is said that revenge is a dish best served cold. January 6 is a perfect illustration of the wisdom of that adage. Acting in heat, the crowd–and Trump–did far more harm to their cause then good. Better to remain calm and plot vengeance coldly, calculatedly. The failure to do so has made the fight all the more difficult.

Indeed, blunder is too weak a word to describe the choices that people made. Does anyone have any better suggestions?